lots and lots of neat

recommended: bob hicok

I realize, as these recommended poets collect, I seem to be biased towards the poems by emerging poets. It's really not intentional, at least I hope it's not intentional. I read Hicok's "Absence Makes the Heart. That's It: Absence Makes the Heart" from issue #11 of Octopus Magazine just as I read the Naca, as I read the Swensen, etc.

I am fond of this poem. Oh, yes. It's clever underlined by pathos, just look at the title. It plays on an aphorism, then cuts it short to make a new point. These two opposing sensibilities in the poem, and their opposition, create a soothing tension. Yes, soothing. And out of this, Hicok stages an argument in favor of absence, using the seemingly ineffectual medium of one surreal image followed by another. This poem is perhaps reined in a bit more than the other two poems in this issue, and I think I'm happy with that control. The metaphors in "Absence..." are so beautiful in their aptness, I wouldn't want a reader distracted.

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
This Clumsy Living (Pitt Poetry Series)

recommended: barbara maloutas

I don't understand how it is I can like "Reason for Water" so much, when I don't really care for the Eric Baus poems that are in this same issue of Octopus Magazine. I respect both for the hyperbolic potential of the imagination impelling both poems forward. "Reason for Water" is just unrelenting. There is water everywhere, and Maloutas keeps saying that, about the water. There is never enough, there is too little, there is enough to fill cisterns, or reservoirs. Oh, sure, she lets herself get distracted, or I guess it could be distracting, talking about silk hats, or the "i" sound in "sin," but it always comes back to water. She even tells you how to drown in water, like any good guide would.

Baus breaks away from his center, or he mistrusts the idea of center so much it should be put into quotes. He mocks it and kind of twirls the poem around that. In "A Delphi," he names a character "Minus," only to make that character's subsequent actions and statements a collection of non sequiturs. Why? Or, well, I understand "why," but it seems to me if a reader is going to continue through this poem, there needs to be a tension, some possible sense that could connect all these things together, and if there is no sense, the poem just sits a flaccid string of words.

Perhaps, in this light, "Reason for Water" could be thought too insistent. I suppose that's its magic. It is always insistent, artfully so.

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
The Whole Marie

recommended: dobby gibson

I think the term "stream of consciousness" might be passe. Or maybe it's this fancy critical term that gets used to describe the modernist style Virginia Wolff and William Faulkner used to open further how a writer can say what he means to say. These days, everyone assumes that you say something, and it should sound like the truth. Even if it's a lie. (Oh, great legacy of Reagan, Clinton and W. Bush.)

So what is this style Dobby Gibson is using in his Octopus #11 poems? He sounds so intent. Like there's nothing holding his voice back. I don't think it's enough to call it a river of consciousness (which sounds kind of cheesy) or a cataract of consciousness (which still doesn't do the compulsive tone justice). So I'll just say there's something very true, addictively true, about his loud voice. And I'll believe him. Even when he's doing something kind of tricky, like with that word "about," and while he's turning it I can hear, even amidst all that loud voice noise he has going on, that there's something really smart being said.

Recommended Links:
Octopus Magazine
Skirmish: Poems
Dobby Gibson homepage

recommended: kristin naca

Is there someone, please, who can give an Academy Award to Octopus Magazine? I'm serious. At Issue 11, I might be way late to the game, but damn. This thing just hurts me to read it.

That's right. It hurts to read Kristini Naca's poem in there, "House." "A house has all around it," the poem says. And, you know what I'm doing? I'm nodding my head like hip hop. I'm pouring some on the ground for a homey somewhere. Because I want to belong to this poem, be hard with this poem. It goes everywhere.  Language can't be pure reference theory? Yes, it goes there. The mysterious compellingness of the speaker's biography? Yes, it goes there. Fresh, fresh DJ scratch personification? Yes, it is pimping in those sandals too.

I'll be honest. I rolled my eyes when I found out MTV was going to sponsor one of the National Poetry Series books. I figured it would have to be some Jewel book, or something they could read on The Real World (is that show still on?). But it turns out Krisin Naca's going to be the book they published. And if this is what she's writing, I say, "Serve me first!"

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
Bird Eating Bird: Poems (just do yourself a favor and preorder it)