Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Downer of the Day

Ok, I'm really sorry, and I know this is might sound negative and uncharitable, but this month's Poetry has some real stinkers -- like, hoo boy, some of this stuff is bad. One example:


My Weather

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD
Wakeful, sleepy, hungry, anxious,
restless, stunned, relieved.

Does a tree also?
A mountain?

A cup holds
sugar, flour, three large rabbit-breaths of air.

I hold these.


Oh for goodness sake. What is this?? I don't even want to talk about it.

That's not to say it's all bad -- Deborah Paredez and Mary Karr's stuff is really interesting (and Karr's poems are about David Foster Wallace, which Serena intuited w.o even knowing they used to date, because Serena, as I've said before, is really really smart). But for goodness sake.