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Common Carnage
Taking a different tack than John Keats in 'Ode to a Nightingale, ' Stephen Dobyns joins sixty-nine poems in Common Carnage, his ninth book of poetry, in order to address the conundrum 'How hard to love the world; we must love the world.' The spiritual intermixed with the bawdy, the courageous with the cowardly, the kindly with the cruel - Common Carnage rejects the decorous and decorative to map the complexity, the common carnage of our lives as it seeks to understand our nature.
127 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1996
579 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Dobyns
82 books206 followersDobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.
He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.
In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.
He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.
In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 7, 2012
There are some really great poetic moments in this collection (Winter Nights, "Li'l Darlin'", "Lullaby"...) and many good moments as well.
I have basically two major problems with this collection:
1.) It is really uneven. Some pieces feel very strong and some feel very weak. While there is a thread running through about Achilles, it feels a bit tacked on, honestly.
2.) The poems in this collection that are directly about the big questions of human life unfortunately come across sounding less like truly deep thoughts and more like "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy."
Honestly, #2 is something I am finding true of much late 80's and early 90's American poetry I read recently versus later American poetry. I think there was a major shift there, but I know personally that there are poets writing at this time that were far beyond what this book offered. Just a thought I'm throwing out there based on some of my recent reading.
I have basically two major problems with this collection:
1.) It is really uneven. Some pieces feel very strong and some feel very weak. While there is a thread running through about Achilles, it feels a bit tacked on, honestly.
2.) The poems in this collection that are directly about the big questions of human life unfortunately come across sounding less like truly deep thoughts and more like "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy."
Honestly, #2 is something I am finding true of much late 80's and early 90's American poetry I read recently versus later American poetry. I think there was a major shift there, but I know personally that there are poets writing at this time that were far beyond what this book offered. Just a thought I'm throwing out there based on some of my recent reading.
May 8, 2020
Stephen Dobyns is an original thinker and an inventive wordsmith. Read him and see the world differently.
From "Odysseus Discusses Achilles":
Death embraces his whole self and Achilles
simpers, flirts, attempt to seduce it.
All else he loves is less than this love.
Do you see why many hate him? He has
gone past the human. He calls it godlike.
Is that what it means to be a monster?
He is without moderation. As for us,
where would we be without our dream
of a homeland, of friends who love us?
Those dreams are the citadel which
we may not surrender. To give them up
isn't that to forfeit our very souls,
as Achilles has lost his soul? What is
as sense of limit but a sense of love?
From "The Invitations Overhead":
Although he knows the geese's honkings are only
crude warnings and greetings, the man also
imagines they tell the histories of the people
they travel over, their loneliness, the lives
of those who can't change their places, who
each year grow more isolated and desperate.
Is this what quickens his breathing when at night
the distant honking seems mixed with the light
of distant stars? Follow us, follow us, they call,
as if life could be made better by departure,
or if he were still young enough to think it so.
From "Rattletrap":
After all, what made him mortal also made him whine.
His complaints became his single favorite subject
and were he to receive the gift of immortality
he would be rendered speechless, since without
Death why should he open his trap? Perhaps that's
why any of us talk. If Sleep is the twin brother
of Death, isn't Silence at least a first cousin?
Consequently we jab, not to communicate, but
to keep the motor running.
From "Golden Broilers":
What is this itch
to invoke valuation, to seek out verdicts?
The critic, the bureaucrat, the insecure
all crave a pointer with which to cause rupture.
This is lovely, this ugly. This moral, this bad.
To carve the world into a patchwork of value,
then pass laws to keep it like that. To create
a yardstick that swaps one's subjective groping
for objective truth.
From "Odysseus Discusses Achilles":
Death embraces his whole self and Achilles
simpers, flirts, attempt to seduce it.
All else he loves is less than this love.
Do you see why many hate him? He has
gone past the human. He calls it godlike.
Is that what it means to be a monster?
