with Arda Collins, the 2009 Yale Series of Younger Poets winner.
Here's how she opens It is Daylight:
The News
At last, terror has arrived.
Next door, the house has gone up in flames.
A woman runs from the burning wreck, her face smeared
with blood and ashes. She screams that her children are kidnapped.
It's truly exciting, and what more would anyone ask?
For a rare and beautiful egg to present itself in the grass?
For sex with the liquor store owner to progress into something meaningful?
You don't know what I've done in front of the mirror.
I've pulled my shorts up high like a thong. I've walked back and forth
doing little kicks and making faces. I've stopped, I've stared.
I try to get my mind around the sight of myself. I make a face.
Of great seriousness. I imagine that I've just received
a large and upsetting piece of news. Then I look into my eyes.
Can I guess what I am thinking? Can I tell you what it is?
**** (and despite the way the lines break here, it's actually a sonnet).
To begin with such a promise of raw honesty, lonely truth, and that last question to the self, to the reader, to doubt.
I'll follow.
****
6 comments:
It breaks as it does in the book on my end. I'm also ready to be convinced how this is a sonnet, because I want very desperately to like this book.
When it publishes on my blog (the way I see it), it kicks certain words to the next line (those which stand alone here), but that's not how they appear in my book.
It's not a formal sonnet, but it is 14 lines with a volta at line 8 or 9, depending on how you read it.
Here's another reason I love this poem (and get sucked into this book and love many of the poems that follow): it's just fucking honest. This poem (which I feel is representative of many throughout) conveys extraordinary loneliness, and it isn't afraid to claim that tragedy is exciting ("a rare and beautiful egg in the grass"). I never say this, but I'll say it now and try to swallow back the bile: I had a visceral response.
So, why do you have to try to like this book (I assume you've read it all)?
The poem displays properly on your page. I always have the opposite problem. My posts preview perfectly, and then break all over. But then, I have a very narrow column.
Most poems turn though, no? I'm not sure that + fourteen lines is enough to make a sonnet. Just as I wouldn't call a poem with fourteen lines of pentameter a sonnet.
There's a book about turns out there that would probably have answers and further arguments for both of us. Can't think of it though.
Anyway, my problem with Collins is a problem with monotony. The argument can be made that this is "voice," and that Collins has successfully sustained one in this first collection, but that's only admirable if the voice isn't boring, and far too often it is. I do like the poem about the ice cream man and swimming pools. And there are lines throughout the collection where I'm at once Aha!-ing, jealous for not writing it, and glad someone far more talented than I am finally did.
The rest trend towards spook-tinged suburban narratives (snore) or poems dominated by a first person (count how many sentences in the book begin with "I"), a perspective I tire of quickly without some serious acrobatics. It's often far too prose-y, and well, there are plenty of great novels out there without this clutter.
As for the rest, I'll stay with "bored." In the last Verse Chronicle, Logan compared her to Anne Carson, which is an apt comparison structurally-, and at times verbally-, speaking. But Carson's ability to handle the deadpan is often devastating and hilarious. This is less impressive--or when it is, I realize I'd rather just go read Carson, or early Louise Glück.
Remembered the book. Structure and Surprise, put together by Mike Theune and with essays from a bunch of his Houston class.
I loved the book right after I got to "I've pulled my shorts up high like a thong. I've walked back and forth doing little kicks and making faces." Of course, a great line is sometimes a lousy reason to love a book, but I've loved for less.
To be sure, I was bored most of the rest of the book. However, I have always remembered that line, or perhaps more accurately, that image. I can't say I remember anything about any of the Pound I've read, but I remember that line. Therefore, Collins is better than Pound... that logical seems impregnable. I shall leave off there.
Eric (and Casey),
I agree, parts of the book made me want to snore, but really, that's typically the case with me. I've never made my way through an entire book of poetry excited for each and every poem (though, of course, some slow down more than others).
And you're right, Eric, all poems turn. Typically a poem takes more than one turn (I say three---three's the number), yet we know a sonnet takes just the one. I felt what made it a unique if loose sonnet was its use of POV and narration to initiate the volta, the way she speaks for the larger we/us, moves to a personal address, and begins to speak for the persona she carries throughout the book.
And I'll still say that despite some snoring, there are moments where I just love the rhetorical turns, the unexpected juxtapositions, and the feeling that I'm reading something by Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Emily Dickinson.
"You're a realist. It's a department store. / God is never there..."
Okay...can each of you make a recommendation on something you think I should be reading (you know, since I trust you guys...)?
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