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Book Reviews: Elegy by Mary Jo Bang, Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, and Love Comes First by Erica Jong

I am, before anything, a poetry freak.

Before I am a snark, or a book fanatic, or even a human being, I am all about ‘da poetry. One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to incorporate more poetry collections into my reading list, and this move has proved a smart—and intensely pleasurable—one.

But reviewing poetry poses a set of challenges quite separate from those of reviewing prose. Poetry, by its very definition, is an intensely personal experience. It is a one-on-one relationship between reader and poet where the ultimate goal, arguably, is to glean personal meaning and find one’s own experience in the poem. Even more so than books, the essential aim of poetry is to make us feel less alone in this great big dung-heap of a world.

Prose, whose aims are similar but not identical, is written with a much narrower focus: the conventional give-and-take of storytelling with a beginning, middle, and end, and the human players caught up in it all. In short, while the interpretations of prose can sometimes indeed be vast, the interpretations of poetry are limitless. For as many people as there are in the world, there are that many interpretations of any given poem.

You can see the challenges faced when attempting to review poetry. Just because I experience a poem as a life-changing event, someone else might find it pure poop. And that’s how it should be; this is what makes poetry so diverse and thrilling.

So I have decided to approach my criticism from a similar angle to that which I approach my prose reviews. Concentrating on the language, the imagery, the characters (in poetry, the biggest characters are most often the poet himself/herself, we the readers, and/or humanity in general—but not always, of course), the development, and the feeling it all evokes.

I’ve read three radically different books of poetry in the last few weeks, and I will attempt to review them here.

The first is Mary Jo Bang’s popular Elegy from 2007. In a day and age when poetry doesn’t get much recognition, let alone achieve commercial success, Elegy was a rarity: it did both. This volume won awards, loads of press, and passionate readers. In the poetry world, it was considered a blockbuster.

The theme of Elegy is wrenching: the death of Ms. Bang’s adult son. Through the esoteric imagery and staccato of her prose, Bang dives deep into what turns out to be an abyss of grief. There are no easy answers, no final destination, no epiphany in these poems. And that’s okay—there doesn’t have to be. After all, she is attempting to make sense of something that is, by nature, unknowable.

But the problem I had with these poems was twofold. One, I found the images invoked to be wildly erratic without a thread of commonality; and two, the style and setup of these verses was difficult to read, preventing any sort of natural flow. For example, the first word of each line, whether or not it is a new sentence or thought, is capitalized. This capitalization was distracting; I was constantly trying to figure out if each new line was a continuation of the previous one, or the introduction of something new (there are also not many commas, colons, or semicolons, which would have made things much more decipherable).

Though the imagery jumps around to seemingly-unconnected thoughts and ideas in the span of a single poem, these images are consistently strong: by turns intense, subtle, and vivid, but always emotionally-centered—which I, of course, very much liked. Take this passage from “Enclosure”, which demonstrates a delicate imagery and a majestic depth of feeling:

One can, hypothetically, be brought back

 

In the form of an actor

 

Who gives an after the fact replication
Of text conveyed in a character’s voice.
I can no more understand the world as a stage
Of myself, mired as I am,

 

In this missing.

So in the end, what satisfied me about Elegy was the intensity of feeling Bang’s words left with me. The presentation of the words themselves just isn’t my style of poetry.

Not to say these poems are bad. They’re not. If the invoking of certain feelings was the goal, then the book is terrifically successful (though it remains unclear if Ms. Bang was able to effectively process any of her grief: by the final poem, there is a sense, and perhaps correctly, that this grief is an eternal one). If the book is meant to stand as an example of exceptional form and style, well, let’s just say I can find better examples.

One of which is Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet from 2005. Turner, a thirty-something Army vet, wrote these poems while stationed in Bosnia, and then in Iraq. They are eloquent, timely, and incisive pieces examining fearlessly the nature of war both internal and external. And all of it without a trace of politics. This, I think, is the sign of an exceptional poet: one who can be political and make a political statement without mentioning the government even once, keeping an eye focused intently on small, seemingly-insignificant people and events and their place in the great cosmic scheme of things.

Turner’s presentation is much more old-school than Bang’s, telling his stories through brief snippets of life in wartime countries, laid out in a smooth, flowing style. All of the pieces in this collection are pretty short, most only a ½ page or so, but they pack a wallop in each line. For example, the title poem:

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Reading about war is a subject that does not particularly appeal to me, but the poems of Here, Bullet are so much more than songs of war. They beautifully—a few times I actually gasped out loud at both the radiant imagery and Turner’s easy elegance of language—illustrate the outer conflicts of society versus the much more complicated battles waged in the heart of every soldier. And, to an extent, in the heart of every human being.

It is not surprising that the human heart takes center-stage in Erica Jong’s new book of poetry, Love Comes First, her first new poetry collection in well over a decade. It’s also no surprise to regular BS readers that I am a huge Jong fan. Her collection Becoming Light has gotten me through some of the darkest days of my life.

And Love Comes First, though not perfect, was worth the wait. The usual terrain of poetry is explored here: love, death, life, family. But there’s also a hefty dose of pure Jong: sex, aging, mythology, folklore, witchcraft. And it’s all presented in her signature poetic style—easy, accessible reading, lush imagery, and expertly-drawn characters (ranging from the poet herself to Henry James to Aphrodite).

If I have one criticism about this collection it’s that some of the themes explored aren’t explored fully enough. I know Ms. Jong’s work like the back of my hand, and I know how capable she is of delving into the human experience, with all its quirks and anomalies. There is a lot of brave investigation going on in this book, but I would’ve welcomed even more.

As can be deduced from the book’s title, love is the one constant theme throughout all of these poems. Love’s inception, its beauty, its struggles, its end. A passage from “Talking to Aphrodite”:

Is that what I am, to you—
a soap opera?
Perhaps even less.
I would like at least
to be a long novel
layered with subplots.

Ah, Ms. Jong, I think we are all long novels layered with subplots…as is evidenced by the three diverse, interesting volumes of poetry discussed here.

Grades - Elegy: C   Here, Bullet: A-   Love Comes First: B

 

Titles  Elegy/Here, Bullet/Love Comes FIrst

Authors  Mary Jo Bang/Brian Turner/Erica Jong

Publishers  Graywolf Press/Alice James Books/Tarcher

Years Published  2007/2005/2009

ISBNs  155597483X/1882295552/1585426849

Snarkbytes  Here’s Erica Jong discussing poetry and reading two of the pieces included in Love Comes First.

 

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