REVIEWS


From September 15th to the 25th, on his blog Bemsha Swing, Jonathan Mayhew conducted a face-off between the last two editions of the popular Best American Poetry series. The Octopus eagerly followed the match.  Here's how it went:

Monday, September 15, 2003

Poem by poem comparison of BAP 2002 (Creeley) and BAP 2003 (Komunyakaa).

Rules: First poem in Creeley versus first poem in Kumunyakaa, etc... until the end of the shorter of the two volumes. I am the infallible judge. You are free to disagree with me, of course; just remember that I KNOW MORE THAN YOU DO.

Round 1:

Yusef: "The end of out of the past" by Jonathan Aaron
Bob: "Up to Speed" by Rae Armantrout

Aaron's not very objectionable poem is a retelling of a scene from an old movie; but what does it add to this movie? It seems to be a "second-degree" text in this sense. The hard-boiled dialogue that might work in the movie can fall flat in the poem. I dislike the cliché "strictly business."

Armantrout writes five short fragments, some of them wittier than others. I like the lines "Does a road / run its whole length / at once." This is a poem I will be re-reading.

Score after One Round:
Yusef: 0
Bob: 1

Round 2:

Yusef: from "A locked Room" by Beth Anderson
Bob: "The Pearl Fishers" by John Ashbery

Anderson's poem is written in smooth, eerie prose-poetry. It reads like an Oulipean parody of a detective novel, and out-Ashberys Ashbery's conventional Ashberian lyric. I reject the idea that to defeat the champion, you need to score a decisive victory. The Anderson poem is a more imaginative choice than picking one more poem by Ashbery.

Score after 2 rounds:
Yusef: 1
Bob: 1

Round 3:

Yusef: "Dedicated to the One I love" by Nin Andrews
Bob: "The Golgotha Local" by Amiri Baraka

A breezy, faux-O'Hara poem--versus a typical Baraka product. This one is a tie since neither poem is convincing to me. Andrew's poem, not without its charm, is surpassed by the original model, while Baraka's dialect sounds stale: there is more linguistic invention in the average rapper.

Score after 3 rounds:
1-1-1.


Round 4:

Yusef: "Some Further Words" by Wendell Berry
Bob: "12 [squared]" by Charles Bernstein

I'm sure Charles would agree with many of Wendell's fine sentiments. Bernstein's twelve haiku-like fragments, separated by horizontal lines, include this faux-Creeley poem:

counting now to five
next to three
then up till four

Bernstein's underwhelming poem wins, but only because Berry's poem is extremely weak, depending too much on an expectation of right-thinking agreement. Imagine a poem written in the same mostly uninteresting language, but espousing right-wing, anti-environmental sentiments.

Score after four rounds:
Yusef: 1
Bob: 2
Tie: 1

Round 5:

Yusef: "Curse" by Frank Bidart
Bob: from "Zero Star Hotel" by Anselm Berrigan

Bidart curses those who brought down the World Trade Center in poetic diction. "you hear as if in slow motion" is a cliché, surely. The curse seems mild in relation to the event, somehow, as if this event were not sufficient to effect a break in decorum. Not a bad poem, for SoQ devotees, but Anselm's language is taut and humorous. This poem is better than most of TED Berrigan. Anselm by TKO.

Score after 5:
Yusef: 1
Bob: 3
Tie: 1

(Editor's note: SoQ = School of Quietude.  Possible synonyms: Official Verse Culture, Mainstream Poetry.  The term is derived from an Edgar Allen Poe essay condemning his more conservative contemporaries.  For more on SoQ, visit Ron Silliman's blog).

Round 6:

Yusef: "Rambling on My Mind" by Diann Blakely
Bob: "Injunction" by Frank Bidart

Here the roles are reversed, Bob having chosen Frank. Blakely's invocation of Robert Johnson seems forced to me. Bidart's Blakean meditation has some wit: "the temple / is offended by, demands the abolition of brothel, now theater, now /school."

While it seems unfair to Yusef, who lost in the last round with Frank Bidart, I'm giving the decision to Bob's Bidart poem.

Score after 6:
Yusef: 1
Bob: 4
Tie: 1

Remember: all this is highly scientific.


Round 7:

Round 8:

Yusef: from "1000 Lines" by Catherine Bowman
Bob: "Ballad of the Comely Woman" by T. Alan Broughton

Broughton's poem reminds me of the early Creeley. It is a re-telling of a folk-tale about a hag turning into a beautiful young woman:

As I walked out one day
I met on my path a woman
ugly as sin and walking a dog.
She stopped me and said, "Young man, ...

A very memorable poem.

Bowman has her moments, but I can't justify banality like this:

[. . . ] all stupid things, really, it was clear, you
were not happy--your therapist said I
needed to get over my problems with
men, before we think about having kids [...]

The round goes to Bob. Score after 8:
1-6-1.

Round 9:

Yusef: "Perfect Attendance: Short Subjects Made from the Staring Subjects of Strangers" by Rosemary Catacalos
Bob: "What I Threw into the Grave" by Michael Burkhard

Good poems with great titles: both are poems with cute premises given away in these titles. I have to give the edge to Catacalos for those long, sinuous lines and wryness:

As when someone's uncle Theo, his name the old Greek joke of "Uncle Uncle,"
misjudges his scythe-like sponge knife beneath the reef at Tarpon Springs

Burkhard is a tad more sentimental. This could be a tie, but Yusef is struggling and so I have to give him the close decision.

Score after 9:
2-6-1

Round 10:

Yusef: "Aeon Flux: June" by Joshua Clover
Bob: "Opposed Glimpses of Alice James, Garth James, Henry James, Robertson James and William James" by Anne Carson

Yusef is bringing it on now! Ashbery-like lush verbosity in Clover versus Creeley-like concision in Carson. Carson's is more my kind of poem, it is true, but Clover's is almost as good in its own way. This one has to be a toss-up, although I like the Carson one as much than any poem in either book so far.

