Yes, I know this prejudice is limiting. I know I’m missing out on a few great things. But hey, at least I’m not missing out on Robert Pinsky.

Last month I was visiting my dad in the hospital in Boston and decided to wander through Cambridge for a bit. I’d somehow never heard of Grolier Poetry Bookshop, but stumbled upon it while walking around Harvard. Grolier is the oldest continuous poetry book shop in America. It’s small (though they stock more poetry titles than most larger bookstores). See a 360 view of Grolier’s bookshelves.

[continued below]

The woman behind the counter at Grolier talked-up a new CD that was prominently featured on the center table: POEMJAZZ– a collaboration between Robert Pinsky and Grammy-winning pianist Laurence Hobgood. She said she’d recently seen them perform the material live at Boston’s Regattabar, and both the album and their live performance were impressive.

I only had so much to spend that day, though, and seeing that I already owned a cassette tape (remember those?) of Pinsky reading about 60 minutes of his poems from the 1990′s– I figured I didn’t need POEMJAZZ. What I did buy was the 3-time poet laureate’s new Selected Poems.

[continued below]

Later while riding the T back to the hospital and flipping through the book, I found a poem (“An Alphabet of My Dead”) about Pinsky’s final encounter with Elizabeth Bishop at a poetry reading at Grolier. Strange little insignificant kismet!

For the next two weeks, I read and reread these selected poems–  filled with history, longing, etymology, ennui, science, family, religion, music, and spirit. I was awed by how the poems held me, even as they wound away from the main riff or melody, testing the limits of breath and voice and mode and theme. Pinsky’s longer poems resemble extended improvisations– a kind of Jazz-like riffing with words that can be both ornamental and wrenching. Many of his poems are actually ABOUT jazz itself– the phrases that float the line between tethered and free, the blue notes, the curves and timbre of instruments, and the breath that moves through them.

Reminded of the jazz that already existed in Robert Pinsky’s poems, I really, really, really wanted to get my hands on POEMJAZZ.

I did. Pinsky’s tendency to repeat certain lines as if they’re lyric motifs seemed strange at first, though I stuck with it; this is jazz after all. It’s not exactly highway listening, but a few weeks later and the CD is still in the car stereo.

[continued below]

iTunes only has one track available– “Creole,” a poem which recently appeared in POETRY Magazine, but you can purchase the full CD with a booklet containing each poem from Circumstantial Productions.

Many reviewers, and the performers themselves, are quick to point out how Pinsky uses his voice as if the were a horn carrying the melody– and that description is apt. The poet delivers his lines with a natural feel, each word dancing with and against the rhythm without evidence of mimicry or effort.

Laurence Hobgood (who normally accompanies Kurt Elling) puts on his best Keith-Jarrett-hat to support the poems with tasteful, motivic improvisations. “Supports” might be a bad word to use here, actually, since both poet and pianist succeed in giving each other appropriate space while adding elements that could stand alone.

The album was recorded live over two sessions, and, as intended, maintains a spontaneous energy: “In jazz as in poetry, there is always that play between what’s regular and what’s wild,” says Robert Pinsky. “That has always appealed to me.”

I haven’t found any quality live-performance video for POEMJAZZ yet, but here’s a video of Pinsky sitting in with some kids from the BU Jazz Combo.

[continued below]

Oh, and as a nod to Pinsky’s long poems that usually find their way back to the “head” (as the main melody is called in jazz terms), I should mention here that my dad is doing well, recovering at home after 17 days in isolation at Brigham & Women’s, and I’m on the 4th book of the “Song of Ice and Fire” series that began with Game of Thrones. I don’t think Pinsky has written any poems about dragons, giants, and grumpkins yet, has he?

Today I learned that Adrienne Rich passed away.

I’m not sure what all will be made by the media of her politics, feminism, and attitudes; but in terms of her writing, those two poems in particular will be burned on me forever. For that, I thank her.

Poet Adrienne Rich (photo by Colleen McKay, from www.PoetryFoundation.org)

———

Baroque is a word that will never spring to mind in connection with Ted Kooser– instead, plain spoken or direct. But not completely. In addition to the quiet openness of Kooser’s poems are his subtle insights into the vagaries of human activities.

