Mean

by Colette LaBouff Atkinson

In the appropriately titled Mean , Colette LaBouff Atkinson’s speakers confront a series of cruel lovers, estranged ex-husbands and ex-ex-wives, neglectful parents, disrespectful children, menacing drunks, would-be rapists, well-meaning but ineffectual teachers, and that annoying kid in first grade who wouldn’t leave you alone. Managing to “say” what most of us would only think but never dare speak out loud, this stunning debut collection reveals that the horrors and cruelty we experience in everyday life can turn out to be very real indeed. But Atkinson does not merely rake her subjects across the she deftly exposes, instead, how the world mirrors back to us our own meanness, lending it a truth and a history. In forty-three deadpan, often merciless prose poems that are masterpieces of the form, Mean lays bare the darkness within the narrator’s heart as well as in ours.   
           

"Colette Labouff Atkinson’s artful laconicism attains the force of a shout, without ever raising its voice. The intelligent, merciless narrative cool arrays a sad comedy, with an unemphatic but penetrating 'and then . . . and then': accounts of love pursued far more often than it is glimpsed or realized."—Robert Pinsky

 

 

 

 

Genres: Poetry

61 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Matthew Kowalski · Rating 2 out of 5]

For someone else this book might be just right. I danced here for a day to see in another mind a mind I do not live in and in about an hour I finished this world. It was well written the words do not drip with metaphor and sound Hemingway would be pleased.

[Peter]

The poems of Mean are not a bit nasty. Like the title poem, the book is unified in that it deals with what has been left behind. Neither has Atkinson written love poems. They are not about the beginning of love, and neither are they about its end. They speak of what remains behind in the turning of the world and what is left is small and what does not nourish.

Her poems treat of certain kind of disappointment that is otherwise mute A kind of disappointment that has no words of its own because there is so little matter to articulate. These poems are startling but not because the language is hard, or the tone is bleak. The language flows. It is smooth. And the tone is matter of fact. Even journalistic. The harshness of these poems belongs to the clear and consistent manner in which the message is delivered: Hey. Are you able to see how little you count, how utterly disposable you are, have been, and probably will be to those who have been closest to you. Can you? I can.

Reading these poems was enormously effecting and intense experience for me. I felt a great deal of compassion for the voice that spoke so clearly, without pause about everything that has passed. And said not a word about what cannot be taken and cannot be destroyed.

[Natasha · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know a poetry book is bad when it's 77 pages and the first poem starts on page 14. Each poem occupies half a page. Feels like stream of consciousness. You get nothing from each poem. Just a growing dislike about Colette Labouff Atkinson. The only 5 starred review here is from someone with the same last name.
Wait, I was mean and wrote a couple of sentences. No Rythm or thyme. Does that make me a poet?

[Lorene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intimate or not, the relationships in these poems are tightfisted and penny-pinching, that is, the poems are brisk, concise, and beautifully wrought. The speaker unabashedly gives us the details of imperfect affairs, hook-ups, liaisons, exchanges, friendships, affiliations, marriages, and kinship. Each pithy revelation by the poet seems to beget another and another, as the book effortlessly unfolds before us. Colette’s prose poems often refer to films, music, and literature as commentaries on the speaker’s state of mind, her relationship to the world, and low and high culture as the subtle or not-so-subtle gyroscope that spins/wobbles the speaker’s experience. In some instances, the poems demonstrate how much of our relationship to others is not only dictated, but also memorialized by the consumption of texts. In other words, the poet underscores how that catchy song or influential book or entertaining movie makes an indelible mark upon our lives. Her poems, too, make that mark.

[Eber Atkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

very excellent.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome. Buy it.

[Robert Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love prose poetry and will savor these little autobiographical nuggets for awhile

[Muz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found while searching stacks. Interesting concept - Poetry prose about being mean and ppl being mean to you.