For your enjoyment, and your consideration: “Poem in the Shape of a Poem” and “Brandoid Roundteen”
I had originally intended on reviewing the winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series in 2009, Susan Parr’s Pacific Shooter, having entered and included a SAE for the winner (DO IT!) but after reading the majority of the book I was divided. Lying in bed watching the shadow of the ceiling fan behind infomercials the best I could come up with was that the poems seemed like if Campbell McGrath’s lexicon had read the complete works of Charles Simic just before becoming obsessed with Ted Kooser and writing a book of quirky descriptions. But that seemed so inadequate. There was much more to the book than I was understanding, so I waited, emailed some friendly poets, and then got impatient, so I open this to the internet forum, please learn me my ig’nant ways. I absolutely loved Susan Parr’s “Poem in the Shape of a Poem” (among others, like Earthirst, an ode to scancion-adicts if you will) however, poems like “Internmoon” and “Brandoid Roundteen” completely eluded me. So I felt I couldn’t write a review. Especially after reading Susan Mitchell’s accusation that the “Bourgeois reader will hate it” because I didn’t hate it, I just wanted to believe in every single page, and apparently haven’t read widely enough to fully understand this collection. Which, in its own way, can help those reading this. So here are the two poems. If anyone has insight into “Brandoid Roundteen” I would be so, so happy to hear it, because there has to be something behind the poem. Random quatrains generally don’t find their way into award winning collections.
Poem in the Shape of a Poem
Forgive my shorn appearance,
my torn ends, tufts of cut hair;
the trackmarks of my comb.
Forgive my staggered racks, flat art,
my standing in this floating room.
Forgive my monochrome.
Forgive my tailored look, my pleated parts,
my tendency to stop and skip.
And please forgive my hats.
They rarely fit.
–
(Not sure what in my past made me so guilty, but I like the absurdist apology poems. Like Hal Sirowitz’s confessional poems, or Billy Collins’ “Sonnet”, or perhaps because just wrote a Villainelle apologizing for its own repetition. I’m not sure, but this poem got me, and I would often flip through the book late at night in the fading light of Shamwow ads and stop at this poem and read it, yet again, and smile. How silly poems, really, are.
–
Brandoid Roundteen
Brandoid Roundteen is a very fine drink;
a very fine drink indeed.
One of them makes six of a man,
two of them makes thirteen.
–
Now, this poem even more than the even shorter and more obscure “Internmoon” - “Internmoon, / internmoon // It’s a ha’moon” which the only thing I could pull from was the lament of a ‘half-funded’ internship?, and being under the ten words poem rule, I’ve apparently subconsciously awarded it a zen-like pass. But “Brandoid Roundteen” got me. Is it a comment on alcoholic effect on machismo? Is it a parody or homage to some poem I have yet to discover? Is it a way to push the collection to the minimum pages required? Although I’m inclined to believe one of the former, the last possible dwells in my mind, as a poor writer with an in-the-works collection. I don’t feel like I’m a bourgeois reader. I don’t want to be a bourgie-mofo. Please, internets. Help me. You are my only hope.