Alien Candor: Selected Poems, 1970-1995

by Andrei Codrescu

Perhaps America has always been best perceived through alien eyes. Surrealist reporter, revolutionary speculator, partisan of poetics, intellectual provocateur. Romanian emigre Andrei Codrescu, a bedbug in his adopted land's Sleep of Reason, has ingrained his trenchant, idiosyncratic critical view, his nimble wit and sparkling ironic intelligence, into the weave of our national text. In fact it's hard to imagine the culture of the American millennium without him. Codrescu's activities as a public radio commentator (for NPR), editor (Exquisite Corpse), novelist (The Blood Countess), movie star (Road Scholar) are well documented. His poetry is undeservedly less well known. This chronological selection, edited by the poet himself, liberally culls from a body of work that includes more than a dozen hard-to-find small press poetry volumes. It's fronted by a useful autobiographical reflection, in which Codrescu sets the stage for his walking us through his years of revolution and passion in New York in the Sixties, evoking benign and exalted emanations of a liberated pleasure-dome San Francisco in the Seventies, charting darkening and deepening notes picked up later among North Coast redwood forests, and tracing the "sober rage" of more recent years of argument and reportage. The distance between the two figures of engagement, embattled critic and involved poet, Codrescu reminds us, has for him always been "My own work has had its own lyric momentum and mysterious drive that has little to do with the quarrels in question". Andrei Codrescu has always been poet first of all.

Genres: Poetry

303 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and NPR commentator. His many books include Whatever Gets You through the Night, The Postmodern Dada Guide, and The Poetry Lesson. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrei Codrescu is an essayist, a novelist, a filmmaker, a radio personality, and I'm sure I'm missing another hat or two. He's also an accomplished poet, and it is this aspect of his personality which is showcased in Alien Candor, a collection spanning twenty-five years and multiple continents. I don't read a lot of poetry, go to slams, or otherwise consider myself much of a poet (though I have occasionally committed some verse), but I do have some favorites: Richard Brautigan, T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins... and Codrescu.

Codrescu's first language is Romanian, and (like Joseph Conrad, another author who came to English later in life), this gives his poetry an unmistakable tang. He simply uses words differently. Such unexpected juxtapositions are playful, delightful, awesome, sometimes downright terrifying.

Take "Dream Dogs," for example, from page 36:

Dream Dogs

years ago it was easy to dream of wolves
and wake up your lover
to show him the blood on your hip.
the wolves had ties
and followed after every sentence
rather polite.
now there are police dogs
using tear gas and the lover next to you
doesn't wake up.

The police state that was Romania colors many of these poems, as in "Comrade Past & Mister Present" (p. 238), which notes that

"The world is louder but the policemen listen better."

At times the imagery is less fearful, more ambiguous, as in "Your Country" (p. 77):

Your Country

in the country of eight hundred different kinds
of flying machines
i put on my blue gloves.
in other countries i have
put on my red shoes.
it is only in your country
i take off everything.
it is only in your country
i empty my pockets.

And sometimes Codrescu waxes elegaic; in "Mnemogasoline" (p. 271), for example, one of the longest single works in Alien Candor, the following lines stand out:

Even the old are only myopically casual:
they too are working for love.
I am tortured by certain looks
I get in dreams from people in my past
who, not content to die and tear a hole in me,
continue staring from beyond.

These really are mere samples, ones that struck me in my first journey through Codrescu's alien candor. I don't expect that trip to be my last; these are works that reward rereading.

[Andrei Mocuţa · Rating 4 out of 5]

that's why she came over
certain of my desire to do exactly that
like a lynx not a typo
but your pen - o, glitch! - flies faster over a page
of proof than buses in this town
so when we were shot together
the embrace lasted longer than the book

[Lane Wilkinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having been a long time NPR listener, I was compelled to pick up this book of poetry, prose poems, and short stories. All told, the writing is decent. Nothing to write home about, but still better than most contemporary poetry. Codrescu, at times, becomes a little too dependent on himself as the subject and impetus for his verse; this can be frustrating if you plan on reading a few dozen poems in a single sitting. "Enough, already, Andrei! You're hungry, horny, and alienated. We get it!"

I'll recommend Alien Candor for a shelf just below eye-level and within easy reach. The book will remain in that spot for all but a few minutes a year, but those few minutes are sure to be enjoyable.