Score after 10:
2-6-2



Round 11:


Yusef: "Litany" by Billy Collins
Bob: "On the Screened Porch" by Elizabeth Biller Chapman

Collins is facile and glib here (big surprise), and loses to conventionally good poem by an unknown poet, from Poetry. A kind of childhood memory poem I would usually sneer at, but here the details are vivid and finely wrought. There is more "content" here than in the Collins. (Yusef's favorite word.) Bob is turning out to be a superb editor. Even his two losses have come with good poems.

Score after 11:
2-7-2

Round 12:

Yusef: "Six Sketches: When a Soul Breaks" by Michael S. Collins
Bob: "Lullaby for Cuckoo" by Tom Clark

Collins' poem has that "ripped from the headlines" quality that Yusef is looking for. Too obvious for my taste, although well enough done on its own terms; quite memorable. Tom Clark's confusing apostrophe to a cuckoo in a clock does not quite convince me, although I do like the lines: "Or was homo faber the missing link / who forged you in his workshop of stupid toys." I'm starting to learn what the Skanky Possum style is all about.

The round goes to Yusef/Collins.

After 12:
Yusef: 3
Bob: 7
Tie: 2


Round 13:

Yusef: "World History" by Carl Dennis
Bob: "Corpus Delicti" by Peter Cooley

Dennis suggests it is better to be a medieval theologian than to start World War I, and better to be Jehovah's Witness missionary than to be Hitler starting World War II. "Corpus Delicti" is a well-crafted poem in a deep image, pseudo-profound mode. Both poems are trying to make the grand statement, but Cooley's poetic diction is more resonant that Dennis' utter flatness. I can imagine a reader attuned to the period style really loving the Cooley poem. The round goes to Creeley once again.

After 13:
3-8-2


Round 14:

Yusef: "Skin" by Susan Dickman
Bob: "Traced Red Dot" by Clark Coolidge

Dickman's poem is truly memorable. What happens to the skin floating around after a terrorist bombing? "What to do / with all the minute pieces, the shreds?" The ending ruins the poem for me, by finding a false resolution of this question: "perhaps / somehow, the earth remembers." And then a little note: "Jerusalem Bombing, February 1996."

Contrasted with Coolidge's skin imagery: "skin pulling its surface moisture / Barbizon personality like a peanut."

I can't give the outright victory to Coolidge, even though he's obviously one of my favorite poets. The poems are just too different from each other: no punches were thrown in this finger-puppet fight so I have to call it a draw.

Score after 14:
3-8-3

Round 15:

Yusef: "Fox Trot Fridays" by Rita Dove
Bob: "Long after (Mallarmé)" by Ruth Danon

Bob gets off easy this time. The Danon poem is charming but slight; doesn't make me think much of Mallarmé. The Dove, on the other hand, is sentimental and clichéd. She tries to mask her clichés "Thank the stars" instead of "thank your lucky stars" but why not eliminate them completely? Bob wins again.

After 15:
3-9-3


Round 16:

Yusef: "Open Door Blues by Stephen Dunn
Bob: "Midsummer" by Diane Di Prima

I hate Stephen Dunn's poetry, and might be expected to prefer DdP. However, Dunn's chatty, genial poem makes me think of a lesser James Schuyler: "I've left the door open. The flies / know. The wasps will soon." Di Prima makes me feel like I'm in Sunday School:

Prayer at the stillness of noon.
A pause at the balancing point
Grace of the ascent ...

but if a woman
is offended,
she finds no one there
to blame.

Maybe I'm not familiar enough with her work. Creeley would have written: "but if a woman / be offended." Skanky Possum again.

Yusef scores!

After 18:
5-10-3

Round 19:

Yusef: "Ponderosa" by James Galvin
Bob: "Animals out of the Snow" by Clayton Eshleman

Galvin's poem about a ponderosa tree getting struck by lightning is quite *striking*. It's one of the best I've found in the Komunyakaa volume so far. Eshleman's dream poem is like Dybek's: more interesting for the dreams themselves than for its language. This is the third or fourth not-very-compelling poem I've found from Skanky Possum. Sorry Dale!

Two in a row for Yusef. After 19:
6-10-3

(Editor's note: Dale Smith is the co-editor of Skanky Possum and maintains his own blog called Possum Pouch). 

Round 20:

Yusef: "An Offer Received in This Morning's Mail" by Amy Gerstler
Bob: "Drones and Chants" by Norman Finkelstein

Amy Gerstler misreads the word "sympathies" for "symphonies" on an advertisement for classical music cds and writes a poem with a clever premise--not quite clever enough to sustain a poem of a page and a half. Norman Finkelstein's rhythmic elegy for Armand Schwerner wins this round easily for Bob.

After 20:
6-11-3


Round 21:

Yusef: "Landscape" by Louise Gluck
Bob: "To a Student Who Reads 'The Second Coming' as Sexual Allegory" by Jeffrey Franklin

If there's anything I dislike more that a poem by Louise Gluck it's a poem by a professor about his student's misreading of Yeats (or anyone else.) The title of Franklin's poem pretty much tells you all you need to know: the title/premise is likely to be better than the poem itself. (Like the poem about Beethoven's nine "Sympathies" in the other book). Gluck's poem presents an eerie, ethereal landscape. She is talented, and this is one of the best I've seen by her in recent years. She wins the round for Yusef.

After 21:
7-11-3


Round 22:

Yusef: "Report on Human Beings" by Michael Goldman
Bob: "Independence Day" by Benjamin Friedlander

Goldman adopts a deliberately dull tone, since his poem is supposed to be a "report." The result sounds like William Bronk on boring pills:

We were distinguished
by our interest in scenery

or

What was most wonderful about us
was our kindness

Friedlander's poem isn't great either. Rather obvious political points and plays on words. This is another tie.

After 22:
7-11-4

Round 23:

Yusef: "Max Jacob's Shoes" by Ray González
Bob: "Surrealist Love Life" by Gene Frumkin

Two homages to surrealism. González's is a coherent, Edsonesque prose poem (although better than Edson), while Frumkin's is more discontinuous, unpredictable in its movements. I like both poems. Although both are one remove from real surrealism, Frumkin has a slight edge because he is trying harder to get at the real thing. Bob wins, regaining his narrow majority.

