And it’s strange. Some issues, I’ll read every poem again and again until I almost have every one memorized. The November 2011 issue was like that. It had so many poems that I read and reread and underlined and read again that I keep it like a book, separate from all the other Poetry issues we have accumulated. There was “The World is in Pencil,” “If,” and “Brutal,” not to mention “Bryant Park at Dusk” and above all Marcus Wicker’s “The Way We Were Made.” This last is a splendid finger-pointing (at some creator – God, I would assume): “but you made every / eyelash erotic….sweet / in every wrong way.”
Other issues, however, leave me cold, no matter how hard I try to concentrate on the poems. The latest issue – February 2012 – was like that. The only poem that I’ve reread for the joy of it is a reprint on the inside of the back cover. It is short, four lines: “The rhetorical ‘How goes it old boy?’; / the unnerving response: // ‘Infinitely sad, old warrior, / infinitely sad. I’ve just heard…'” Although the poem is just a snippet of dialogue (the ellipses is in the original), that snippet captures a rupture in the commonplace that I find startling and moving at once.
So, I’m not complaining about Poetry‘s selection; I’m not about to write a letter-to-the-editor lambasting their selections. Take this as more as an observation about poetry and taste: I can understand without liking, and like without understanding, but either way the only way to find out is to read lots and lots.
(p)eau symposium 