What does feeling feel like? Or, How can literature make you feel what feeling feels like? And I don’t just mean, How does it feel to write imaginatively, and to imagine spectacular things, and then to work at making those imaginations appear to have emotional resonance. Maybe I’m getting distracted here. But I think Predatory needs to be distinguished from the world of contemporary, American “surreal poetry.” Yes, it fits into this currently popular genre. Yes, these surreal poems often cast the imagination as a crescendo, and many people mistake that crescendo for feeling. “I’m excited! I’m imagining!” That’s what those poems say.
That’s not what real feeling feels like. I’m talking more along the lines of Cate Marvin’s Fragment of the Head of a Queen. In fact, if Marvin’s book weren’t so monochromatic in its sentiment, I’d say it was a good model for thinking about Predatory. Both books have these poems that push and push at a situation. Everything is relevant. The world outside keeps on inflicting itself on the speaker. The world makes the speaker feel something. With the Marvin, that something is one feeling, and it’s this consistently sickening anxiety. It’s like that book makes feeling that way inescapable. It’s truly affective poetry!
But I prefer the Shaheen. Because the poems are about anxiety, as well as love, as well as civic duty, as well as laziness. Shaheen’s poems are vulnerable, and they’re even vulnerable about their vulnerability. The guy just won’t quit! Because it feels as though Shaheen has a stake in feeling things. And sometimes describing that can get confusing. Why don’t you try feeling or loving or being concerned or privileging friendship? Then why don’t you describe how that feels in the most precise terms? That’s Predatory. It’s difficult. It’s confusing. And for Shaheen’s speaker it’s more so, because there’s an entire internet of descriptions available for comparison or imitation. Don’t we live at a time when the grand dilemma of language’s imprecision should have been solved already? Well, no. And here’s Predatory to show you why solving that dilemma would make life really dull. Predatory makes being confused about life fun! Because the thing about feelings is that they persist whether they’ve been described or not. Feelings are like a combustion engine that’s always moving, and Predatory makes the noble gesture to try describing that engine by plotting all the most pertinent points out. And the speaker is helpless as to why they all fit together. Fortunately, at least for the poems in this book, they do.
Recommended links:
Predatory
glennshaheen.com (The official web site!)
"Scientist" (A funny prose poem that doesn't even appearin the book!)
Fragment of the Head of a Queen
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