Score after 23:
7-12-4


Round 24:

Yusef: "Beauty" by Linda Gregg
Bob: "Carried Across" by Forrest Gander

Gregg's poem includes the faux-aphorism "The violation / of beauty never happens just once," soldering together an anecdote about seeing Brigitte Bardot on ET and another about shooting a dog who's killed a sheep. (Jordan asks in his Constant Critic review: does she want to shoot Brigitte Bardot?)

Forrest Gander's poem is quite amazing, both in its finely observed details and its overall effect (it extends over seven pages in this volume). I like the defamiliarizing use of Spanish. Score another for Bob.

After 24 rounds:
7-13-4

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Round 25:

Yusef: "The Opaque" by Mark Halliday
Bob: "Beginning with a Phrase by Simone Weil" by Peter Gizzi

Halliday's meditation on poetic opacity is rich with examples--"Blueprints for the wiring of public buildings in Singapore." The poem goes on a little too long, and becomes too *transparent* at times, but is still more interesting than Gizzi's variations on the phrase "there is no better time than the present." The two poems are not that dissimilar. Gizzi makes fewer mistakes in his excellent poem, and I almost gave the round to him because of my irritation with Halliday, but Halliday holds the reader's attention more strongly, winning the round for Yusef.

After 25:
Yusef: 8; Bob: 13; Tie: 4

Round 26:

Yusef: "Rhythmic Arrangements (on Prosody)" by Michael S. Harper
Bob: "Reunion" by Louise Gluck

This round features two of the four poets who appear in both volumes (the others are Bidart and Warsh.) I got mixed up for a second about which poem was chosen by which editor. Harper's poem starts off:

I was forced to memorize and recite
in front of an atonal white hostess

made to do it again
in Iowa tests of critical argot complicit

with theatrical endrhymes . . .

The "atonal white hostess" might very well be Louise, whose tone-deafness here is astounding:

It is a pleasure, now, to speak of the ways in which
their lives have developed, alike in some ways, in others
profoundly different...

or

... Time has been good to them, and now
they can discuss it together from within, so to speak,
which, before, they could not.

Harper's deft metaprosodic poem wins the round for Yusef. The thought crossed my mind that Gluck was parodying the empty, banal way we think about our lives. I kind of doubt it.

After 26:
9-13-4

Round 27:

Yusef: "Sad Little Breathing Machine" by Matthea Harvey
Bob: "The Gold Star" by Albert Goldbarth

Goldbarth could give lessons in grossness to Gabriel Gudding:

Elaine's job on the geriatric ward included encouraging
the constipated to loose their stingy, gnarled marbles
into the bowl--by hand . . .

Harvey's discontinuous anti-narrative lacks conviction. I try to avoid reading any of the contributor notes at the back of the book, but this poem had me stuck. Still, I will be re-reading it, while Goldbarth's poem exhausts itself in a single reading. Yusef wins.

After 27:
10-13-4


Round 28:

Yusef: "Villlanelle" by George Higgins
Bob: "Affirmation" by Donald Hall

Higgins' villanelle beginning "When Steven Spielberg spoke at Oakland High" is simply brilliant. I'm a sucker for a villanelle (or sestina or pantoum), and this one packs a punch. The idea is that they try to fix up the usually dilapidated school in advance of Spielberg's visit. (He visited the school apparently because some students had laughed inappropriately during a screeing of Schindler's List.) The poem wouldn't have worked if it weren't a villanelle.

I can see how the emotional rawness of Hall's poem appealed to Bob. "To grow old is to lose everything." To be fair, this is an above average poem for Hall, who everyone knows to be an utter mediocrity. Yusef wins with Higgins' villanelle.

After 28:
11-13-4


Round 29:

Yusef: "The Desire Manuscripts" by Edward Hirsch
Bob: "TCAT serenade: 4 4 98 (New Haven)" by Michael S. Harper

Why retell stories from Greek mythology in a bored, perfunctory way? Harper wins, this time for Bob, with his take on Seamus Heaney. Just when it seems Yusef is getting his act together, he blows it again. His taste is often *whiter* than Bob's.

Score after 29:
11-14-4


Round 30:

Yusef: "Summer Night" by Tony Hoagland
Bob: "you: should be shoo you" by Everett Hoagland

The first Hoagland poem is a half-way decent poem of every-day life. Worthy of publication, though not in a "best of" volume. Everett's poem is a somewhat predictable tribute to Baraka and 60s Afro-centrism. I have to give the round to Bob, since the second Hoagland is more ambitious and provides a window on some fascinating cultural history. At least our alphabets are synchronized now!

After 30:
11-15-4

Round 31:

Yusef: "Success" by Richard Howard
Bob: "9-11-01" by Fanny Howe

"Her dealer, who handled successful artists / was a successful dealer, / and his Christmas party, too, was a success." Did anyone ever think Richard Howard could write his way out of a paper bag? The punchline to the poem is amusing enough, but why make us wade through 10 dull stanzas before we get there?

Fanny wins it for Bob with her 9/11 poem.

After 31:
11-16-4

Round 32:

Yusef: "Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical" by Rodney Jones
Bob: [untitled] "across dark streams" by Ronald Johnson

Ok, Yusef, you are disappointing me. Warmed-over poetic gossip from the Southern agrarians, what Allen Tate told Rodney about Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell? Who cares?

Bob, on the other hand, is resorting to DEAD GUYS. In most forms of competition being dead is not an advantage, but, as Rodney himself writes, "The dead, when they are recent, are as good / as they will ever be." [Huh?]

Ronald Johnson's poem is wonderful, I'm going to quote all of it:

across dark streams
of shooting stars

supplicant cast fly
another year alive

belief, belief brief
zero at white core

Not only that, but Ronald Johnson is from Kansas. We only have two or three good poets in the history of the state. Another round for Bob.

Score after 32 Rounds:
11-17-4


Round 33:

Yusef: "Some Rain" by Joy Katz
Bob: "Flying" by Maxine Kumin

Katz's poem, a poetic survey of rain in relation to a dozen or so historical figures, is amusing in a Kenneth-Koch like way. It's basically a list poem. It could have been more sharply drawn, but it is better than Kumin's anecdotal poem. Bob goes wrong here the same way he did when he went with Donald Hall. These poets just don't have it. Yusef wins.

