Donkey Gospel, by Tony Hoagland
(Graywolf, 1998)
In order to understand a Tony Hoagland poem, you need to follow some very specific instructions. First, grow old. Unfortunately, this disqualifies a whole army of under-23 year olds who swear on Donkey Gospel or Narcissism as holy poetic writ, but they are committing unholy acts. To love Tony Hoagland, you must have lived a life that you can leave in your past. You must have a view of youthful indiscretions from the solid perspective of "youth" being a problematic word. Because youth really isn't the same thing as "young at heart."
Next step, believe beauty is always going to be somewhere in the past tense. No, not The Past. A good poem will always have some issue with The Past (oh, memory, oh, mistakes, oh delicious youthful foibles). The beauty I'm always talking about still lives with the poet, in his present, where he keeps getting reminded of the beauty he can only phrase in the past tense. I'm referring to that murky region where the present relates to the past. It's like nostalgia plus a larger dose of the present. The poem has to deal with the poet writing the poem, who lived the holy life so completely, where it was beautiful everywhere everyday. That was back when the poet was present, or, as Hoagland makes clear, there was access to drugs that would make the present even more present. He didn't have to think of the past. There was only a present, and it was tough even to take in all that present at once.
Does that mean Donkey Gospel operates on a nostalgia for some poignantly remembered glory? Yes. But the past is only a prerequisite for the poems' real magic. Because the same poet who lived that life is still living his life. Maybe with a little less gullibility. Maybe knowing that recklessness has consequences. But life continues to be in the present tense, and it might very well be biologically impossible for the poet to pass that life by.
And this is the precise point of paradox that gives these poems their vitality--a poet who has experienced the life of reckless abandon, who still feels compelled to that kind of life, but who recognizes that consequences follow every action. The result is a mixture of wisdom and puckishness. Like if Ozzy Osbourne was actually coherent (well, maybe a coherent Ozzy Osbourne lite, I have never found a decapitated bat in any of Hoagland's poems). Read the poem "Beauty," which is at once a paean and an elegy for what it feels like to have been possessed by beauty, and to know that any way that you might relate to beauty later in your life is going to be qualified by your knowledge that, "Hey, beauty is happening right now, and I'm smart enough to know that." It's a delicate stance to negotiate. Too much self-knowledge makes it look like the speaker needs to convince himself, a la Billy Collins' worst poems. Too much nostalgia and the poem becomes your boring uncle.
Recommended Links:
Donkey Gospel
Hoagland reads at Dodge Poetry Festival in 2006
Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment
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