April is National Poetry Month. Here are new collections by four exceptional poets.
• Click and Clone
Elaine Equi
(Coffee House Press)
Whether celebrating clones or revising Led Zeppelin (“That stairway only leads half-way to heaven”), Equi melds verse with aphorism, wisdom with wicked playfulness. The clone concept has really gotten to Equi; she works out the implications of scientific breakthrough in a number of poems, as well as ones that cite literary forebears to the idea of doubling a human or oneself (in Edgar Allan Poe; in Dostoyevsky). My favorite of these may be “Some Things Never Change”:
Once I had a body
always tired
of pretending
to be me.
Now long gone.
Replaced by files, codes,
a social network
held together with pins.
The reach of its reach
(you wouldn’t say arms)
much further
but still, tired.
In “A Guide to the Cinema Tarot,” she advises, “Keep your ear to the ground/I mean all the way down.” That’s an apt apercu: Equi really knows how to get down.
• Destroyer and Presever
Matthew Rohrer
(Wave Books)
Rohrer’s frequently beautiful, brief poems are rooted in specific images that initially seem unrelated—but which ultimately form a unity as meditations on how the ordinary distractions of everyday life can be seen as the source for almost everything important in life. “Dull Affairs” begins:
How am I to concentrate
on the heavy and dull
affairs of state
with the sound of a baby having a dream
in the other room… “
Rohrer makes music from the most conversational turns of phrase, as at the conclusion of “Poem for Asthma”:
I am clubbed in the head by a wintry cloud
Am pulled bodily from my dream
”Oh, absolutely man,” is my answer to everything.”
• How Long
Ron Padgett
The 68 year-old poet is frequently as playful in this new collection as he was as a young-buck member of the New York School of poetry in the ’60s and ’70s. Here, he’s almost chipper in contemplating what death will be like:
I’m almost oddly cheered
by the thought
that I might find out
in the not too distant future.
Now for lunch.
Padgett’s sense of romantic joy is undiminished, as is his thoughtfulness about language and the ways in which time changes meaning, and sense can morph into eloquent absurdity. As he writes in the beginning of “What Are You On?”:
If you asked an Elizabethan
What are you on?
he or she would have answered
The earth, this terrestrial globe
whereas today it means
What medication
are you taking?
(Are you taking has less energy
than What medication it is an anticlimax
without a climax)…
• Culture of One
Alice Notley
(Penguin)
In Culture of One, which is billed as “a novel in poems,” Notley assumes the identity of Marie, a bag lady living by her wits in the Southwest. Garrulous, angry, dreamy, and passionate, Marie’s monologues, harangues, and meditations can be both exhausting and exhilarating; they accumulate to take on a frequently tremendous force.
Notley writes in “A New Way to Live a Life”:
This is what Marie has been working on. Not communitarily but singly.
Everyone doesn’t have to be like her, no one’s like anyone; and she doesn’t want to show them how to do it — how to be her — she doesn’t know how.
There’s got to be another way to live a life…
Twitter: @kentucker
Mmmm, surprised C.D. Wright’s book didn’t make this list as it’s as good a mix we have now between accessibility, formal complexity, and popularity. I strongly dislike Rohrer’s poetry and that said this was not one of his stronger works, but good call on Notley who’s coming on strong as our (err the midwest’s in my case) best voice by shirking the pedantry of poetry’s other leading figures. Thank you for taking some room from EW’s otherwise passive-media bent to call attention to a still surviving art form.
SAM KISSED FREDDIE!!!!!!!!!
What is wrong with you EW, this is monumental in the history of iCarly!!!
I think Rohrer is an excellent poet, as are Notley, Padgett, Equi and Wright. I don’t understand why anyone would want to knock any of these amazing writers. As a poetry fan, I look forward to reading all of their books.
Yay, for the return of this column!
gawd, on one end of the spectrum is the degradation and creative void of rap and on the other end is boring, pretentious crap like this.
This crapfest is the poetic [I use the word extremely loosely] equivalent of Rubicon. Do yourself a favor and read “A Footing On This Earth” by Sara Henderson Hay or “This Is My Beloved’ by Walter Benton.
First off, I don’t understand the analogy; second, I think you’ve missed the point of this list by recommending two (one long since) dead and rather inconsequential poets.
Thanks for this! Happy poetry month, word nerds!
Oh fiddle dee dee. Walt Whitman had more talent in his hair than these posers have in their entire bloated corpses.
Word
Well, it’s quite obvious a lot of people commenting here have never read contemporary poetry – these are four of the most interesting poets working now – if you compare them to Whitman then you’re not the brightest bulb, are you? Read these poets, now!
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