After 33:

12-17-4

Round 34:

Yusef: "The Dragon" by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Bob: "Great" by Bill Kushner

Two poems that are victims of a "style." Kelly's, a "creative writing" adjectival style ("wet black compost"). Kushner's, a breezy jerky New York-school style. It's a tie, even though Kushner's style is more to my liking.

Score after 34:
12-17-5


Round 35:

Yusef: "When the Towers Fell" by Galway Kinnell
Bob: "'Broken world' (for James Assatly)" by Joseph Lease

Kinnell's poem is a valiant attempt to describe the 9/11 disaster. I wanted to dislike this poem, but I have to admit many readers will be deeply moved by it. Lease's subtle elegy for his friend James Assatly is the better poem, giving the round to Bob.

After 35:
12-18-5


Round 36:

Yusef: "After Horace" by Carolyn Kizer
Bob: "Felix Culpa" by Timothy Liu

I've read Horace in Latin: he would never rhyme "Licymnia" with "heart will be a." (In fact, he does not rhyme at all). Horace is a master craftsman, and the translation, verging on doggerel, is insulting to his memory. Liu's poem is enigmatic. His explanation in the back is perhaps better than the poem itself, which still wins the round for Bob.

After 36:
12-19-5


Round 37:

Yusef: "Love Blooms at Chimsbury after the War" by Jennifer L. Knox
Bob: "On Antiphon Island" by Nathaniel Mackey

Knox's 14-liner poem is delightful: a series of fictional characters "dropping dead" one after the other. Mackey has his moments here too. I like the word "andoumboulouos." This round was hard to call until I realized that I had to try too hard to like Mackey's poem. If it didn't have his name attached to it, I wouldn't have tried at all. So Yusef wins this round.

After 37:
13-19-5


Round 38:

Yusef: "Proverb" by Kenneth Koch
Bob: "And Even You Elephants" by Jackson Mac Low

How could I possibly choose between these two? Mac Low's Stein poem is absolutely marvelous, and Koch is one of my favorites. This round is a tie.

After 38:
13-19-6

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Round 39:

Yusef: "Y2K (1933)" by John Koethe
Bob: "Perfect Front Door" by Steve Malmude

I am a fan of Koethe's poetry in general. This poem is complex, ending with a rewriting of Yeats' "The Second Coming" and a reference to Hitler. As usual, the style is vaguely Ashberyian.

Malmude's "Perfect Front Door" - published in The Hat no less- is more sharply drawn:

My summer
is threadbare
these jeans
are chains . . . .

Malmude's refreshing poem is one of my favorites so far in either book, and wins the round for Bob.

After 39:
13-20-6


Round 40:

Yusef: "In the Hall of Bones" by Ted Kooser
Bob: "Address to Winnie in Paris" by Sarah Manguso

The premise of Kooser's poem is clever. I like his description of bones, but he ruins the poem with a sentimental ending:

... Of all the skeletons
assembled here, this is the only one
in which throbbed a heart
made sad by brooding on its own shadow

Manguso's prose-poem epistle is delightful. (I feel a little awkward because this is the first poet I'm discussing here who actually might read this blog.) Compare her ending with Kooser's:

"What the lover seeks is the possibility of return, the strange heart beating under every stone."

Bob wins again. Score after 40:

13-21-6

Round 41:

Yusef: "The Music of Time" by Philip Levine
Bob: "Butter & Eggs" by Harry Mathews

"Butter & Eggs" is one of the greatest poems in the English language. Well, maybe not, but it is unforgettable and certainly deserves to be in a "best of" anthology. (See the uncomprehending remark about this poem in the amazon.com reader review section for Creeley's BAP.) It is simply an extremely precise recipe for cooking eggs with butter. I'm not sure why it works as a poem, but it does. Why isn't Mathews better known as a poet?

Levine's poetry has declined since he wrote "They Feed They Lion" years ago. This is a good effort for Levine; I kind of liked it. But if you've read 50 poems by him you've read the other 450. Yusef loses with a pretty good poem. Not fair, but I don't make the rules, I just enforce 'em. (Actually, I made the rules too.)

Score after 41:
13-22-6

Round 42:

Yusef: "Jihad" by J.D. McClatchy
Bob: "The Quarry (1-13)" by Duncan McNaughton

Poetry is a mode of exploration. Both of these poets know this, but McClatchy relies more on the already-known. McNaugton's knowledge is discovered in the process of writing to a much larger extent. "Jihad" is a thankless subject for a poem, to be sure. Score one more for Bob.

After 42:
13-23-6


Round 43:

Yusef: "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle" by W.S. Merwin
Bob: "To my Father's Houses" by W.S. Merwin

Bill vs. Bill! We've achieved alphabetical equilibrium a few rounds after the half-way point. Unfortunately, the two Merwins have written the SAME poem. Not literally, but the relation between Herbert and the bicycle is the same as the relation between the father and his houses, and the speaker's attitude toward this relation is identical. Herbert doesn't really own the bicycle and the father doesn't really own any of his houses. This one is a draw.

After 43:
13-23-7

Round 44:

Yusef: "Dear Alter Ego" by Heather Moss
Bob: "Ashberries: Letters" by Philip Metres

{I'm exhausted; this is hard work. I'm only keeping with it because I've been getting adoring emails and blog-citations all week.}

"Dear Alter Ego" is a jaunty poem, beginning like this:

I wish to cancel my subscription to your
deviance, the dither of which could send me
to cloister myself in darkest moorhead . . .

I rather enjoyed it. "Ashberries" has nothing to do with John Ashbery. This is a beautiful if conventionally well-written poem, quite a find for Creeley. I hate ties, but what can I do?

After 44 Rounds:
13-23-8


Round 45:

Yusef: "A History of Color" by Stanley Moss
Bob: "Trail" by Mong-Lan

I don't know how to put a little dot under the o of Mong; the circumflex will have to suffice. Her poem is another exploratory voyage, like those of Forrest and Duncan earlier. Moss's poem is an odd historical essay about colors, with many fascinating details. I don't really get what he's trying to do; he would need more Kochian humor to bring it off in verse--he strives for a profound ending that the poem will not support. Bob wins with Mong.


