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recommended: albert goldbarth

Albert Goldbarth's poetry is the reason I don't do ecstasy. Not because it's a suitable substitute. I guess I really wouldn't know, but I suspect the feeling I get from Goldbarth's poems isn't quite what I've heard ecstasy is like. No, I don't do ecstasy because I really don't think I could ever know whether it was the real deal or some junk made in a dude's deep sink. That curl of the lip I get even thinking of this is the expression on my face when I start reading a Goldbarth poem. Oh, God. What's it going to be this time? Am I going to crawl out of my skin for all the Yuk! Yuk! moments he includes?

Or, is it going to be like "Everyday People" in the Summer 2009 issue of Kenyon Review? Because you know what? When Goldbarth writes a poem, I mean one of these slow accumulation kind of poems, where every important idea gets illustrated and lived through by a narrative that is itself meaningful, I am a Goldbarthian through and through. I savor the deep implicit. I can take any wise guy voice that might surface, because this poem must mean something more than that guy, or me, or Goldbarth, and I trust that Goldbarth knows that. He has given in to the undertow, and it's a beautiful thing to read when it happens.

How are we, such busy, everyday people, supposed to keep up with the things that complicate our life, and, while doing those things, remain civicly conscious about the world? Goldbarth is so sweet about this. Yes, there might be a dash of cynicism, but it's that realistic kind that recognizes people have limits. And what happens if one of those limits is indulging your sense of wonder? Isn't that what poetry is supposed to encourage people to? Is poetry opposed to civic mindedness? Oh, Mr. Goldbarth, why can't I make you have a conversation with Mr. Auden?

Related Links:
Kenyon Review
To Be Read in 500 Years

recommended: mark irwin

I know I have a weakness for a concept elaborated further and further by a string of images that are almost impossibly connected. It's what draws me in to the Bob Hicok from Wednesday, and the Dobbie Gibson from last week. Mar Irwin's poem, "Red Feather," in the Spring 2009 issue of Kenyon Review does just that. "Sometimes I think the red feather's / the word is." And with this unlikely equation the poem leaps up to attention. Well, it might not be attention at that point. He has to make that red feather / is combination really touch, and, fortunately, for all of us, he does. When he walks into a "sun-ripe / woods" and the poem responds "red feather," I can't help but feel. What? I'm not sure. What is is is is just then? I might know, but I know the speaker does. And it may be that's what I need from this poem.

Related Links:
Kenyon Review (worldcat search for Kenyon Review)
Tall If (New Issues, 2008)

recommended: kascha semonovitch

I have to agree with David Baker. These Semonovitch poems aren't afraid of showing a little leg, oh, I mean, a little personality. Like, let's feature the speaker of these poems in the next Girls Gone Poet Shaky Cam video. You really can't help it.I admit sometimes the poems feel like they overstep some vague boundary, but then I think, "Is that the taste of game in my mouth (like venison, or free range chickens)?" And, though I disagree with Baker, who claims this is such an exception (what recent poems is he reading that he feels young poets are drawn to "sarcasm" and "snide"? Definitely not the poems recommended on lotsandlotsofneat!), I think that Semonovitch does excellent work flashing that gamy leg and then turning the poem back to the subject at hand.

Related Links:
Kenyon Review (worldcat search for Kenyon Review)