Goodbye With A Fist

The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise has quite the list of accolades, including the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the 2013 James Laughlin Award. And it bites. Yes, you read that right: it bites.

Weise writes angry, brash, and sometimes brutally. This is a book with several chips on its shoulders. Very punk rock, very get off, very Bukowski. There is nothing pretty here. You have to bring the pretty with you as a reader and press insert. This book is like a wounded dog backed into a corner with the fur on its neck standing up. It's not growling, it's not barking; it is snorting and snotting in rage and almost malice.

But despite this don't-get-too-close stance: it is also intimate. Bitterly intimate, but still intimate. For instance, in "The Ugly Law":

... The maimed shall not

therein or thereon expose himself or herself
to public view under penalty of staring,

pointing, whispers, aphorisms such as "We are all disabled"
or "What a pretty face you have" or "God gives

And this, from "Poem for his Ex":

Does it make you feel better
to know he cheated with a handicapped
girl? I wonder if you have

any handicapped friends.
I don't know why I'm using that word.
It demoralizes me. Or if you don't.

This intimacy (which doubles as bitter advocacy, the way many African American poets write about slavery) serves to soften the hardness of this collection. So does the fact that it is arranged like a theatrical play. The table of contents is sectioned off into One, Intermission, Two, and Curtain Call.

For me, the most captivating things in this collection happen when Weise steps away from the confessional flavor of sex and amputeeism and assumes characters to reveal the deeper workings of her mind. The intermission section reads like a lonely but insightful meditation on modern human relationships. The Book of Goodbyes shows us what Bukowski would have written if he were female.

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Legal Disclosure: I have no affiliation with this author and did not receive anything for this review.

Rusty Morrison's "The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story"

 

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on April 26, 2009)

Rusty Morrison, The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story, (Ahsahta Press, 2008) 72 pages, poetry, $17.50 U.S.

Rusty Morrison here offers us her sophmore collection of poetry and It did, however, win the Academy of American Poets' prestigious James Laughlin Award in 2008.

Morrison is grappling with the death of her father. To her credit, such an experience is fundamentally indescribable. At least she tried. It almost feels as though she didn't have a choice. Most artists have no other alternative in the face of challenging events but to process them through art and so she has. The end result is a true, tangled labyrinth of emotion and clever lines. Morrison knows how to manipulate the beauty in language and occasionally a particular line will give pause.

But the book seems to fall short of its goal and flounder where it most needs to shine. At times, whole poems implode under the weight of what Morrison is attempting to describe although they do so spectacularly. The poet falls victim to loving her own sound too much. Many lines are clever descriptions and observations on life, but seem to have no purpose other than that. One is left wondering, "What was that about really? What is it she was trying to say?" Morrison thus allows herself to sabotage the full emotional effect for the sake of flowery music.

Every line in the book is ended with one of or a combination of the words "please, advise, stop". The idea of doing this is interesting and required a boldness that should be applauded. However, 72 pages are too long to sustain this effectively. What begins as an interesting structural and artistic device becomes annoying. After a while, Morrison's use of this device makes the work sound desperate, whiny, even boastful of her grief. From there it loses all emotion (and poetic value) and the lines roll off the tongue like cold excerpts from old telegrams.

Morrison used her art to try to make terms with one of the worst experiences of a person's life. I hope she did draw much solace from the effort. Ultimately, though, the collection fails if viewed as art alone. The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story is an extremely ambitious project that over-stretches itself.

Learn about Rusty Morrison.

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Review of "You and Three Others Are Approaching A Lake"

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on March 9, 2012)

Anna Moschovakis, "You And Three Others Are Approaching A Lake" (Coffee House Press, 2011) 119 pages, poetry, $16. Winner of the 2011 James Laughlin Award given by the Academy of American Poets.

I was a little distracted by the title when first opening this. It suggested the scenes at Lake Silencio for this fan of the BBC series "Doctor Who". But, of course, Anna Moschovakis had nothing of the sort in mind when she penned her second poetry collection "You And Three Others Are Approaching A Lake." What did she have in mind? I'm not sure. The lake does have some metaphorical significance, but I couldn't sniff it out with certainty. What is clear is that this is poetry with a mission.

Moschovakis employs lines that are aurally as far from poetry as one can get. They are often almost dry statements which seem to be clipped from various news broadcasts and stitched together. This is not to suggest that this is not poetry, however. This is poetry in the sense of its not-showing-all-the-cards aspect. The careful choosing of her prosaic lines leaves a great deal unsaid, inferred, and the pregnant pauses are uncomfortable ones.

Moschovakis attacks everything Western culture is and she attacks it violently. From over-comsumption and waste to commercialism and materialism to what passes for recreation to the new lows that technology has allowed mankind to reach, she places the whole of Western vice before the reader and forces one to look long and hard at it. Not only does she bloody the culture itself but she also points out exactly what its effect on the human psyche has been. Humans are in the background of this collection and so are human emotions. In fact, those emotions society might consider as virtuous in a human being- desire, humor- are addressed only through the viewpoint of a "Human Machine" and "Annabot". Violence to the planet and its others species is a recurring theme. This is industrialized and technologicalized poetry. It is hard, unflinching, and it wounds.

The oddest thing about the four long poems that make up this book is that they do not feel political at all. One's logic says they are, that they must be and fiercely so. But they do not feel it. They do not read it. Somehow, despite extremely dark and heavy material, Moschovakis manages to maintain an intimacy that precludes an obvious political rant.

What Anna Moschovakis has achieved with this work is to rudely awaken her readers to a reality that is very uncomfortable to admit and nearly impossible to come to terms with. It is a reality so condemning that it is easier to forget it, ignore it, or remain in ignorance of it than to address it. Bravo to Moschovakis' bravery in not only making her readers consider it, but also in being willing to face it herself.

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