After 45:
13-24-8


Round 46:

Yusef: "The Loaf" by Paul Muldoon
Bob: "Behind the Orbits" by Jennifer Moxley

Muldoon cannot be dismissed; a historically resonant poem invoking the five senses. Moxley's blank verse meditation is richer in logopeia. It has a weird Victorian tone going on which I can't quite put my finger on. I like the fact that I have a hard time figuring out what she's doing. I have no sense of aesthetic incoherence, as I did with Halliday.

This one's for Bob. Yusef is in a serious slump here. There are some match-ups coming up I'm not exactly thrilled about, like Pinsky vs. Olds.

After 46:
13-25-8


Round 47:

Yusef: "Four Deaths that Happened Daily" by Peggy Munson
Bob: "Sympathy" by Eileen Myles

Munson's poem is quite arresting, with some Plathian self-dramatization, but in a good way. She doesn't take herself too seriously:

One day I died while preparing to live.
The killer stepped out of a Seurat painting
And said "I will make you into a million dots ....

I would have liked Eileen Myles to win, but her poem, from APR, seemed less vivid, less memorable in direct head-to-head competition with Munson's. What is it about APR that drains the life out of poetry? Yusef finally gets his 14th win.

After 47:
14-25-8

 
Round 48:

Yusef: "Asparagus" by Marilyn Nelson
Bob: "Sunday Night" by Maggie Nelson

Marilyn:

First cook it in its own delicious steam,
sauté breadcrumbs in butter separately,
combine, eat slowly . . .

Maggie:

Or why not make a malt of it? It's
virtually the same thing as a milkshake

but with powder.

Marilyn N's eminently dislikeable sonnet about eating asparagus loses to Maggie N's disjointed and amusing "Sunday Night," first published in The Hat. I'm getting a sense of what the best journals are, Hambone and The Hat among others.

After 48:
14-26-8

Will Yusef beat the spread? He was at least a thirty point underdog going in...

It expresses its reluctance as virtue.
It is reluctant to intrude, like minds into
the fleetingness they concede.

When it is convenient to me, I make a great show of overcoming my prejudices: for some reason the New York poets I love have tied or lost throughout this game. If I go back more than three times between the two poems, as in this case, I must declare a tie. North's poem makes fewer mistakes, but is less interesting and engaging.

After 49:
14-26-9

The least satisfying poems have often been those by the biggest names, and this makes perfect sense: those are the ones most likely to be selected for the poet than for the actual poem.

Monday, September 22, 2003

Round 50:

Yusef: "What Happened to Everybody" by Naomi Shihab Nye
Bob: "Haunt" by Alice Notley.

I liked Nye's "ubi sunt" prose-poem, which has a deep "mono no aware" and "lacrymae rerum" feeling. Some really well-chosen details here. Notley's poem also details loss, though less sharply:

Why are you
I'm looking for poetry
it's here where it hurts us so much
I have to go on doing this

Yusef wins the round; Notley is one of my top 15-20 contemporary poets, but this particular poem struck me as diffusely written.

After 50:
15-26-9

Round 51:

Yusef: "Queen Min Bi" by Ishle Yi Park
Bob: "Snapshot from Niagara" by D. Nurske

These poems were both published in Barrow Street (the first time, I think, that two poems from the same magazine have come face to face). Yusef's choice is the more inspired: Park's portrait of the "Queen Min Bi" is outrageous, powerfully written, and memorable. I wanted to quote an especially arresting image, but found that the genius of the poem is in the accumulation of details. Some of the language is clumsy, but this does not seem to matter.

Bob seems to be growing weary. The poem about a pair of newly-weds getting their picture taken at Niagara falls presents a stock image: "two dim faces, woman, man / worn identical by happiness." Perhaps he was thinking of "be wet / with a decent happiness" when he chose this poem.

Two in a row for Yusef. After 51 Rounds:
16-26-9

Round 52:

We adore images, we like the spectacle
Of speed and size, the working of prodigious
Systems. So on television we watched

The terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing
Until we were sick not only of the sight
Of our prodigious systems turned against us

But of the very systems of our watching.

It gets worse. There is a Donald Duck reference. He is trying to do a "public" poetry in a way that doesn't work. Let's hope Louise Gluck doesn't try to write like this now she's laureate. The real title of the poem, by the way, is "Anniversary."

Olds' poem is actually entitled "Frontis Nulla Fides." It has its moments, but is too clunky even to win over the Pinsky poem. No points are awarded this round, not even to the "tie" category.

Score after 52:
Still 16-26-9


Round 53:

Yusef: "What the Paymaster Said" by Kevin Prufer
Bob: "Twenty-Six Fragments" by George Oppen

This hardly seems fair! Oppen has been dead since at least the mid 1980s. Prufer's prose-poem is clever if a bit obvious. The paymaster is the voice of management offering absurd payments to his employees. I liked it well enough, but how can I compare it with a page or two ripped out of Oppen's notebooks, ranging from the banal to the sublime?

In the play, the actors cry out
But in the poem the words
themselves cry out

Oppen wins it for Creeley on historical interest.

After 53:
16-27-9


Round 54:

Yusef: "Sequoia sempervirens" by Ed Roberson
Bob: "Starred Together" by Jena Osman

Two thoughtful poems. Roberson's meditation on the sheer size of the sequoia in relation to human scale and life. Osman's essay-poem on spectatorship and voyeurism. Osman has more going on poetically speaking; Roberson's metaphor of human = squirrel could have been more sharply articulated.

One for Bob. After 54:
16-28-9

Round 55:

Yusef: "The Disappearances" by Vijay Seshadri
Bob: "Fretwork" by Carl Phillips

There is a long-line style and a short-line style:

Every creature, intelligent or not, has disappeared--
the humans, phosphorescent,
the duplicating pets, the guppies and spaniels,
the Woolworth's turtle that cost forty-nine cents ... (Seshadri)

Little hammer, chasing--onto
unmarked metal--pattern,
decoration,

a name,

a scar upon the face
of history, what

has no face (Phillips)

I prefer the second style, it is leaner and quicker to the punch. Seshadri's poem, in its attempt to make the grand historical statement, seems over-serious to me. Phillips' historical meditation is more subtle. Another win for Bob.