[continued below]

Like the poet Wallace Stevens and the modernist composer Charles Ives, Kooser sold insurance for a living. He lived and still lives in Nebraska. He is an inheritor of vast space and tight communities. Kooser’s poetry explores the day to day world around him, a person canning applesauce or a man accidently seeing a woman he once loved. But underneath the observation is an understanding of our paradoxes and complexities. In “Shadows and Dreams” he ponders the people walking out into the unknown world of old age:

                                             Their ears

are full of night: rustle of black leaves

against a starless sky. Sometimes

they hear us calling, and sometimes

they don’t. They are not searching

for anything much, nor are they much

in need of finding something new.

Kooser is a close friend of Jim Harrison, a poet whose reputation for wild, excessive living stands in contrast to Kooser. Polar opposites, close friends– they have written a book of short vignettes, almost letters, titled Braided Creek. Neither writer is identified in the conversation, leaving the focus on what is said. And it is a wonderful conversation that carries the reader right into their friendship and into their poetic explorations.

Lost for while,

I found her name

when I scratch through

my hair.

 

To prevent leakage,

immerse yourself in clouds and birds,

a jubilant drift downward.

 ———–

So, we’re both named Christopher and we like the same books– clearly I’d love Hennessy’s poetry.

[Read some of his poems HERE and HERE and HERE  and HERE.]

Anyway, in the past couple weeks he’s had a poem featured on Poetry Daily and his debut collection Love-In-Idleness has been named as a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. I thought it’d be a good time to ask Christopher a few questions; he was kind enough to answer them.

[continued below]

——————-

Your poems are concerned with naming things. You’re working to uncover some of the forces at play behind words. Why is that important for you as a writer, and for readers?

CH: I’m so glad that aspect of the work comes across. It’s important for me as a writer because I’m sort of a noun whore. (Remember School House Rocks? They had one that was about nouns—“A noun is a special kind of word. It’s any name you’ve ever heard.”) I love the juiciness of nouns, the music and layered-ness of their naming.

That’s part of the reason why I end my poem “Carriers” (about a muse/angel who drops words from the sky) with two nouns, peach and maelstrom, falling into the throat of a beautiful young man. I was trying to foreground the power of how when we name things, we call forth music, image, and sense. I wanted those two words to call up fuzz and fury –and beauty– in the same moment. But then I also have a poem called “Christopher Looks” that uses my own name to play with the idea that our names are actually malleable containers, can be ciphers, can be warped reflections. The poem collages together the results of a Google search using the phrases “Christopher looks like.”

For a reader, I think names mean so much to us that we’re predisposed to want to unearth them from their contexts or, conversely, to mire them in mud. I hope readers who love nouns and naming the juice of language will love my book.

You’re also pretty focused on the body and (excuse the term)– embodiment. You mentioned “Carriers” (which was recently featured on Poetry Daily); in that poem, language and eroticism combine when a boy actually swallows a word. How do you make a body real in a poem?

CH: I’m so gratified “Carriers” keeps coming up! (It’s actually also included in A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry.)  Yes, I’m a bit obsessed with the body. I actually catalogue it (specifically its injuries and ailments and other problems) in a poem about the Midwestern body in particular. And I’m always, I find, lingering over hips, especially. Perhaps because they’re male hips, and I like to think about how the hips are such a female-gendered body part and yet the male hips are beautiful in their own way. And speaking of nouns—“hips!” What a word. I always think of rose hips.

I think you make a body real in a poem, and this might sound counter-intuitive, by connecting it to an image or sense that will pull the reader away from the familiar—the body is perhaps the thing most familiar because we inhabit it every second of every day—and into the unimagined. It’s a tall order, and I don’t always do it. But I try! It’s what I was trying to do when I wrote of the breastbone’s “aching well” in my poem about Jacob and the Angel. And when we think “body” we sometimes think only of limbs, appendages, those things we fetishize, simply desire, (breasts, legs, hips, the ass, muscles) or express our desire with (for men, the penis), etc. But don’t forget that the body is also what’s within it, it’s fluids, it humors, if you will. And I try to do the same thing in this regard. It’s what’s behind the lines “…Blood in the cum/ is the scarlet ribbon / in an egg’s albumen, / a mistake of embryonic petals / coiled at its center.”

I should also say the worst thing—the killing-est thing—can be to have even the slightest fear of the body, of revealing it, of wanting it. One of the true formative moments for me as a poet, and also a Rubicon moment, was when my mentor at Emerson brought me into his office to read a poem. There was an image in the poem of a beautiful man, running on the beach, I think, wearing only a pair of tiny hot-pink shorts. (I’ve been trying to find that poem ever since; I wonder now if it even existed or if I’ve created it because I needed it.)

