April is National Poetry Month

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. 

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             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