After 55:
16-29-9

Round 56:

[JM wipes sweat from brow]

Yusef: "Sleet" by Alan Shapiro
Bob: "A roof is no guarantee" by Pat Rehm

Another lean vs. fat match-up:

Dad sang for someone to fly him to the moon,
to let him play among the stars, while mom
held the lighter up to another Marlboro (Shapiro)


A roof is no guarantee
that you'll sleep

The unease of premises
pins together the curtains
at night (Rehm)

It's hard to believe
5 sparrows were sold for this

Round 57:

Yusef: "For Nazim Hikmet in the Old Prison, Now a Four Seasons Hotel" by Myra Shapiro
Bob: "Ends of the Earth" by Adrienne Rich

Myra Shapiro gives away the game in the title. The reader instantly writes the poem in his head just on the basis of the title, and then the actual poem can never win against this mental poem. Adrienne might like Myra's poem, actually. It is more sharply conceived than her own garrulous effort. I don't let myself be influenced by the poets' explanations in the back of the book. I did look back to see what Rich thought her poem was about, however: living in a room in an artist colony previously occupied by someone else.

This one's a tie, I'm afraid. Shapiro loses points for obviousness, Rich for pointless obfuscation. (Me who usually likes obfuscation.)

After 57:
16-31-9

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

 
Round 58:

Yusef: "Song with a Child's Pacifier in it" by Bruce Smith
Bob: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" By Corinne Robins

Smith, a poet I have never heard of, comes out strong for Yusef with writing like this "and the air is perfumed with the lacquered black oil spilled / and volition like a little philosopher of hell..." This is an autobiographical poem with complex but not flaccid sentences extending over long sinuous lines, continually surprising.

The Picasso poem by Robins is amusing: what if the demoiselles in Picasso's famous painting could talk, what would they say? I generally don't respond well to poems with a premise like this. I've knocked the one about Beethoven's "sympathies," etc... I can't say it's badly done here, but Smith's poem is stronger, winning a round for Yusef.

After 58:
17-31-9


Round 59:

Yusef: "There's trouble Everywhere" by Charlie Smith
Bob: "Tenets of Roots and Trouble" by Elizabeth Robinson

Smith writes in a discursive, prosy Ashbery-inflected idiom--"The day / refers to itself in third person." His diffuse and thoughtful poem isn't really all that different from Robinson's Ashberianism of the Left: "There was a tribe adopted first person singular pronoun: / I." What I mean is that both styles are rooted in a single influence, but take this influence in opposite directions. We've already seen the Ashbery to the right in Goldbarth and Koethe. I prefer the leftward turn, of course, because it seems to me that the Ashberianism of the right was pretty much exhausted in the 1970s (by Ashbery himself at times.) So the round goes to Bob for Robinson's exploratory poem.

After 59: 17-32-9

That adds up to 58, but one round no points were scored.

Round 60:

Yusef: "Translating" by Maura Stanton
Bob: "Self-Portrait with Critic" by Ira Sadoff

There is a verisimilitude problem in the Stanton poem (for me as a Spanish professor). I don't believe that the particular words the speaker finds in "this novel / published in Barcelona in 1901" would really be found in a novel published in Barcelona in 1901. I don't believe that she would have found this novel by accident in a house she had rented. This does not diminish from the charm of the poem, however. Sadoff's critical self-examination describes what a lot of us do: "tinkering around / in a minor key, since no one's listening." Sadoff is leaner and more intense, but I have hard time dismissing Stanton, so this one is a tie.

Will Creeley win an absolute majority? There are fifteen rounds left, and he needs 38 wins (6 more).

After 60:
17-32-10

Round 61:

Yusef: "Lines" by Ruth Stone
Bob: "I Do Not Know Myself" by Hugh Seidman

It's surprisingly easy to find points of comparison between poems as they line up against each other. (Or maybe my talent as literary critic is to invent spurious comparisons.) In any case, both these poems are short, religious lyrics. Stone speaks of a self trying to cross a border between individual and cosmic consciousness. She loses me with the ending:

Sharp as the odor of fresh sawdust,
the color of lost rooms,
those erotic odors, angst of brevity;
like crossing your thighs
in a spasm of loneliness.

I hate similes. Seidman, a poet whose existence was known to me, but only vaguely, writes a starkly simple poem about seeking enlightenment. He trusts himself enough not to COMPARE what he is seeking to anything else, and wins the round for Bob.

After 61:
17-33-10


Round 62:

Yusef: "The Restaurant Business" by James Tate
Bob: "You also, Nightingale" by Reginald Shepherd

"Elsie and I were having a nice, little romantic dinner at our favorite restaurant, when the owner of the restaurant came over and sat down at our table.."

It works as prose; I'm not sure why Tate feels he has to break the lines at "romantic / dinner" and "of / the." His scary little parable is classic Tate, a prose-poem written in lines of verse. "I was reading a nice, little book of poetry by James Tate in the bookstore when the owner of the bookstore interrupted me to ask whether I was going to buy the book." The poem has a terrifying conclusion. Normally, I wouldn't get that far.

Shepherd's weird imagining of Petrarch is closer to genuine surrealism, and the lines are genuinely verse:

Petrarch dreams of pebbles
on the tongue, he loves me
at a distance, black polished stone
skipping the lake that follows

worn-down words...

He wins the round for Bob.

