Thresherphobe

by Mark Halliday

In his sixth collection, Mark Halliday continues to seek ways of using the smart playfulness of such poets as Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch to explore life’s emotional mysteries—both dire and hilarious—from the perpetual dissolving of our past to the perpetual frustration of our cravings for ego-triumph, for sublime connection with an erotically idealized Other, and for peace of spirit. Animated by belief in the possible truths to be reached in interpersonal speech, Halliday’s voice-driven poetry wants to find insight—or at least a stay against confusion— through personality without being trapped in personality. History will leave much of what we are on the threshing floor, Halliday notes, but in the meantime we do what we can; let posterity (if any!) say we rambled truly.


Forward Prizes for Highly Commended for 'Classic Blunder' and 'Lois in the Sunny Tree'

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Mark Halliday (born 1949 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is a noted American poet, professor and critic. He is author of six collections of poetry, most recently "Thresherphobe" (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and Keep This Forever (Tupelo Press, 2008). His honors include serving as the 1994 poet in residence at The Frost Place, inclusion in several annual editions of The Best American Poetry series and of the Pushcart Prize anthology, receiving a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, and winning the 2001 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Halliday earned his B.A. (1971) and M.A. (1976) from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in English literature from Brandeis University in 1983, where he studied with poets Allen Grossman and Frank Bidart. He has taught English literature and writing at Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, Western Michigan University, Indiana University. Since 1996, he has taught at Ohio University, where, in 2012, he was awarded the rank of distinguished professor.[5] He is married to J. Allyn Rosser.

Reviews

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed, I smiled, I empathized, and I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Halliday’s poems. As one who formerly was not a fan of poetry, I can say that I would honestly recommend this book to a friend. Halliday’s poems are filled with a plethora of wit and wisdom, life and love, and humor coupled with vulnerability. His poems evoke participation and thought. In his own way, he has put into words much of the human experience. His poems cover a variety of topics. They range from portraying the sentiment of a child to depicting the nostalgia of a geriatric. His poems address the complications of life while presenting interesting personal undertones. As you read Thresherphobe Halliday’s wry personality will shine through the pages to become a beloved and endearing companion to the journeys of everyday life. His work is personable and relatable, open and sincere, humorous and inspiring. In it, he captures the ups, the downs and the in-betweens of life. In meeting Mark Halliday at a public reading, I discovered that he is every bit a poet in real life as on paper. Our brief discussion seemed similar to interactive poetry. He said that progress is not the only measure of beauty, that inspiration can come to us at any time, and that many times poems, thoughts or ideas are started on a napkin. He claimed that poetry is natural, a feeling deep down. It is something that we find within ourselves through careful searching of our own life experience.

[Tori Thurmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halliday’s conversational and humorous tone draws you in and his wisdom surprises you. This collection won’t be my last of his!

[Stewart Lindstrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that the sort of people who find themselves identifying with Holden Caulfield will enjoy this book of poems very much. Whimsical and yet deeply sad, Halliday's poems are often focused mainly on voice. Metaphor here is rare. And so his poems tend to live or die based on how well that voice carries. Some of these are excellent. Like...quite excellent. Others I find flabby to the point of almost being unreadable. Suffice it to say that Halliday is inconsistent, at least in this collection. His themes are very few, as well. Most seem to boil down to:

I am getting old and I feel useless also
I am horny for young women half my age also
no one reads my poems and this makes me
sad very sad indeed can you stand
this for 70 pages if so this book is for you

I'm being a little too cynical. There are a few here I will most certainly bookmark. But Halliday is definitely an acquired taste. He has postmodernist tendencies. Some attempt at generating Halliday poetry might be easily made by choosing descriptive passages at random from the pages of, say, Infinite Jest, and indenting them here and there. I'm serious. I think I will try this:

"That sometimes human beings have to just sit
in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become
way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize
how seldom they do. That there is such a thing
as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible
to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating
on anything is very hard work."

Wow I did it. I hope the UChicago press sees this and publishes me.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorites, from Lingo Bistro:

'High on the terrace above the latticed arbor of muscatel
one thinker bends his trimmest beard over a lavender dish
and glides by slightest motions of sensitive eyebrows
into the pond of nuance where evening grows sibilant'

I would read the poems twice: first for the language, second (ok, sometimes third) for comprehension. Almost every one was enjoyable with every (re)read.

[Jeff Tigchelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good lord, Mark Halliday just keeps getting better.
His work manages to be...fun...to read - which I so often find not to be the case with poetry. Halliday's poems are wry, honest, heartbreaking, not afraid of vulnerability...I'll say more later and quote from the book, but it's on the nightstand and I don't want to wake anyone up

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

So entertaining. Honest and vulnerable without being showy. Funny throughout. Interested in desire without being oogy.

Mark Halliday is a man of many primes. And he continues to look at what it means to have so many of them so far away.

[YL · Rating 5 out of 5]

"pathos of the momentary smile"

as mj said, just do it.