He is without moderation. As for us,
where would we be without our dream
of a homeland, of friends who love us?
Those dreams are the citadel which
we may not surrender. To give them up
isn't that to forfeit our very souls,
as Achilles has lost his soul? What is
as sense of limit but a sense of love?
From "The Invitations Overhead":
Although he knows the geese's honkings are only
crude warnings and greetings, the man also
imagines they tell the histories of the people
they travel over, their loneliness, the lives
of those who can't change their places, who
each year grow more isolated and desperate.
Is this what quickens his breathing when at night
the distant honking seems mixed with the light
of distant stars? Follow us, follow us, they call,
as if life could be made better by departure,
or if he were still young enough to think it so.
From "Rattletrap":
After all, what made him mortal also made him whine.
His complaints became his single favorite subject
and were he to receive the gift of immortality
he would be rendered speechless, since without
Death why should he open his trap? Perhaps that's
why any of us talk. If Sleep is the twin brother
of Death, isn't Silence at least a first cousin?
Consequently we jab, not to communicate, but
to keep the motor running.
From "Golden Broilers":
What is this itch
to invoke valuation, to seek out verdicts?
The critic, the bureaucrat, the insecure
all crave a pointer with which to cause rupture.
This is lovely, this ugly. This moral, this bad.
To carve the world into a patchwork of value,
then pass laws to keep it like that. To create
a yardstick that swaps one's subjective groping
for objective truth.
October 29, 2015
I picked up this volume of poetry on a whim in a second hand bookshop in Whitby. I've no idea why apart from the fact that it looked unread and the cover was pretty. I was very pleased that I did pick it up as it introduced me to an American poet of whom I had never heard, let alone read.
Dobyns' poetry combines both wit and pathos. The volume begins with pre-birth (the souls of the unborn clustering around waiting for their bodies) and takes us through to death and the unresolved question of eternity. In between are a variety of poems exploring the figures of the Iliad, most notably Hector as well as pieces about art, jazz and the world. The writing is not always consistent but most of the poetry does what good poetry always should: it makes us look at ourselves and our world in a different way, giving us pause for thought.
Dobyns' poetry combines both wit and pathos. The volume begins with pre-birth (the souls of the unborn clustering around waiting for their bodies) and takes us through to death and the unresolved question of eternity. In between are a variety of poems exploring the figures of the Iliad, most notably Hector as well as pieces about art, jazz and the world. The writing is not always consistent but most of the poetry does what good poetry always should: it makes us look at ourselves and our world in a different way, giving us pause for thought.
April 27, 2023
There were too many poems that felt ineffectual. For example, in an earlier poem titled "The World As Textbook," the second stanza ends with this dud: "To forget the world is to become its victim." Maybe this aphorism is a red herring because of its cheapness, but he does this in other poems too. e.g. In "Indifference to Consequence," "Humility means no pushing and shoving,/ to accept a place with all that lives." Again, maybe I'm missing the satire, but I don't want to see that trick played out on every other page. Another trope that I didn't like was the use of sex. This is just me: I don't find post-coital relief to be a poignant moment for enlightenment.
My favorites:
- "Trying Not To Be Cynical"
- "Best in the Business"
- "Fade Out"
- "Rattletrap"
- "When a Friend"
- "His Decision"
My favorites:
- "Trying Not To Be Cynical"
- "Best in the Business"
- "Fade Out"
- "Rattletrap"
- "When a Friend"
- "His Decision"
April 18, 2012
A current running through the text is the destiny/shape/worth/effects of the soul. Although I didn't much appreciate this particular question as a motif, the poems themselves were original and fresh with wise ironies. Particularly, the series on Homeric allegory and the Lullaby he strangely dedicates to Stephen King were great.
March 24, 2009
a gift from my poet sister. she was looking for "guy" poetry. i shared it with friends, left it at my drawing table in studio; everyone seemed to enjoy it.
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March 17, 2011Stephen King recommended.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews