Brock, Geoffrey. Weighing Light. Ivan R. Dee, 2005. (88 pages)
Millar, Joe. Autobiomythography & Gallery. Brooklyn Arts Press, 2007 (94 pages)
American poetry in the first decade of the 21st century continues to evolve in subject
matter and technique—and not always through the typical 20th century onslaught of the new,
but also through variation and through that famous Modernist dictum by Ezra Pound to “make
it new.” Geoffrey Brock’s wonderful debut,
Weighing Light (Ivan R. Dee, 2005),
weaves a conversational diction and emotional immediacy through traditional poetic forms
to create powerful autobiographical lyrics. These psychologically delicate poems renew
poetic forms without spotlighting the technique, a suave accomplishment that has eluded
many similar poets in recent years. In contrast Joe Millar’s
Autobiomythography & Gallery
(Brooklyn Arts Press, 2007) offers a variety of disjunctive language experiments in
lyric-size poetry and some larger series, and there are interesting morsels among the
smorgasbord here. Millar’s eschewing of clarity and concision likely is his strategy
for representing what he calls the “obesity” of life. Millar shows flashes of insight
and talent. However this book’s New York School strategy of presenting poetic data,
rather than selection and concision, may appeal to adherents of this approach, but it
offers little beyond technical play for readers not swayed by new for new’s sake.
Weighing Light
Geoffrey Brock is expert at capturing the illuminations and dislocations of being a young
adult journeying toward stability of place, profession, and a relationship—while offering
readers a mature, witty voice. Brock already is an accomplished translator of Italian—having
translated Italian poet Cesare Pavese and novelist Umberto Eco—and he currently teaches in the
graduate writing program at the University of Arkansas. Brock’s sparkling debut has been
long in genesis. As a result it possesses a sense of weighed experience even when engaging
in neophyte tales of moving apartments and fleeting romances. Alongside this, he also tackles
mythology and handles his own moments of introspection;
Weighing Light contains a number of
gems.
In poems such as “Epithalamium: Midsummer
Convergence” and “Eating Carrots with Charlie Bernheimer” Brock recalls friends and a
professor from his student days seen in the bittersweet permanence of memory. Meanwhile
the earthly stage-set already has changed. This theme becomes even more explicit in the
mostly iambic pentameter sonnet “And the Day Brought Back the Night,” where the speaker
pretends to be in a relationship until a:
. . . fact checker showed up, late, for work
And started in: Item: it’s years, not days.
Item: you had no dog. Item: she isn’t back,
In fact, she just remarried. And oh yes, item: you
Left her, remember? I did? I did. (I do.)
Geoffrey Brock approaches loss with humor. He embraces memory with palpable emotion.
Weighing Light mostly offers short lyric poems of expressive emotion and reflective wit, such as “Move,” “Modern Romance,” “Mon Chat, Mon Semblable,” and the poems cited above. His poetry uses colloquial speech and deadpan humor combined with occasional rhyme and mostly iambic meters. It will be interesting to see if Brock develops talent for philosophical poetry found in the opening poem, “Abstraction,” or if he ever attempts longer narratives, a talent for which is hinted at in his three-page montage “Mundane Comedies.” “Mundane Comedies” ends with an allegorical tale, written in unrhymed iambic pentameter in tercet stanzas, with a concluding couplet. It ends like this:
“Well now if that don’t just beat all,” God says,
Gazing across the field at a knot of men
Arguing outside the tent. He seems
Tired; evening has fallen and many remain
To be interviewed. “Uh, yessir, it sure does,”
I stammer, handing him my application
And standing by the folding metal chair
That faces his. “So, Mr.—” But a cry
Cuts him off, and he rises to his feet,
Flustered. One man lies prostrate on the ground;
The rest have darted back inside the tent.
A gust of wind disturbs God’s hair, his robe.
I cringe, expecting—what? Minutes pass.
“Your application,” he resumes, “I thought—
I’m sure I set it here when I stood up.”
There’s nothing here but us, two empty chairs,
And sun-baked earth. He checks his pockets – nothing.
He turns, chagrined but not apologetic,
Smiles, and tells me: “You’ll have to come on back
Some other time.” I thank him and set out,
Sad but relieved, toward the swaying trees,
Now black against the darkening plain of sky.
“Good luck,” he calls to me. As I glance back,
I see a woman emerge from the tent, sidestep
The body, and begin her trudge toward God,
Pale application flapping in her hands.
Autobiomythography & Gallery
Iowa Writer’s Workshop veteran and installation artist Joe Millar offers a
smorgasbord of poetry in his first 90-page collection. The book’s wandering technical
adventurism will be its primary attraction for some, and lack of editing under the proud
flag of hyper-modern verbosity a repellant to others. The book certainly could have been
cut down in pages--though to be fair, Millar may not believe that every line of poetry
should matter as Modernists such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and others advocated in
their promotion of imagism at the beginning of the 20th century. Millar’s aesthetic comes
from the mid 20th century explosive and effusive Abstract Expressionist movement of
Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell, and in writing, John Ashbery. However Millar’s
poetry does benefit from focus when it offers focus. For instance in eponymous poem,
“Gallery….,” Millar writes insightfully:
I am that corruptible thing
pruned by incentive steadily working toward a whole-someness
what doesn’t
kill you only makes you
more you
a blue flame at that spirited center
But what is it at the periphery
that held at this distance
desires to be held?
There is much to admire in this insightful beginning; the passage begins with a
Christian-echoing assertion that Millar himself is “that corruptible thing.” The next line
points out that “corruptible” people are made better through “incentive,” a diction from
market economics, but which in this line of poetry refers to being tied to humanity’s search
for wholeness. The narrator is “pruned” through the process of “steadily working” toward
this “whole-someness.” This vaguely-worded phrase “whole-someness” is effective in showing
that the goal of wholeness cherished by many remains a mystery. What is it exactly? We sense
it and strive for it, but rarely understand. The next line broken across the page
horizontally offers a twist on a Nietzsche’s aphorism so Millar can argue that there is no
escape from the self through experience. Experience only “makes you / more you.” This dive
in “you” is the poem’s most intense fire. It is “the blue flame” at the core of burning.
Millar uses the descriptive word “spirited” to echo the word “spiritual,” leaving readers
with tasty hot food for thought. The poem then asks about “what is it at the periphery”—asks
how the self relates to the world?
The poem then drops this question and runs
on and on for many additional pages. Millar’s strategy of piling all sorts of associations
into his poems leads him to follow this opening question with additional stanzas featuring
a bus ride, an art gallery, “[m]ascara-purple clowns,” and then fifteen more pages.
For the modern reader on the information superhighway, I wonder whether endless and
seemingly unedited data can be the best literary strategy.
Autobiomythography & Gallery
offers a river of images, verbal play, and quick scenes. Its unanchored assertions tackle
today’s diverse and disjunctive world. Here in “Gallery….” precise philosophical poetry
would have continued this poem’s compelling, argumentative, and visual opening. Instead,
it sidesteps it. In the end, stringing together lines of data however novel is easier
than writing coherently about the nature of the self, the self and the world, or corruption
and wholeness. That is the “news” of poetry that still needs to be written, read, and
discussed.
is forthcoming from Goose River Press in November 2007. He edits the annual journal
(www.poemsagainstwar.com). He has an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where
he was a teaching fellow and lecturer. His commentary and poetry have appeared in