Dear Editor: Poems

by Amy Newman

Each prose poem in this extraordinary volume is an impassioned letter to a nameless editor from a poet seeking publication for her collection about chess, sainthood, and the poet's lonely childhood. Taken individually, the poems display a dazzling originality; together, they form an exquisite exploration of memory and longing.
Publishers In her fourth collection, Newman mines the awkwardness of composing cover letters for submitting creative writing for publication and the inevitable anxiety of the wait that follows, weaving them into ruminations on youth, memory, and religious belief that double as commentary on poetry and process. Almost every poem takes the form of a letter to an anonymous, perhaps godly, editor, describing her "manuscript," X=Pawn Capture, purportedly a "lyrical study of chess" and its effect on her family. The letters quickly digress into recollections of how the speaker's grandparents, who raised her, evaded their own emotional responsibilities--grandfather through chess and grandmother through devotion to Catholic martyrs--interspersed with scenes from a socially stunted adolescence. Beauty, time, and displacement of desire are recurrent themes, buoyed by playful and baroque descriptions reminiscent of Lisa "Because it is not our privilege to understand the world, which is shown to us in such irritating dimensions and swatches, like the scratchy tweeds I would have preferred to the wrinkled handkerchiefs of my upbringing." The epistolary form retains its ability to surprise, perhaps because it feels like Newman's speaker is in a trance from which she suddenly snaps to, realizing that she is in the midst of composition. This is a complex, nuanced, and stimulating work.
Newman's prose poems--a series of letters to an editor regarding a book manuscript--at first glance seem a little too precious. But she quickly defies that expectation with this haunting and evocative collection, her fourth. The title of the manuscript, described as a "lyrical study of chess," X = Pawn Capture, seems to pose the question, What does this symbol mean? With this query at the very heart of the book, Newman goes on to ask, How can the imagery and tropes of saints, chess, and letters to the editor accurately, or at the very least adequately, capture the essence of an experience? Like the poet's letters, this question goes unanswered, and Newman is left trying to ritualistically fill in the gaps with as many explanations and metaphors as possible. At the same time, she acknowledges that the most poetic part of poetry is the space between metaphors and images. And it is in those gaps that the reader finds enough hints to discern the shadowy beauty and pain just barely out of reach. A surprising and delightful collection. -- Sarah Hunter

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2011

Reviews

[Diann Blakely]

Before DEAR EDITOR appeared in the world, it was a truth universally acknowledged that no further poetry collections could succeed, much less equal, Lucie Brock-Broido’s THE MASTER LETTERS, but Newman has pulled off an well-nigh impossible feat: she adheres far more strictly to epistolary decorum, but what bleeds through the lines is a universal human pulse, veins opening in the form of words; or, to put things a different way, Newman’s voice has its locus in the deepest parts of the self, representing its call, clamor, and cry. “Please recognize my existence,” comes through the story of the battling grandparents and references to chess and saints, “recognize my singularity, my poems, and the wounds from which they originated.”

Not that “Amy Newman” ever asks for pity. She wants only what the rest of us do: to be hear, to be understood, and somehow loved for who she is. A Bob Dylan song would have seemed out of place in Dear Editor’s particular soundtrack, but four lines from “Maggie’s Farm” often ran through my mind as I was reading: “I try my best / To be just like I am / But everybody wants you / To be just like them.”

While the word may never hear or understand the poems by "Amy Newman" in this book, she refuses to accommodate or change herself--no such option exists. And herein lies DEAR EDITOR's bravery: the threat of rejection is imminent and constant, just as in life, and creating a near-allegory of the enormous, even dangerous, vulnerability to which we subject ourselves when approaching a new Other is part of what I can only call the collection's wholly unique, wholly original genius.

For a terrific pair of items on DEAR EDITOR, including a chat with Newman herself, see http://therumpus.net/2012/01/the-rump... and you'll be able to understand why editor Brian Spears chose the book for the December selection of the RUMPUS's poetry book of the month club (http://therumpus.net/2011/12/why-i-ch...). I found his surprise to be not unlike my own: "How did she pull this off?"

While I look forward to re-reading DEAR EDITOR, I take equal pleasure in anticipating the completion of newest project, ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN POETRY HISTORY. Some poems have already appeared in the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, with a particularly stellar commentary by Lisa Russ Spaar (http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm...), the MISSOURI REVIEW (http://www.missourireview.com/archive..., and http://www.missourireview.com/archive...), and, once again, the RUMPUS ((http://therumpus.net/2012/04/national....)