My mentor had me read the poem and told me I needed to stop fearing the male body, that I needed to write the poems that I wanted to write. I had been so fearful of the body (the body on which I’d been gazing at for years) that I was writing these terribly muffled poems of coded desire. They were really stifled poems, and thus not good.

Are you sick of being asked, “How do you know when a poem is finished?” I’ll ask anyway. How do you know when you’ve finished revising a poem? How do you know when a word is adding its bit of magic or just getting in the way?

CH: That’s a question I was just talking to a student about. Let’s break it down. First, every line must be self-sustaining, memorable. Every one. It should begin in a place that’s the only possible place to begin. You should have tried to extend the ending past the point of reason. You either produce an extended ending that’s shit or you discover the true ending of the poem. Either way I think you know immediately. Other than that, it’s all guesswork, of course!

What is your greatest difficulty as a writer and how do you deal with it?

CH: Can I be coy and just quote Keats? “….Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason…”

Yankees Vs. Red Sox; Beatles Vs. Stones; Hennessy Vs. _________________?

CH: I love the balls this questions has! Okay, I’ll say “Hennessy vs. Cherry Garcia Ben & Jerry’s Fro-Yo.” I hope that doesn’t make too much sense.

The subtitle of your blog Outside the Lines is “a place for writers to consider how identity shapes creativity.” So, a small question… how does identity shape creativity, or visa versa? If you had to pigeonhole your identity and creative voice, how have they shaped one another? How does any of this relate to the title of your first collection– Love-In-Idleness?

CH: This is the question that prompted me to enroll in a Ph.D. program. So perhaps I’ll have an answer for you in two years when I complete my dissertation. Until then, I’ll just give you this often-offered-up anecdote. When a critic named Jeff Weinstein was asked if he thought there was a gay sensibility and if it affected culture, this was his one-sentence response: “No, there’s no such thing as a gay sensibility and yes, it does affect culture.”

[The most recently I’ve seen this, as I say, often-mentioned anecdote, was from Christopher Bram in an interview in Salon.com. (Thomas Rogers from Salon, call me!) Bram recently published Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America.]

I realize citing that response is a cop out, but all I can say in my defense is to point people to browse the blog and they will surely get a sense of some of the ways this question can begin to be thought through.

As for Love-In-Idleness, the book’s narrative and lyric identities are my own: gay, Midwesterner, country mouse who’s now a city mouse, son, partner, and storyteller. Lately, I’ve begun to wonder if the more interesting poems, however, are those that are not part one of my more stable or comfortable identities—hypersexual being, trickster, nature lover, asshole, magician. These are not who I am. But perhaps they are who I want to be. Maybe that’s where our best poetry happens. In that space of self-making, wish-making—in the conflict of the self and the self-one-desires.

I feel obliged (sadly) to note I’m skirting the whole issue of the identity as a theoretically useful concept. For decades now to talk about ‘identity’ has been to risk appearing naïve.  I think we’ll see a growing desire, even among academics, to find ways to argue for the return of identity.

What were some of the unexpected considerations you had to make when putting together your first collection?

CH: I discovered many of my poems hadn’t found their endings. And that turned out to be a great joy—to find those two or three lines that suddenly appeared and made me realize a whole different poem was just waiting to be found.

If the last surviving anthology had one of your poems in it, which one would you pick as proof that you were here? (and why?)

CH: This question has balls, too! Or rather implicates the answerer’s hubris.

What the hell. I’d pick my poem “The Cicada, And Other Lessons.”  It ends with this stanza:

The cicada sleeps

underground for 17 years

to avoid the mantis and wasp.

But when it emerges, it sings.

There is no shame in that life.

Why? Because there aren’t many things in life that I believe in the truly simple way that belief should really be. But the message of that stanza is one of them. And the fact that it’s part of a father-son poem, I think, matters too.

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to write poems, or who says “I wanna be a poet when I grow up?”

CH: Drown yourself in literature, in words, in nouns. And swallow them, peach and maelstrom. Swallow them whole! It will hurt at first. But from pain comes pleasure. And hopefully art!

Might I end by quoting Hart Crane: “Thou canst read nothing except through appetite…”

Take that how you may!