After 62:
17-34-10


Round 63:

Yusef: "The Lost Boy" by William Tremblay
Bob: "For Larry Eigner, Silent" by Ron Silliman

Remember when they used to say language poetry was "non-syntactical" or "non-referential"? The same kind of people who went around saying the Derrida didn't believe in the existence of reality. Silliman's poem for Eigner is quite referential, and every sentence has a perfectly transparent syntax too. It even has plenty of "content," the word that Yusef uses in his introduction to write off the language and post-language groups completely. If you only know Silliman from his blog, you are missing out on quite a bit. This poem is quite moving: the tribute of one poet to another, written in a way that makes us FEEL the respect for Eigner's craft: it is inherent in Ron's own language:

Moon in the poplars
sets just before the sun
first rising throws shadows
the way a ventriloquist does voices
long, lean, stretching back into compactness

As for Tremblay, he has also written an excellent poem, with some unforgettable images:

... Though his bones
mouldered in cold drizzle he comes
crashing through wild plum thickets
clutching at my shirt, asking where I was
in his sagebrush hours...

Tremblay obviously has talent to spare, although the poem is over-written for my taste, especially toward the end. It is certainly one of the best poems in the Kumunyakaa volume. It might have beaten a lesser poem than Ron's. Another round for Bob.

After 63:
17-35-10


Round 10,064

Yusef: "After Your Death" by Natasha Trethewey
Bob: "Poem After Daniel Hang" by Dale Smith

A School of Quietude poem, well done, against Dale Smith's imitation/translation of a Spanish conquistador. This is a difficult one. I am not convinced by this voice:

but only when at last
I relaxed could I see
the possibilities of a life
in which to be deprived of Europe
was not to be deprived of much.

or:

Tribe after tribe,
language after language
who could recall them all?

Who is supposed to be speaking here? The voice just doesn't ring true, either as a 16th century explorer or as a contemporary American poet. I can see the argument that it's supposed to be hybrid voice, but I don't buy it. Dale/Bob should win for ambition,

but

Yusef wins with Natasha's nicely turned poem about "another space emptied by loss." I like the image of the fig half-eaten by insects.

After 10,064:
18-35-10

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Round 65:

Yusef: "On Being Asked to Discuss Poetic Theory" by David Wagoner
Bob: "In Way of Introduction" by Gustaf Sobin

Two "metapoems," apparently. I have a verisimilitude issue with Wagoner: who would ask this particular poet to discuss poetic theory? He responds to the dubious request with a parable about snow falling on the mountain, concluding that the same snow falls even when he isn't there to watch it. A poetics based on the realization that the world exists without human consciousnesss. I get it, but he takes too many words to say it. Sobin, on the other hand, pares down his language:

poems are about. yours, though,
yours, it would seem, are
a-
bout the process of their own
depletion: about, one might assume, the sheer

aboutness of being...

I get it. I've read Char, and Heidegger, and Blanchot, and other poems by Sobin. To me, this kind of writing has a dejá vu air about it. Still, for a less jaded reader it could be effective. I give the round to Bob.

After 65:
18-36-10

Round 66:

Yusef: "In a Rut" by Ronald Wallace
Bob: "Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours" by Juliana Spahr.

She dogs me while
I try to take a catnap.
Of course, I'm playing possum... (Wallace)

You can pretty much predict the rest of the poem will use a series of animal expressions, and that's the problem with this sort of poem: utter predictability.

From Spahr's title you might expect a response to Frost's poem that begins "The land was ours before we were the land's." That's what you get, in a seemingly endless variation on this theme: "Some of we and the land that was never ours while we were the land. Started from us and of the ground which was never with we while we were the ground. Some of we wore the land. Some of we carried the ground..."

Predictable also? Somewhat tedious? In the positive, Gertrude Stein sense of the word tedious? Some of I liked this poem more than the animal metaphors, so some of I awards the round to Bob.

After 66:
18-37-10

Bob needs only one more round to be declared the absolute victor, by winning over 50% of the rounds. He is already guaranteed has a healthy plurality. I will keep going to the end.

Round 67:

Yusef: "Premonition" by Lewis Warsh
Bob: "Call" by John Taggart

Warsh is a poet I'm only now getting into. I just bought a book by him for three dollars at "The Dusty Bookshelf" here in Lawrence, Kansas. [Bob has a poem by Warsh also, that will come up in a future round.] "Premonition" is good pick for Yusef: a poem long enough to allow me to figure out how much I like Warsh's work.

Taggart's poem is quiet and unassuming, also a good choice for Creeley, but I'm going to award the round to Yusef.

After 67:
19-37-10


Round 68:


Yusef: "In Sky" by Susan Wheeler
Bob: from "Raton Rex, Part I" by Sam Truitt

The Wheeler poem is an uncharacteristic choice for Yusef:

The girl refuses the stadium seating.
The girl mixes lazule and vivianite.
The girl was or was not a mother, this is irrelevant.
The girl's skin shelters; her skin burns with self

Truitt's poem, part of a larger sequence, is equally delightful, with short lines spilling over into one another in a bizarre stream-of-consciousness. This one is a tie, denying Bob his definitive victory.

After 68:
19-37-11

Round 69:

Yusef: "Man Running" by Richard Wilbur
Bob: "Do Flies Remember Us" by Jean Valentine

We've all seen that movie or that t.v. show where the guy is running away from the law. Richard Wilbur has seen it too, and writes a banal, stereotypical poem-version of it in tired rhymes:

Whatever he has done
Against our law and peace of mind,
Our mind's eye looks with pity of a kind
At the scared, stumbling fellow on the run

The phrase "of a kind" is only there for the meter and rhyme. Wilbur's point is that we sympathize instinctively with the guy running away, not with the police.

Jean Valentine's poem makes a more original point, in fresher language:

Do flies remember us?
We don't them
we say "fly"

say
"woman"
"man"

[There is typo in the first line: "Do files remember us?"] This one goes to Bob Creeley, who has now won a bare majority of the total of 75 rounds.

After 69:
19-38-11

The final five rounds will be conducted tomorrow, even though the outcome is no longer in doubt. Also tomorrow, my best of the best and worst of the best lists.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Round 70:

Yusef: "The World" by C.K. Williams
Bob: "Eye Contact" by Lewis Warsh

C.K Williams' poem about living in France is chatty, entertaining, quite pleasant and filled with concrete details. He brings in Ponge, Fragonard. Unfortunately, he tries to draw out a didactic conclusion from his observations, in flatter language:

... reality has put itself so solidly before me
there's little need for mystery... Except for us, for how we take the world
to us, and make it more, more than we are, more even than itself.

Yet even as I type these words I think: if this were a William Bronk poem I would accept this language. Maybe I'm getting softer, more indulgent, as I resist the temptation to rip into this poem as though it were by Linda Pastan.

Lewis Marsh, though, comes strong with a poem reminiscent of Frank O'Hara's "Fortune Cookies": "The Trojan war was produced by Zeus for his own pleasure." I am a sucker for aphorisms, so Bob wins the round.

After 70:
19-39-11


Round 71:

Yusef: "My Work" by Terence Winch
Bob: "Return to Saint Odielinberg, Easter 2000" by Claire Nicholas White

I know, it must be hard to find 75 whole poems published in a single year that one would actually want to include in a book like this. I have deep symphony for these editors. I've only had to read 150 poems for this face-off. They must have read thousands to find these 150.

When Yusef chooses a poem from New American Writing, he comes up with this:

In my work, at any given point,
the great issues of identity politics
and dialectical absolutism assume
a tight coherence, a profoundly
threatening total awareness
by which I seek to mediate
the conflict between meaning
and the extremes of deconstruction

I violently hated this poem a few days ago. The parody seemed facile. Now I'm not so sure. Parts of it are quite funny indeed; there are some cheap shots, but it rings true (by-and-large, on-and-off). The fundamental problem, maybe, is that the pretentious way certain poets talk about their work is FUNNIER than any possible parody of this discourse.

White's poem is a rather conventional "finding the family roots" narrative. It just wasn't sharply written enough for me. Leave out the similes, poets! ("its two towers / like teeth.").

Yusef wins the round.

After 71:
20-39-11


Round 72:

Yusef: "Scrabble with Matthews" by David Wojahn
Bob: "In Charge" by Nathan Whiting

Wojahn's account of playing scrabble with William Matthews (I cheated and read the explanation this time; I didn't know that Matthews had died), vs. Whiting's dramatic narrative about a guy with sixteen dogs. Wojahn says that Matthews wore his erudition lightly, but the same cannot be said for this poem, which is mannered and "academic." Whiting's funny poem about the dog collector wins for Bob.

After 72:
20-40-11

Round 73:

Yusef: "Clemency" by Robert Wrigley
Bob: "Illumined with the Light of Fitfully Burning Censers" by Dara Wier

"Clemency" is one of those poems with a lot of "writing" in it--"the redwing blackbirds / drilling their whistly bells." Is "scintillate" an adjective (after the analogy of desolate)? The speaker talks directly to God and is unembarrassed by doing so (or by his own "fine writing"). I've got to respect that sense of unembarrassment.

Dara Wier writes a parodic poem in "intelligent voice of suburban housewife" who, we repeatedly hear, "got an ok parking space." Does the intelligent housewife still use the word "fishmonger"? Not a criticism, just a question. What is defining her as intelligent here? Is the parody here too condescending?

I have to give the round to Bob just for the title of Dara's poem. I feel my critical faculties slipping away from me. I feel more and more fallible as the game reaches its conclusion, less and less inclined toward meanness.

After 73:
20-41-11


Round 74:

Yusef: "After the Opening, 1932 by Anna Ziegler
Bob: "Nostalgia II" by Charles Wright

Ziegler imagines Edward Hopper after a gallery opening in 1932. The reader's response will depend on how convincingly the scene is painted: Hopper's need for solitude, scorn for the Rockefellers, etc... The poem is more of a short-story, really. I feel a lack of verisimilitude, but maybe it's just me.

Wright's poem ends with a simile that has me scratching my head:

The future, like Dostoyevsky, poised
To read us the riot act

I've never "gotten" Wright's poetry, and this poem is no exception. I understand it semantically, not aesthetically. He has a certain feel for language, but the results obtained seem duller than we might expect. Is it a problem of tone?

This one is a tie.

After 74:
20-41-12

Round 75:

[drumroll]

Yusef: "Reading the Bones: a Black-Jack Moses Nightmare" by Ahmos Zu-Bolton II
Bob: "A Sheath of Pleasant Voices" by John Yau

Two good poems with which to end the game. Zu-Bolton's spooky nightmare about some kind of soothsayer interpreting a pattern of bones on the sidewalk, and Yau's pleasant, witty poem about a more obscure nightmare. I did like the lines:

I am one of the last
of the computer chain errors

to become illuminated

Yau's poem lacks conviction for me: I don't know why it was written, though I am willing to keep reading it until I figure it out. The last round has to be a tie. Final score, after 75 rounds:

Yusef: 20
Bob: 41
Tie: 13

With one round vacated.


A note on "methodology": the alphabetical set up some fortuitous match-ups--much more interesting ones than I would have predicted. Over the course of 75 rounds, any unfairness due to method alone is evened out. A great poem might lose to an even greater poem, or a mediocre effort might prevail when the other editor lets his guard down.

I've found about 15 poems that are spectacularly good, others that are delightful in some way. There were several that I felt myself incapable of responding to, even when written by poets I admire.

Best of the Best:
Berrigan, Broughton, Carson, Coolidge, Gander, Johnson, Mac Low, Malmude, Manguso, Mathews, Mong, Rehm, Silliman, Warsh (Bob)

Anderson, Ashbery, Dickman, Higgins, Koch, Park, Smith, Warsh (Yusef)

Worst of the Best:
Gluck, Olds (Bob)

Dennis, Hirsch, Nelson, Pinsky, Wilbur (Yusef)

When I post something late in the afternoon it's almost always a mistake. I feel punch-drunk from the BAP face-off. What did I learn from all this? I hate similes, except when I love them. They are like.... I don't care for obviousness or poems with cute premises. There are far too many prose-poems, too few poets like Ronald Johnson. I like "lean" poems more than "fat" poems.

Hambone and The Hat are the best avant journals. The Boston Review, New American Writing, and jubilat are worthwhile as well. I'm sure Skanky Possum is as great as everybody says it is, but the poems Creeley chose from there were not at the top of my list. Chicago Review is good but I can live without Ploughshares, Poetry, and APR. Why is there nothing from Columbia Poetry Review? No Barbara Guest or Kenward Elmslie (and so on....)