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A review by readwithmikey
Facts about the Moon: Poems by Dorianne Laux
4.0
From my undergrad class:
It is going to be difficult to write this journal entry and not simply turn it into an excuse to launch into a session of effusive praise for Laux’s work. There were some great poems in here—and I’m not fully sure if I like this more than Collins or Hoagland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did in the end. I’m not going to lie; I love the moon as a poetic image, which Laux seems to use often (especially in the title; and it is the first book of poems so far, perhaps the only one, where the cover image matches the title). In this, I can’t help not talk about the title poem, filled with not only facts about the moon but with a sudden twist in “the mother who’s lost a child,” which becomes the centerpiece for the remainder of the poem. The last line couldn’t have been a better conclusion, I felt: “You know when love when you see it, you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.” I love it because I can relate to it. It’s like my selective memory is a jigsaw with only my favorite pieces (excuse the obligatory poeticism). There were probably some nights in high school when I came home furious, feeling unloved and spurned by society. But now when I remember it, my mind only chooses to remember the good parts, such as the chicken patties at lunch and the late nights at Starbucks spent studying for a statistics final. Laux pulls me in and lets me think and I appreciate her for that.
The title poem also exhibits a couple other things about Laux, the second much more present than the first, I feel. The first is the twist, which seemingly all authors have or utilize in some poems, which can be found in “The Crossing” (using the metaphor of a patient elk, one “stubborn creature staring down another,” as a portrait of marriage), “Puzzle Dust” (using the idea of puzzle as a gateway to something philosophical about children, though I couldn’t tell if the child was with her doing the puzzle or in the puzzle itself), and “Sisters” (which, for such a short poem, moves toward a sense of impending danger in the second half). But second, and perhaps more importantly, Laux manages to do what perhaps—in some strange way—all poets should do. She does not gloss over the truth and, while she is unabashedly honest, she manages to make the grotesque beautiful. There is a strand of hope throughout most of these poems that I wouldn’t naturally expect. “Democracy” is realistic but not desolate, “My Brother’s Grave” is genuinely sweet in how—even though Laux didn’t know her brother fully—she can still understand the void his passing leaves in her life, “Facts About the Moon” as mentioned, “Afterlife” with its touching slice of waitress imagery (I still sense a sweetness in a poem that ends with “Quite dead”), and—most notably—“It Must Have Been Summer.” Laux doesn’t idealize the landscape but she can speak truth into it, which is beautiful without being fully despairing.
In addition, I appreciate that her poems live at various parts of the spectrum. To be honest, if the entire poem took the tone of the nature-based “The Life of Trees” (“If trees could speak they wouldn’t, only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind” is a great line too because it takes the hackneyed forms of nature and molds them into something more unique, for example), which even manages to be political in a few lines, I wouldn’t have minded. But Laux surprised me with things like “The Last Days of Pompeii” (I could even see Collins doing that one on one of his “commentary days”—maybe), the picturesque and sensitively drawn “The Germans,” the out-of-nowhere “Face Poem” (This stuck in my head, half because I liked her perfect characterizations, half because random things stick in my head. Seriously, though—“Your steep, crumbling cliff of a face,” “your used car lot of a face,” and “toss of the dice face” are just fantastic; the entire poem reinforces an important point that in imperfections we can sometimes find the greatest beauties. What can I say, Valentine’s Day is on the horizon), or the eerie back-to-back commentaries on womanhood with “Sisters” and “A Walk in the Park.” She also gets ten points for “The Idea of Housework,” which she must have written with my dorm room in mind. Laux is not a one-trick pony but, even if she were, I think she would have enough poetic insight within her to pull it off, “it” being whatever one trick she felt meant the most to her. (7.5)
It is going to be difficult to write this journal entry and not simply turn it into an excuse to launch into a session of effusive praise for Laux’s work. There were some great poems in here—and I’m not fully sure if I like this more than Collins or Hoagland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did in the end. I’m not going to lie; I love the moon as a poetic image, which Laux seems to use often (especially in the title; and it is the first book of poems so far, perhaps the only one, where the cover image matches the title). In this, I can’t help not talk about the title poem, filled with not only facts about the moon but with a sudden twist in “the mother who’s lost a child,” which becomes the centerpiece for the remainder of the poem. The last line couldn’t have been a better conclusion, I felt: “You know when love when you see it, you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.” I love it because I can relate to it. It’s like my selective memory is a jigsaw with only my favorite pieces (excuse the obligatory poeticism). There were probably some nights in high school when I came home furious, feeling unloved and spurned by society. But now when I remember it, my mind only chooses to remember the good parts, such as the chicken patties at lunch and the late nights at Starbucks spent studying for a statistics final. Laux pulls me in and lets me think and I appreciate her for that.
The title poem also exhibits a couple other things about Laux, the second much more present than the first, I feel. The first is the twist, which seemingly all authors have or utilize in some poems, which can be found in “The Crossing” (using the metaphor of a patient elk, one “stubborn creature staring down another,” as a portrait of marriage), “Puzzle Dust” (using the idea of puzzle as a gateway to something philosophical about children, though I couldn’t tell if the child was with her doing the puzzle or in the puzzle itself), and “Sisters” (which, for such a short poem, moves toward a sense of impending danger in the second half). But second, and perhaps more importantly, Laux manages to do what perhaps—in some strange way—all poets should do. She does not gloss over the truth and, while she is unabashedly honest, she manages to make the grotesque beautiful. There is a strand of hope throughout most of these poems that I wouldn’t naturally expect. “Democracy” is realistic but not desolate, “My Brother’s Grave” is genuinely sweet in how—even though Laux didn’t know her brother fully—she can still understand the void his passing leaves in her life, “Facts About the Moon” as mentioned, “Afterlife” with its touching slice of waitress imagery (I still sense a sweetness in a poem that ends with “Quite dead”), and—most notably—“It Must Have Been Summer.” Laux doesn’t idealize the landscape but she can speak truth into it, which is beautiful without being fully despairing.
In addition, I appreciate that her poems live at various parts of the spectrum. To be honest, if the entire poem took the tone of the nature-based “The Life of Trees” (“If trees could speak they wouldn’t, only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind” is a great line too because it takes the hackneyed forms of nature and molds them into something more unique, for example), which even manages to be political in a few lines, I wouldn’t have minded. But Laux surprised me with things like “The Last Days of Pompeii” (I could even see Collins doing that one on one of his “commentary days”—maybe), the picturesque and sensitively drawn “The Germans,” the out-of-nowhere “Face Poem” (This stuck in my head, half because I liked her perfect characterizations, half because random things stick in my head. Seriously, though—“Your steep, crumbling cliff of a face,” “your used car lot of a face,” and “toss of the dice face” are just fantastic; the entire poem reinforces an important point that in imperfections we can sometimes find the greatest beauties. What can I say, Valentine’s Day is on the horizon), or the eerie back-to-back commentaries on womanhood with “Sisters” and “A Walk in the Park.” She also gets ten points for “The Idea of Housework,” which she must have written with my dorm room in mind. Laux is not a one-trick pony but, even if she were, I think she would have enough poetic insight within her to pull it off, “it” being whatever one trick she felt meant the most to her. (7.5)