Poetry Interlude
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
The 2022 Reading Round-Up, continued…
Poetry deserves a dedicated post, because I read it differently than fiction and nonfiction, and because it is largely neglected in the greater world. I generally dip in and out of a number of poetry books over the course of a year, but here I’m only covering the ones I read cover to cover (one title is omtted because it’s in my top five!). Listed in alphabetical order by poet, including a small sample of the work:
A Model Year by Gina Myers (Coconut Books, 2009)
I met Gina through my graduate writing program at the New School, and I’ve loved her work since. This is her full-length first book, published some time ago now, and she’s published a few since, but it jumped out at me last winter. I think I returned to it because it’s atmospheric, good reading for a cold day, a guide to moving through, and then moving past, world-weariness. A stanza from “Young Professionals in the Rain”:
In motion or looking to rest.
No one saw the weather report
or pretended to know the rain won’t stop.
The storm returns to memory.
The young professionals in the rain,
going to work in the latest watches,
waiting for something to love, something
to blow up in their faces. To believe in a kind of
perfection only a child can believe in.
Poemas y antipoemas by Nicanor Parra (Cátedra, 1988, first published 1954)
I have a strange relationship with this book. I didn’t know that it was important to me until I realized that I keep returning to it, unconsciously. Usually I establish a kind of private worship ceremony with personally important books, where they get pride of place in the bookshelf; I have strong opinions about their physical presentation; I feel possessive over the authors, though I try to keep this on the downlow as I realize it’s obnoxious. My copy of this book looks like it was chewed by a hamster and I’m indifferent to the cover. Parra’s poems elude me, but I do need them.
Nicanor Parra was a contemporary of Neruda (10 years younger), also from Chile, and tried hard to be the anti-Neruda - against florid language, sentimentality, poetry as grand and declamatory statements. (I love much of Neruda’s work, but some of his poetry could credibly be accused of all of the above.) Parra has a wry and dark humor and makes great use of the long line and surreal images. I read him in Spanish and didn’t feel compelled to also look up his work in translation in English, which also tells me that he is voice-driven, clear and precise. The poem I most retain of his is “La vibora” (“The Viper”), a long one, also one of his best known, you can read it English or Spanish.
My Private Property by Mary Ruefle (Wave Books, 2016)
I admire Ruefle’s confidence. There’s a sense of spontaneity in her work, the poem taking off in unexpected directions, but it never feels rough or unfinished. This is a collection of prose poems and lyric prose works, including a terrifying and unforgettable essay about menopause. A taste:
You are a thirteen-year-old with the experience and daily life of a forty-five-year-old.
You have on some days the desire to fuck a tree, or a dog, whichever is closest.
You have the desire to leave your husband or lover or partner, whatever.
No matter how stable or loving the arrangement, you want out.
You may decide to take up an insane and hopeless cause. You may decide to walk to Canada, or that it is high time you begin to collect old blue china, three thousand pieces of which will leave you bankrupt. Suddenly the solution to all problems lies in selling your grandmother’s gold watch or drinking your body weight in cider vinegar. A kind of wild forest blood runs in your veins.
(It first appeared in Granta, you can read the whole thing here.)
The Man Grave by Christopher Salerno (Persea Press, 2021)
I noticed this book and its striking cover on Facebook in a post by the author, whom I had met briefly years ago when hosting him at a reading series. A few days later, I came across it at a wonderful poetry-only bookstore called Index in Leiden, where I used to live in the Netherlands, and thought the encounter was serendipitous, so I picked it up. These are poems interrogating masculinity - the masks and violence implicit within it - in both boyhood and manhood. (And also, marriage, poetry, sex, family….) They travel far and in varied directions, both inward and outward, with an abundant lexicon and in a range of forms. They feel intimate but are expansive in their interests and images. From the collection:
IVF
More snow fell than was able
to be plowed. We turned
our faces to the clouds, waited
in waiting rooms to fill
out the forms, kissing each
one like the scalp of a child
with hair as unreal
as a doll built by hand
in the hold of a beautiful ship.
I sit in the room full of porn,
exhale my own name,
the one of that saint who
carried the Christ child
over a swollen river.
***
Thanks for reading. Share your favorite book of poetry you read last year in the comments, if you like.