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Foiled Again: Poems
The seventh winner of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize is J. Allyn Rosser's Foiled Again. Ms. Rosser's third poetry collection contains poems of startling range and depth, with formal poems-traditional, hybrid, and nonce-and just as many shaped by the loopy trajectory of their associative momentum. At the heart of Rosser's work is a kind of crazed optimism-a quixotic, wryly cheerful pilgrimage through the maze of bafflement, loneliness, and love that constitutes our experience.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published September 27, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 13, 2016
Despite their at-first pedestrian settings and banal themes (domesticity, parenting, once-loves, a playground, etc), Rosser's poems are stirred by something darker and funnier that you never realized underpinned contemporary existence but which you're not surprised to find actually do. She has a particular penchant for bemoaning and ridiculing, without seeming to, many of our staid social mores, going so far as to anthropomorphize basic concepts, (the Q&A, Muse and Truth) which might sound silly or even trite, but which her versing, versus all, makes wonderful.
August 14, 2013
Clever.
May 23, 2020
[ . . . ] We adore insincerity
as long as it's piked on thick enough
not to question our cultivated jadedness
while sipping at the martini of its hyperbole.
as long as it's piked on thick enough
not to question our cultivated jadedness
while sipping at the martini of its hyperbole.
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January 29, 2014I have this little, private collection of poems, about 75 or so. They are poems that I keep going back to because I keep getting pleasure from them, often pleasure that I can't quite figure out. They have a special beauty that I want to be near to for another time. I don't claim that these poems are the best poems you'll find anywhere, but they are there to somehow make my life a little better, somehow. Two of my special poems are by J. Allyn Rosser. One of them, "The Smell of Rat Rubs Off," is in "Misery Prefigured."
"Smell" is a sonnet, not quite Elizabethan and not quite Italian, so just the sound of it, the music, is a tad different from what you expect. The melody throws you a little off balance. The poem's narrator is a woman, who is attracted to a man, who can make her dance like a puppet. He arrives when he wants to, and leaves when he's ready. It begins, "Once again you've fallen for the lure ...."
There's no escape for her. She knows he's a rat "slinking from the pantry of the righteous." He's shrewd, soulless, clever and without mercy. Lord does she know it, and she knows his every trick, and she falls for each one every time. He doesn't leave "A single, high-aimed compliment unturned." This guy knows what to say, knows that she doesn't believe it, and knows that what he says works like magic every time, and they both know that she knows.
She's helpless, like a paralyzed insect, poisoned by a spider, waiting to be consumed by her offspring. This guy treats her as though she has somehow been hurt and only wants to help "when he's the secret you're bereft,/embracing you with his Houdini hold...." Get that, "Houdini," Harry Houdini, the escape artist.
When all is said, she can only take shallow satisfaction in her certainty that she stands on the moral high ground.
"You'd think by now you'd learned to be consoled
To know the soul he"s sold is not yours but his,"
BUT
"though where yours was a hollow feeling is."
"Rat" is a personal favorite, but Rosser's microscopic dissections of human relationships, her unerring command of the power of the language and her ever-naked heart have produced poetry that never leaves this reader unmoved.
"Smell" is a sonnet, not quite Elizabethan and not quite Italian, so just the sound of it, the music, is a tad different from what you expect. The melody throws you a little off balance. The poem's narrator is a woman, who is attracted to a man, who can make her dance like a puppet. He arrives when he wants to, and leaves when he's ready. It begins, "Once again you've fallen for the lure ...."
There's no escape for her. She knows he's a rat "slinking from the pantry of the righteous." He's shrewd, soulless, clever and without mercy. Lord does she know it, and she knows his every trick, and she falls for each one every time. He doesn't leave "A single, high-aimed compliment unturned." This guy knows what to say, knows that she doesn't believe it, and knows that what he says works like magic every time, and they both know that she knows.
She's helpless, like a paralyzed insect, poisoned by a spider, waiting to be consumed by her offspring. This guy treats her as though she has somehow been hurt and only wants to help "when he's the secret you're bereft,/embracing you with his Houdini hold...." Get that, "Houdini," Harry Houdini, the escape artist.
When all is said, she can only take shallow satisfaction in her certainty that she stands on the moral high ground.
"You'd think by now you'd learned to be consoled
To know the soul he"s sold is not yours but his,"
BUT
"though where yours was a hollow feeling is."
"Rat" is a personal favorite, but Rosser's microscopic dissections of human relationships, her unerring command of the power of the language and her ever-naked heart have produced poetry that never leaves this reader unmoved.
May 28, 2012
I was able to participate in a workshop with J. Allyn Rosser in which I learned quite a bit about writing modern poetry. I must say, her poetry is much, much better when read aloud by the author rather than just reading it.
I had a hard time initially connecting with her poetry because I felt it was a little over descriptive and sometimes a little too wrong. But I love the storytelling aspect in her poetry. My favorite poem was definitely China Map because of the interesting story she creates in it.
Rosser is a good poet, but, for my own personal taste, I felt like her poems were a little too long in some places.
I had a hard time initially connecting with her poetry because I felt it was a little over descriptive and sometimes a little too wrong. But I love the storytelling aspect in her poetry. My favorite poem was definitely China Map because of the interesting story she creates in it.
Rosser is a good poet, but, for my own personal taste, I felt like her poems were a little too long in some places.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews