With this post, I’m launching an effort to read
more poetry, especially contemporary poetry, especially poetry I already own
(although I do have an eye on a couple of as-yet-unpurchased recent releases).
As part of the effort, and to celebrate National Poetry
Month, I’ll be reading The Best American
Poetry 2017, edited by Natasha Trethewey (the overall series is edited by
David Lehman). I’m splitting my reading up into about four sections of about 20
poems each, to give me more of a chance to pay attention to and discuss
individual poems. In general, I sometimes read The Best American Poetry volumes, I sometimes don’t, and I seldom
read them very close to their release date. I’m inspired to pick up last year’s
in large part because it is edited by Natasha Trethewey. I’m skipping both
Trethewey’s and Lehman’s introductions, however; I’m curious as to whether I’ll
perceive any themes as I read, and I want to come to the poems with a fresh
eye. As I often do, I’ll read the introductions last.
*****
So, after reading the first cluster
of poems, do I detect any overarching editorial aesthetic? Not necessarily.
There’s an openness to the language – for the most part, these poems are not
hermetic. Many of them have an everyday, forthright “tell it like is” quality
on the level of the language and diction (which is not to say there isn’t also evidence of craft).
The opening poem — “Weapons
Discharge Report” by Dan Albergotti (poems are arranged alphabetically by
author) — is notable for its stark and timely message, as I write in the days
following the March for Our Lives demonstrations, but just as much for the rhythm
and momentum of its language, mostly found but bringing attention to the
authorial insertions that often fall at the end of a densely accelerating line
or verse. The insertions reflect back, resonating against and interrogating the
bureaucratic language that comprises much of the poem.
Weapons Discharge Report
Incident involved the shooting of an animal.
—option under “Nature of
Incident”
in Police Policy Studies
Council’s
form “Weapons Discharge
Report”
. . . it looks like a demon . . .
—Officer Darren Wilson,
describing
unarmed
eighteen-year-old Michael
Brown in grand jury
testimony
Complete this report as fully as possible to the
best
of your recollection. Do not consult video
evidence.
What time, what day, what week, what month, what
century?
What district, what section, what subsection,
what nation?
The
opening, in combination with the two chilling epigraphs, establishes the “found
language” genre of the poem. The second stanza emphasizes the tedious banality
of choices and rote data collection, but by opening the stage to “this
century,” it pushes against the reader’s desensitization — how prone are we to
dismiss barbarism and injustice as features of the past, not part of life in this century? In the next stanza, “the
nation” stands out in part because it’s out of place — a list of divisions
becoming gradually smaller, discrupted — to highlight uniquely American guilt?
to reflect how the pattern carried out in even the smallest communities or
neighborhood takes part in and makes up an oppressive system?
Select nature of incident: exchange
of gunfire between officer and offender,
perceived threats with a brandished edged object
or blunt object or unfired firearm, armed attack
was perceived by officer (but weapon never
found),
another perceived threat not involving a weapon
(examples: safety of the public, involved
parties
or officers threatened, officer felt threatened,
felt underappreciated, felt tired, bleary eyed,
angry, on edge, ready to pop, looked at
sideways).
…
Was officer moving or stationary? Was officer
standing,
prone, running, sitting, in vehicle, kneeling,
supping,
squatting/crouching, ascending/descending
stairs,
only ascending, towering above like a colossus?
The
sometimes subtle, sometimes overt switches in to the poet’s critical language (“looked
at sideways,” “towering above like a colossus”) highlight complexity but never
withhold judgement — if poetry comes in part from making the familiar strange,
this poem calls out our familiarity for complacency.
In a much different manner, poet
Jericho Brown speaks on the same subject:
I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trashbag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed . . .
With
personal language and an intensity highlighted by link breaks, Brown shows no
patience for the euphemisms and excuses surrounding police killings. His poem
“Bullet Points” ends with a powerful assertion of the beauty of the black male
body.
David Barber’s “On a Shaker
Admonition” shares with Albegotti’s poem an aspect of litany and an inspiring
epigraph (“ripped from the footnotes,” Barber jokes in his contributor
comment). While parts of the poem can be read as an exploration of what it
might be like to be free of mass incarceration and other societal legacies of
slavery, the questions it raises are also personal, calling on the reader’s
imagination: what would it be like to be radically trustworthy? to offer
complete trust? would this be a sought-after utopia, or is something lost with
the ability to enforce secrecy or ownership?
No cutpurses to fleece us, no jackboot to roust
us, no half-assed excuse
to
detain us, remand us, debase us, reform us,
no iron fist or invisible hand to quash or
unleash us, no righteous
crusade
to destroy us to save us: just us, just us.
All of us no longer shiftless, feckless,
careless, faithless: no losses to cut,
no
charges to press, nothing to witness, nothing to confess,
no one to cast into the wilderness, no caste to
dispossess, no shamefulness,
no
shamelessness, no cease and desist, no underhandedness
under duress, nothing to peer into or peep at
with a flickering eyelash,
each
cloudless passing hour lusting after less and less.
Not all of the poems in this batch – not even
the majority – are political. Carolyn Forché’s “The Boatman” tells a refugee
story. Carl Dennis’ “Two Lives” blends the personal and political, as the poet
imagines a different self — one who, instead of being raised in a nuclear
family that benefitted from WWII era government contract work, is raised by a
single mother after his father is killed in Normandy. Dennis imagines this
working-class alternate in contrast to the solitary and perhaps selfish
academic, but the poem also ponders connections, grounding these two visions in
the same world.
Mary Jo Bang’s “Admission” paints a portrait of
a mother than foregrounds generder roles.
My mother was glamorous in a way I knew I never
would be. Velvet belt buckle. Mascara lash. . .
.
Every woman was her rival. . . .
In
her commentary, Bang reveals the poem is inspired by and layered with stories
of the Bauhaus art school, its founder Walter Gropius, and photographer Lucia Moholy.
The personal, the social, and the artistic/aesthetic overlap within the
container of the prose poem.
... to be continued
