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danmc's review
2.0
I bought this for $25 thinking myself lucky for finding it at all, based on a couple poems in Billy Collin's 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. One is called Poem.
Another is The Fate:
And Extinguishable, the last was just as good. He seemed a bit like a Steven Wright who'd decided to get into poetry instead of stand-up comedy.
But oh how the book disappointed. There were occasional flashes of those short-form gems. The Fate was in this book. As was Ancient Measures:
But while all of his best poems were short pieces, the book is packed full of longer poems that read like pointless stream of consciousness drivel. The kinds of free-association that a writer in a beginning fiction class would do for a class exercise on day two of the class. Here's a few lines of one example, picked essentially at random:
Nun Claims Most Snakes Too Serious to Make Good Bookmarks (Your Soul Is a Chosen Landscape)
That's almost all of the book. In his Acknowledgements, he says, to paraphrase: I'm supposed to thank people, but almost all of these poems were rejected at least 6 times. The few that made it into "crummy little mags" none were selected for best of the year anything. And then he says:
"If they didn't think the poems in this book were any good, why are you reading it?"
And I wished I had a good answer, not just "I made a mistake."
Fingerprints look like ripples
because time keeps dropping
another stone into our palm
Another is The Fate:
Standing on the youthhold I saw a shooting star
And knew it predestined encounter with the sole love
But that comet crashed into the earth so hard
Tilted its axis a little bit not much just enough
To make me miss meeting her by one or two yards.
And Extinguishable, the last was just as good. He seemed a bit like a Steven Wright who'd decided to get into poetry instead of stand-up comedy.
But oh how the book disappointed. There were occasional flashes of those short-form gems. The Fate was in this book. As was Ancient Measures:
As much as someone could plow in one day
They called an acre;
As much as a person could die in one instant
A lifetime--
But while all of his best poems were short pieces, the book is packed full of longer poems that read like pointless stream of consciousness drivel. The kinds of free-association that a writer in a beginning fiction class would do for a class exercise on day two of the class. Here's a few lines of one example, picked essentially at random:
Nun Claims Most Snakes Too Serious to Make Good Bookmarks (Your Soul Is a Chosen Landscape)
À la gongs, that await the Emperor's semen
But in vain, I partition silence into rooms
Called poems. Why? Only Empresses remain—
Why am I needed if seed, blown from some
Sunflower come to land solely on sundials . . .
Yet wig of compass-needles; comet. Soars
—For sync's sake? Like optional hearts, in styles
Singular averse against the opus wall of stars
That's almost all of the book. In his Acknowledgements, he says, to paraphrase: I'm supposed to thank people, but almost all of these poems were rejected at least 6 times. The few that made it into "crummy little mags" none were selected for best of the year anything. And then he says:
"If they didn't think the poems in this book were any good, why are you reading it?"
And I wished I had a good answer, not just "I made a mistake."
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