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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
This book is incredible and I will need to reread it because wow. Wow. First of all, Seuss’s language is stunning. I have this feeling, when I pick up her books, that I am now in the hands of someone who is a master, and not in a weird way, just: she makes such beautiful sentences. That's all. She plays with language so beautifully. This book is sparse and spare and sad and wry and it’s mostly about poetry, about language, about making language, about reading and loving reading, words and loving them, the weirdness of that. There's a poem called "Modern Poetry" and another called "Romantic Poetry", one called "Poetry" and another called "Against Poetry", and they are all brilliant poems about the life of a poet and the life of a human but mostly what they do is hold this contradiction: Why do we make art? How do we keep making it?
In one poem she talks about uselessness as the essential definition of art which I can’t stop thinking about. It really resonated with me. I think too often people try to make art useful. Throughout this whole book she is poking fun of herself for loving words and books and poetry (she keeps asking what is the point, “a poem can’t love you”). She goes over all of these poets who have made words and what has any of it done? And she goes on doing it. She goes on loving it. She doesn’t resolve the contradiction.
This is also a beautiful book about aging. She keeps talking about how she’s done with love, she’s over that part, and it’s not like I don’t believe her, exactly, but there is this wryness in her tone that feels earnest. I don’t know how to describe it. At one point she talks about how she’s a cynic, but the last poem in the book is called "Romantic Poet", and it’s about a friend telling her she would not like Keats at all, he was horrible and smelled bad, and the last line is “But the nightingale, I said.”
The whole book is held in that one line. So many words, so many beautiful arrangements of words. There is one poem about a comma and about the sounds of sentences that took my breath away. There are all these poems about living in the world but wanting to be far away from the world, about the poets she has loved and how strange it is to go on loving them. But she does not reign herself in. The proof is the writing. She’s sad and a little lost, maybe, hardened by the world, maybe, but here is this book. But the nightingale. We live in this impossible tension and there is nothing to do about it but go on living in it—or don’t.
The whole book is held in that one line. So many words, so many beautiful arrangements of words. There is one poem about a comma and about the sounds of sentences that took my breath away. There are all these poems about living in the world but wanting to be far away from the world, about the poets she has loved and how strange it is to go on loving them. But she does not reign herself in. The proof is the writing. She’s sad and a little lost, maybe, hardened by the world, maybe, but here is this book. But the nightingale. We live in this impossible tension and there is nothing to do about it but go on living in it—or don’t.
I thought a lot about the Mary Ruefle book about poetry I just read while reading this, the sensibility feels similar, in that both of these poets have this dry humor, they're skeptical of poetry as a disipline, they make fun of themselves and are a bit prickly, and yet they are also earnest. And I think there is something important here about earnestness, because it isn’t just pouring your heart out, although that's part of it. Seuss has a different kind of earnestness. She acknowledges that poetry is useless but she’s still into making beautiful sounds. Which is to be interested in the futility of it, which is to think about the artifice of it, which is to understand what the world of poetry and words and letters and books will never ever bring you, and then, still, to write a line like, “But the nightingale, I said.” The more I think about that line the more it floors me. It cuts through every other thing in the book.
challenging
reflective
I didn’t connect to it emotionally, but I liked the meta-reflections on poetry’s forms and what poetry is trying to do
funny
reflective
Sylvia Plath vibes. Gave me the same feeling of being in conversation with poet, it's the same feeling I had when I first read the brilliant Roger Reeve's Best Barbarian book of poems.
I LOVE when a poet shows their love of reading and references other poets and authors in their work. I love a conversation of literature across the centuries.
My favourites from this collection (in the order as listed in the book itself):
I LOVE when a poet shows their love of reading and references other poets and authors in their work. I love a conversation of literature across the centuries.
My favourites from this collection (in the order as listed in the book itself):
- Little Fugue State
- Modern Poetry
- My Education
- Bluish
- Threnody
- Simile
- Penetralium
- Poetry
- Romantic Poet
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The language isn’t quite juicy enough and some of the line breaks feel arbitrary (some poems could have been essays), but there are some moments that feel so true, lines that strike me as the mature contemplation of many years’ serious devotion to a craft. She knows poetry, loves poetry, and has a lot of insights to offer. Very worthwhile read
When I am in a reading funk, I just need to crack open Seuss, any Seuss collection, and then BAM! She blows me into a whole new dimension. Her poems, language, and her choices open up a fissure into possibility. She breaks rules, creates new rules, and then breaks them again. She takes old tired cliches and makes fun of them, or honors them, and then makes fun of them again!
Seuss is breaking new ground with every book she writes, every poem. I feel like I'm a child again waiting for the new Harry Potter book to publish, but now I'm waiting every other year for a Seuss book to come out to find out what strange and exciting corners and lines she's decided to cross over and give everyone the middle finger while she does it.
I can't recommend her books more. Modern Poetry is just another one to add to your TBR, and then read it, don't wait for later. When you'll read it, you'll wish you read it sooner.
Seuss is breaking new ground with every book she writes, every poem. I feel like I'm a child again waiting for the new Harry Potter book to publish, but now I'm waiting every other year for a Seuss book to come out to find out what strange and exciting corners and lines she's decided to cross over and give everyone the middle finger while she does it.
I can't recommend her books more. Modern Poetry is just another one to add to your TBR, and then read it, don't wait for later. When you'll read it, you'll wish you read it sooner.
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is the first book of poetry I've read by Diane Seuss and I am floored. She is funny, and dirty, and clever, and vulnerable - everything I look for in a friend. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a poet in a long time but I mean just look at this! It's the final stanza from a poem called Penetralium:
Be drunk... it's the only way, raved
Baudelaire, corkscrewed
through and through with syphilis.
How artless, this source
of art, this shit show where
the greenest
watercress grows.
I could describe all these poems the same way - Seuss mines a shit show where the greenest watercress grows. Me? I hung on every word.
From Rhapsody (one of my favorites):
The adage is that a cynic is a broken romantic,
except for Arthur Rimbaud, who was born and died
a misanthropic shrew. I would like to conjecture
that a romantic is a cynic who has been infected
with resurrection metaphors and believes in the integrity
of a good
line break. I know
someone who saw a famous
lounge singer carried out
of a Vegas hotel
on a stretcher with a broken
light bulb in his ass.
Be that guy.
Don't be Jesus, be the Shroud.
Don't be the savior, be the stain.
Funny and playful, of course, but behind the clever turns of phrase and evocative images there is an undercurrent of profound implication. Seuss may be the class clown but she's only making everyone laugh because the thing she really wants to say is uncomfortable.
I love this book. I'll be reading it again, for sure, and I highly recommend it to any reader, even dabblers, or the innocent, who don't read a lot of poetry.
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My favorite poem in this wonderful collection is "My Education" and as a poet myself, I found this one line from it to be a real treasure and gift: "You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, products of lifelong observation and asymmetric knowledge, will be your own." Thank you, Diane, for this crucial reminder and for your brave, honest and inspiring words!