—————-

Christopher Hennessy is the author of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets (University of Michigan Press). He earned an MFA from Emerson College and currently is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He was included in Ploughshares’ special “Emerging Writers” edition, and his poetry, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, Verse, Cimarron Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Bloomsbury Review, Court Green, OCHO, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge,Wisconsin Review, Brooklyn Review, Memorious, and elsewhere. Hennessy is a longtime associate editor for The Gay & Lesbian Review-Worldwide.

(from “Low”)

It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting

For the light to change; a bakery.

 

It’s a lake. It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by pines.

There’s a couple.

 

It’s a living room. The upholstery is yellow and the furniture is walnut.

They used to lie down on the carpet

 

Between the sofa and the coffee table, after the guests had left.

In these lines, Collins is using that now-familiar impersonal voice in order to set up dimensions, a kind of hierarchy of the mundane. There are markers, however– the formal repetition of “It’s,” with which we can view how this “impersonal” voice bounces surprisingly away from whatever “It” may or may not be. Collins gives us a way to cover the distance.

“It’s not happiness, but something else’”- a feeling?

“waiting/for the light to change”- an expectation? An impatience? Momentum about to change?

“A bakery”- hmmm. Personal, or at least specific, all of a sudden. A place. And one that’s mere inclusion in the poem hints at import.

“It’s a lake”- OK. Is this the same “It” from the previous stanza? Is the lake also the “something else”? I doubt it. Suddenly, the speaker is bringing us to another question, another doubt, through the very act of saying something certain– what something IS. If you’ve read Collins, or if you’ve read Part 1 or Part 2 of this series, then this tactic will seem familiar, her use of certainties and specificity to create conflict and doubt.

“It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by pines”- Well, I don’t know what is happening here, but that is just a beautiful line. Holy shit. Excuse the profanity. But, ya know, some lines deserve some cussing about them.

“There’s a couple”- Again, an impersonal observation melds with the personal. Not only does the lake emerge, but so does “the couple” and we must immediately question if the speaker is a part of or apart from the couple. Does the speaker feel anything at all about the couple? More questioning through a certain statement. Collins is brilliant at that. She keeps doing it.

[continued below]

Arda Collins, 2008 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition

A Look at “Pool #13” 

I become envious

of my imagined image

of a person holding two six-shooters

and wearing clothes from the mall and a cowboy hat.

Let’s forget for a minute the fact that these lines tumble into a discussion of personal shame regarding image and self-image. Here, Collins is using a highly immediate, personal, confessional voice to twist us quickly around. This confessional voice is actually not revealing much about her actual self. She is merely admitting to an imaginary envy, coveting a fantasy self. What a strange inward turn of negative reflections.

The next great thing? She surprises us again. Her fantasy self isn’t a super model or GQ cover specimen. It’s an absurd, campy cowboy-outfit-wearing consumer.

This technique is far more interesting than simply being confessional and saying “I have bad self image” or “I don’t know who I am.” Collins is far more subversive and subtle. The unexpected reversal, the fantasy envy, is a great way to lead into the admission of shame. Otherwise, it would seem far more cliché, melodramatic, and diary-like. Dig?

—————-

OK. I think that is enough Arda Collins for one season. Her work is compelling and complexing, and worth discovering. Check it!

Listen to the interview here (it’s only about 8 minutes long):

An interview with poet Mark Strand from NPR’s “Here & Now”

————-

Coincidentally or not, my favorite default browser homepage (Poetry Daily) featured Strand’s “Bury Your Face In Your Hands” yesterday as well.

He’s been working with the short prose-poem form lately. Check the links above to read a few examples.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand: photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the world’s largest annual prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in, or translated into English. Two $65k prizes are awarded each year– one to a living Canadian poet, and an international prize granted to a living English-language poet from any country in the world (which can also include Canada). $10k is also awarded to all shortlisted poets who read at their annual event in Toronto. Nice!

[continued below]

On top of being an incredibly generous institution, the Griffin folks have also got a great archive of readings posted on their YouTube channel. Check it!

—————————————

Winners of the Griffin Poetry Prize

Winners are listed first and highlighted with bold.