Of particular interest is a reading/talk Newman gave to her local branch of NPR: the voice that reads three poems from DEAR EDITOR is more confident and forceful than I would have thought. She speaks of the saints throughout the book as emblems of her detestation of "bullying"; what Newman doesn't say is obvious to any reader of DEAR EDITOR should know to be true: the defilement, interrogation, and deaths of female saints was perpetrated by men, one of whom also assumes--in my mind, at least--the role of the eponymous editor. And the word "submission"! I have many reasons to be grateful for my time as the late William Matthews's student and friend, one of the most important was his emphatic declaration that this wasn't a word that poets should ever use in such circumstances. "Use 'offer' instead." Matthews, as always, was right: I have known many editors whose chief characteristic was reveling in the ultimately tiny amount of power they wield, and I tried never to be like them during my twelve-year stint as a poetry editor at ANTIOCH REVIEW, but to this day, I "offer" my poems to any editor, dear or not.

[V.S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best books i've ever read. i'll leave it at that & let everyone else explore it for themselves

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy Newman's Dear Editor is a collection of prose poems written in the form of submission letters promoting a manuscript she calls X = Pawn Capture. Referrals to chess, saints, and family members are used to carry the emotional weight of each of the poems. They begin as quite simple offerings but increase in complexity near the end as Newman's reflections on memory and a sense of loss become more apparent. I suppose chess is a metaphor for life. Newman plainly states the litany of saints is not. They serve no purpose except to be brought forward to use if we like, like her grandfather's cigars. Or you can throw them into the ash heap outside where her grandmother is burning the letters. They're beautifully written things, these poems. Their repetitive knells build and build in the mind until they've accumulated considerable power. They're rhapsodic, ecstatic, and totally unforgettable.

[Jeannine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book as the construct is terrific - a series of letters to publishers asking them to publish her fictional poetry book, "X=Pawn Capture," which, meta-liciously, she describes so fully in the book that we get a wonderful sense of her family history, her mental connections between chess and martyrs, and her inner insecurities as a writer. I laughed out loud a couple of times, and since my father was a huge chess maniac and taught me some of the main moves of chess as a little girl and had me play against a robot - true story - I very much identified with Amy's meta-story about her grandfather teaching her chess playing techniques while remaining emotionally unavailable, as her grandmother cooked and told her gruesome stories of Catholic saints and the "old country." Anyway, it's a terrific book, funny without being overly light or flippant, and something that any poet who has sent out book manuscript after book manuscript will identify with, including the quasi-religious language of submission to publishers and the writer's always plaintive queries.

[Sami · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely book of prose poems, part memoir, meditative and often funny. Over the month or so it's been on my bedside table, it's sort of quietly taken root and evolved there: while I was reading it, I thought that what I was really reading was one long poem, despite its being organized as many small ones (They are all presented as a series of submissions to an editor.) I wondered whether the individual segments - as I was thinking of them then - could stand alone as poems. Now I've finished it and am familiar with the whole, when I pick it up, I feel the individual poems asking to be read in their own right and found that, in their subtle differences in mood, they bear separation very well. It's been as pleasurable and rewarding in a whole other way but I think I needed to read the volume in its entirety before I could get to that. Anyway, in this way it has evolved and gained a curious and companionable personality, highly readable, highly dippable, sitting there beside my bed.

[Mark Stratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning collection of prose poems. I cannot explain or find words to express how much I enjoyed this collection. Simply wonderful.

[Liam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a humorous book to read. I read it on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Each poem is set up as if it's a letter to the Editor. Great idea!

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the best prose-poems I've ever read.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I didn't connect with the poems, the structure of this book is fresh and inspired.

[Vincenzo Balistreri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a brilliant journey through understanding relationship, masterful.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

( 4 stars )

really beautiful read, recommended to me by a poet i love and had the chance to meet.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of prose poems, all of them in the form of cover letters to an editor who might publish them-- most of them open in the same way, introducing the manuscript project the poems are taken from (a book of poems about chess, called something like X= Pawn Capture), the poems then proceed to offer a lyrical biographical vignette, capturing the speaker/ Newman in her childhood, caught in bonds between her grandmother and -father.

It's a moving book, and the more poems I read, the more I liked it-- part of me wants to say it's more than the sum of its parts, better as a book than any individual poem, and another more cynical side says that's just another way of saying not all the poems are as good as the best poems, which is probably also true-- some of them seemed a little flat, like there was something schematic being worked out here, clearing poetic brush around the twin concerns of chess and saints lives, to prepare us for a better poem to come. Whatever the ultimate truth, I did find the sweep convincing, especially when we more fully understand the identity of the editor being addressed in the last suite of poems, and the way the work at the end payed off the investment of the earlier poems-- I felt it really did pay off, and I like it a good deal.

Lots of intriguing poems here, but it's hard to pull them out of the context where they live, to make them stand on their own-- they all become examples of what the book is doing, instead of really excellent versions of what the book is doing. Odd, that.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite poetry books of all time. Written as a series of prose poems, through the medium of letters to a journal editor Newman uses a game of chess to explore the dynamics and relationships within a family. Brilliant, clever and inspiring.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting little book. It's a series of prose poems addressed to editors, asking them to publish the speaker's poems. I find it more interesting as a concept than as poetry per se.

[Zack]

fun book.