When: Poems

by Baron Wormser, Alice Fulton (Foreword)

Selected by Alice Fulton as the Winner of the 1996 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Shara Azad]

If I had to think up examples of contemporary American poetry for a random stranger I met on a train in some other country, I would probably refer that person to "When." Published in 1996, "When" is different from Wormser's early work in that it seems less clear if the speaker is Wormser in every poem. Instead, the poems are tied together by a sense of "American-ness" or the fact that the setting is seemingly America, but it is America at different times in history and through different eyes, ranging from a college aged-girl riding a bus to an ant to an old man waiting to die in a hospital. Wormser transitions through these various voices with ease, demonstrating his versatility as a poet and also a deep sense of empathy as he effectively touches upon very serious emotive topics that he could not possibly have experienced himself. The narrative quality of this book of poetry (though each piece is a different narrative) perhaps enables Wormser to do this so well.
The narrative form of "When" lends itself to humor, but in a different way from Wormser's previous work. Through character (usually the speaker), he is able to set up humorous situations, and the wry tone comes through then, although the sentences are not as simple as they were in "The White Words." Additionally, due to his attempt to adapt many distinct voices in this book, some of the speakers call for more serious tones just based off the situation Wormser is trying to portray (i.e. a prisoner at a concentration camp). Therefore, I would say that humor is not a unifying theme in this work, which seems less characteristic of Wormser's style, more so than a depiction of the range of the many voices he can undertake. For this reason, some of the pieces feel slightly forced, but then the narrative element pulls through to mask this to some extent.