2001

Canada:

• Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours
• Robert Bringhurst, Nine Visits to the Mythworld
• Don McKay, Another Gravity

International:

• Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh, translation of Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan
• Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, translation of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai
• Fanny Howe, Selected Poems
• Les Murray, Learning Human

Judges:

• Carolyn Forché
• Dennis Lee
• Paul Muldoon

Guest performer at awards ceremony: Gord Downie

2002

Canada:

• Christian Bök, Eunoia
• Erin Mouré, Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person
• Karen Solie, Short Haul Engine

International:

• Alice Notley, Disobedience
• Victor Hernández Cruz, Maraca
• Christopher Logue, Homer: War Music
• Les Murray, Conscious and Verbal

Judges:

• Dionne Brand
• Robert Creeley
• Michael Hofmann

Guest host at awards ceremony: Albert Schultz

2003

Canada:

• Margaret Avison, Concrete and Wild Carrot
• Dionne Brand, thirsty
• P.K. Page, Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New

International:

• Paul Muldoon, Moy sand and gravel
• Kathleen Jamie, Mr And Mrs Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994
• Gerald Stern, American Sonnets: poems
• C. D. Wright, Steal Away: selected and new poems

Judges:

• Michael Longley
• Sharon Olds
• Sharon Thesen

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Heather McHugh

2004

Canada:

• Anne Simpson, Loop
• Di Brandt, Now You Care
• Leslie Greentree, Go-go Dancing for Elvis

International:

• August Kleinzahler, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
• Suji Kwock Kim, Notes From the Divided Country
• David Kirby, The Ha-Ha
• Louis Simpson, The Owner of the House

Judges:

• Billy Collins
• Bill Manhire
• Phyllis Webb

2005

Canada:

• Roo Borson, Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida
• George Bowering, Changing on the Fly
• Don McKay, Camber

International:

• Charles Simic, Selected Poems: 1963-2003
• Fanny Howe, On the Ground
• Michael Symmons Roberts, Corpus
• Matthew Rohrer, A Green Light

Judges:

• Simon Armitage
• Erin Mouré
• Tomaž Šalamun

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: August Kleinzahler

2006

Canada:

• Sylvia Legris, Nerve Squall
• Phil Hall, An Oak Hunch
• Erin Mouré, Little theatres

International:

• Kamau Brathwaite, Born to Slow Horses
• Michael Hofmann, translation of Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems by Durs Grünbein
• Michael Palmer, Company of Moths
• Elizabeth Winslow, translation of The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Judges:

• Lavinia Greenlaw
• Lisa Robertson
• Eliot Weinberger

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Robin Blaser

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Simon Armitage

2007

Canada:

• Don McKay, Strike/Slip
• Ken Babstock, Airstream Land Yacht
• Priscila Uppal, Ontological Necessities

International:

• Charles Wright, Scar Tissue
• Paul Farley, Tramp in Flames
• Rodney Jones, Salvation Blues
• Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga

Judges:

• John Burnside
• Charles Simic
• Karen Solie

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Tomas Tranströmer

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Matthew Rohrer

2008

Canada:

• Robin Blaser, The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser
• Robert Majzels and Erin Moure, translation of Notebook of Roses and Civilization by Nicole Brossard
• David McFadden, Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden

International:

• John Ashbery, Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems
• Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems
• Clayton Eshleman, translation of The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by Cesar Vallejo
• David Harsent, Selected Poems 1969-2005

Judges:

• George Bowering
• James Lasdun
• Pura Lopez Colome

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Ko Un

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Paul Farley

2009

Canada:

• A.F. Moritz, The Sentinel
• Kevin Connolly, Revolver
• Jeramy Dodds, Crabwise to the Hounds

International:

• C.D. Wright, Rising, Falling, Hovering
• Mick Imlah, The Lost Leader
• Derek Mahon, Life on Earth
• Dean Young, Primitive Mentor

Judges:

• Saskia Hamilton
• Dennis O’Driscoll
• Michael Redhill

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: James Wood

2010

Canada:

• Karen Solie, Pigeon
• Kate Hall, The Certainty Dream
• P.K. Page, Coal and Roses

International:

• Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, The Sun-fish
• John Glenday, Grain
• Louise Gluck, A Village Life
• Susan Wicks, translation of Cold Spring in Winter by Valerie Rouzeau

Judges:

• Anne Carson
• Kathleen Jamie
• Carl Phillips

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Adrienne Rich

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Glyn Maxwell

2011

Canada:

• Dionne Brand, Ossuaries
• Suzanne Buffam, The Irrationalist
• John Steffler, Lookout

International:

• Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Heavenly Questions
• Seamus Heaney, Human Chain
• Khaled Mattawa, translation of Adonis: Selected Poems by Adonis
• Philip Mosley, translation of The Book of the Snow by Francois Jacqmin

Judges:

• Tim Lilburn
• Colm Toibin
• Chase Twichell

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Yves Bonnefoy

Guest performer at awards ceremony: Jonathan Welstead, Poetry In Voice recitation champion

2012

Judges:

• Heather McHugh
• David O’Meara
• Fiona Sampson

May I suggest you get into the spirit of things with an iPad app?

