Whimsy Speaks Again

I received another Poetry today.  So why do I tell you about it, this bastion of SoQ as some would say?  Heck, I dunno.  Poets keep moving to Chicagoland (perhaps to be close to all that money? OK, I'm just kidding.).  Poetry has a budget exceeding that of the next 100 largest litmags and there seems to be an underlying tension among their various editors and management about what they're really trying to accomplish, Barr's pronouncements notwithstanding.  I think it makes their editorial choices interesting, in the way that throwing bones or inspecting entrails might be.  If you believe in Ron's comprehensive theory of SoQ world domination, then you may wish to avoid Poetry.  On the other hand, when Rae Armantrout and Mary Jo Bang show up in Poetry, you have to figure some accommodation is in the works.

This month's issue has the largest percentage of not-previously-published-in-Poetry that I've ever seen, but that's probably because it's the Indian Poetry Translation issue.  Things start off interestingly with Marie Kinzie's Looking Forth.  It is one of those topographically-challenged poems with words all over the place, a feature made popular (along with underscores and parenthetical interludes) by Ms. Graham, and something I've seldom actually felt had a positive effect on my appreciation of the poem.  Nate Klug, an undergraduate at U of Chicago, had some nice work, most of it dreary, but fresh and competent:  "... Ash clots like fall leaves / dovetailing overhead, the rivermouth / one gaping skillet. ...".  Next up is Ms. Armantrout, whose work here appears to me quirky without managing to be engaging (Had): "And so I ask, / 'Do you need both / skies?' // I say keep / 'jets' and 'its' / consistent. // I suggest / again / that you strip down / while remaining calm."  What's a Poetry issue without its pastorals?  Here's Davis McCombs with The Last Wolf in Edmonson County:  "Then I stood below the pedestal of Dismal Rock / as shadows straggled up like sheep from the river."  Don Paterson provides the odd and chatty in rough IP (Two Trees):  "One morning, Don Miguel got out of bed / with one idea rooted in his head: / to graft his orange to his lemon tree. / It took him the whole day to work them free,".  Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner, Lucille Clifton, makes her debut in Poetry with sorrows:  "who would believe them winged / who would believe they could be // beautiful    who would believe / they could fall so in love with mortals". 

The Indian poets include Syamala Kallury, Shajahana, Kunwar Narain, G. S. Amur, Amrita Priam, Udayan Thakker, Ramakanta Rath, Akhtarul Iman, Navakanta Barua, Pradip Acharya, Chennaveera Kanavi, K. Ayyappa Paniker, Ka. Naa. Subramanyam, Vinda Karandikar, and Sunil Gangopadhyay.  Some were originally in English, some were translated by the author or others (e.g., Clinton B. Seeley).  I generally don't read translations aside from the occasional Beowulf, but these were a pretty imageful, if morbid group.  People are impaled on sharp poles, a dog dies in an old house, eunuchs sing a birthday song, a dead hand sticks up from the earth, a man picks his son's nose, an old woman spits into her hand, a man wants to kill his lover with a "coconut-and-molasses bonbon laced with arsenic", railway carriages hold the "charred bodies of men, women and children", a cobbler puts "a stitch or two across his stomach".  There are a lot of great lines in the body of work ("I am the fifth leg / of your bed of pleasures"), and the poems generally seem authentic and compelling, even in translation.

The prose section this month includes:  R. Parthasarathy's Indian Poetry Today, Kay Ryan's witty and succinct take on The Notebooks of Robert Frost, Brian Phillips's Poetry and the Problem of Taste (which manages to say a lot about alternative aesthetics without choosing up sides).  The letters to the editor consist almost exclusively of missives lauding Zbigniew Herbert, admiring Michael Hofmann's review, and slamming Alissa Valles's translations.

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I have two very poetic tomato plants.  They are big and green and sprawling and bearing fruit.  I ate the first tomato of the season last night.  This is just to say I wish I could have shared it with you.  It was delicious.

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I received an email from Daniel Nester regarding some readings.  The text included the most precise blurb I've ever seen, about a poet from L.A (Dana Spiotta):  "The hippest, funniest, most urbane and heartfelt account of life west of the 101 and north of the 10 to come along in years"

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Jonathan discusses innumeracy (happy birthday!).  A succession of percentages don't seem quite right.  I think it's mostly a matter of "common sense", by which I mean the familiarity of certain concepts when you work with them a lot.  I've read that Einstein did thought experiments for a decade before writing his seminal papers in 1905.  Imagine how strange his views must have seemed, even to himself, when he first began to dream them up.

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Joshua advises the Poetry Foundation to spread a little money around locally, instead of funding white elephant awards (which I thought was a pretty funny description, considering that I've entered the Emily Dickinson competition again).  The Foundation certainly seem to be on an award-giving binge.  There are awards for critics, humorists, verse dramatists, neglected masters, children's poetry writers, and old guys.  It would be fun to see awards for elliptical poets, flarfists, and New Sincerists.

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Sunday, this blog will be three years old.  Crag's blog is four (and has had a lot more customers).  Keep up the good work, Mr. Hill.