Sometimes I really can be victim to the poem of the explosive imaginative energy. Is this me suffering from the Dean Young Effect? Perhaps. Or I get to feeling that "skittery poem of the moment" feeling, and it's like Patrick Swayze is all on screen again and it's time to dance. Oh, I don't think I've EVER felt this way before.
Or I have. In fact, I would say that most, except for the most complacent poets, have figured out the Effect/Trick, and I would say that most poets let it pass without notice when the poet really gives them nothing to notice. I say Bartel has some clever additions in his poem, "Brooder," found in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of FENCE. Yes, it has lots of dazzle: "a fool's-green silver of aquaculture, morning scrapes with snow, little gaps / coated in pitch & March thistles rotting at the mouth." OK, good. I'm interested, but not that interested.
No, what sets Bartel's poem apart is the heavy pivoting done on the word "brooder," where it feels as though he wants his reader to see the speaker sitting over a brood of something, everything, that thick spoken imagination. He is "emanating sad heat." He is "King of Hens." This is clever, but it also adds some gravity to the poem, and that gravity is what draws me in. One who broods has gravity, and I can hear how this speaker is losing everything, even while his suffering accumulates.
Now, if I was going to label a Dean Young Effect, this would be my personal call. Because when Young is good, he's making me feel a reason for his images.
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