About 6 months ago, Faber & Faber launched a really well-made app for T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. It’s not exactly poetry news anymore, but I was reminded of this app again today while attempting to set up an interview with some of the peeps from Faber at the London Book Fair.

Many of the early steps to move poetry into the digital world have been awkward ones; but this Waste Land app is upping the game quite a bit. The only awkward thing about it– Viggo Mortensen reciting Eliot???

Download The Waste Land app for iPad.

Here’s a video news report The Guardian did about Faber’s new iPad app for T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:

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And here’s audio from the Poetry Off the Shelf  podcast episode dedicated to the same app:

The Waste Land: the app

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Yes, the last one on that list is fairly lo-impact. But after reading Todd Boss’ poem “To Wait” on Poetry Daily about a month ago, I had to get his latest collection Pitch. So I ordered it on Amazon and, yes, waited.

To Wait

is no great

bread.
It’s tough

and mostly
tasteless

stuff.
You chew

and chew.
It’s said

to be good
for you, but

it only fills.
Swallow it,

it swells.
And it must

be mildly
sodiate,

for its last
effect is just

like its first:
thirst…

It goes on cleverly from there.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’d been slowly working my way through Nick Flynn’s Some Ether. For me, that book was, well, maybe not life changing– but it certainly changed me. (Are those two things any different?)

Flynn’s poems mix incredible precision and detail with wild, unexpected leaps. And it’s highly confessional stuff, which made it a bit of a slow read for me. I needed to keep putting it down to digest.

In the midst of all that, Pitch arrived in the mail. I sat down and began to read. I kept reading. About an hour later, I was finished– so I went back over the collection again.

There was a playfulness to Todd Boss’ work that sped me through it– but a playfulness that was carefully crafted and very much worth returning to. I couldn’t help thinking that Kay Ryan must be an influence.

[continued below]

I’m not sure if juxtaposing these two poets (Flynn and Boss) in this way is unfair. Nick Flynn’s poems go for maximum emotional impact, but they often achieve that impact THROUGH playfulness. And Todd Boss’ poems aren’t simply light pieces that encourage momentum through some clever structural tinkering; he’s got rich soil to dig in– particularly in terms of parent/child relationships. So I hope it doesn’t sound like a value comparison.

I guess what I’m saying here is that I was relieved, amongst all my waiting, to read a collection of poems that hit me like a great pop song would; Pitch is quick-paced, accessible, and catchy enough that you’ll want to revisit it in order to uncover the concealed complexity that makes it work so damn well.

… the wait
is what

a writer
spends

his brief
and bitter

tenure on
this breath-

taking, heart-
breaking

earth
making

every
ending

worth.

His work can be both chilling and affectionate in turns, but the real achievement is in how Flynn turns these events, emotions, and memories into something so much more than just a tortured scrawl of words– and how each poem is a constellation of loosely connected feelings and images; he includes only the richest details so the space between them becomes haunted by their glow.

In his poem “Angelization,” for instance, the speaker observes the death of someone close to him. Flynn likens that person’s now-disembodied voice on an answering machine to the voice of a pilot recovered from a black box. Despite the astuteness of this moving conceit, there’s another seemingly-unrelated detail that, for me, gives the poem it’s gravitational (and physical) center:

… the day Richard left

a woman sat in the waiting room, balancing

a goldfish on her knee

in a knotted plastic bag. The woman

seemed hypnotized by reruns, the goldfish

circled, always surprised by

the bag, as if expecting the water

to simply go on & on.

There’s one of those “poetic” moments that feels its way in a few directions at once, like a resonance. Yeah, Flynn is great at ringing those blue notes.

[continued below]

Though I’ve not yet read his memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (which deals with the aforementioned family traumas), Focus Features has turned the true story into a film called Being Flynn– starring Robert DeNiro (as Flynn’s father), Julianne Moore (as Flynn’s mother), and Paul Dano (as Flynn himself).

Below is the trailer, and below that is a video interview with Nick Flynn on the set of the film. Peep it.