Name: Clampdown (Flood Editions)
Rating: 4.31 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 9780978746797

W.B.

Author 4 books129 followers

September 20, 2010

If I had to name the contemporary poet who most reminds me of Robert Duncan, I would have no problem choosing Jennifer Moxley. In the same way that Duncan was either loved or hated for his intransigence in practicing a lyricism that was ever-mindful of poetry's traditions, ancient and otherwise, and which constantly remembered poetries of the past in a sort of diachronic collage methodology, Moxley cleaves to spirits which fostered and share her sensibility. The dead, personal and otherwise, beloved and not, hover everywhere in this book. It's probably no coincidence that one of the poems pastiches in that unforgettable Homeric image of Odysseus in the Underworld, watching his beloved dead drink that blood libation like a cat. 800 B.C. but that image strikes one as 21st-century cinematic.

This sort of over-the-shoulder reverence often leads to a sense of the sacredness of one's art, and there is that mindfulness in Moxley's writing, but this poet is slightly more cynical than Duncan even at his most acerbic (say, when he railed against wars through which he lived and which he perceived to be against freedom). And Duncan's manna of mysticism (one immediately thinks of his friendship and correspondence with like-minded H.D.) is a luxury for which Moxley's poetry sometimes admits a yearning; but ultimately she chooses self-abnegation, because her poetry abjures belief which it perceives to be delusion.

Many of the poems enact a catharsis along just such lines. Take, for example, "The Quest," which opens appropriately with the Spicerian epigraph, "The Grail is the opposite of poetry." This is a poem which mocks the vainglory of poetry itself, the idea that if human suffering and understanding can only be alembicized into great poetry, then all is well, all is redeemed: "The lie is that after years of darkness/ the exegesis of any dessicated hermit / will serve to alleviate our bewilderment." This is deadly-serious and quite funny at once. The poet has twisted poetry's notorious self-fetishizing pathos into bathos, as though it were some sort of balloon animal. She often parries poetry's admiration of itself in its funhouse mirror with something I want to call--with no aspersive intent--her dark schtick.

But that Spicerian idea (against poetry as transhuman) is still rife with irony, and Moxley knows that. Spicer kept that death-grip on the Grail all his life, even if he cursed himself for it in that memorable line and elewhere. This doesn't mean that sacredness or empathy cannot exist tenably and credibly in poetry. Moxley might turn the river through poetry's augean stables, but she still clearly believes in the ground of poetry--an empathy and love which will not desert the words. There is a suite of poems on love which employ beautiful conceits which put this reader in mind of the best Elizabethan poetry. And poetry's strange, enduring companionship is a recurrent theme in the collection.

The poet's belief in the craft of poetry (and here I'm hoping you will read craft as a pun--and think of it a life-sustaining vehicle as well, say a raft!) sustains this collection. In the opening piece, the poet writes, "It still works nicely in poetry, like / worshipping outdated gods." It seems fit this collection is dedicated to Alice Notley. It's hard to find a better model for a life dedicated to the craft than Notley.

I imagine some people will read lines such as the ones I'm quoting above and not experience them as humorous to the slightest degree. That's just a matter of sensibility. Almost everyone will admit that great poetry transcends literal interpretation--it's what is not able to be paraphrased. But in my experience, readers are often deathly-afraid of admitting great poetry transcends sensibility and emotionality as well. This may be because readers tend to feel they need to have their appreciation of a poem shared not only in degree, but in kind as well. There is a need for some sort of objective validation of one's experience of poetry--which is, of course, funnily doomed. It's funny and dead-wrong to my mind. Readers may appreciate a Frost or Dylan Thomas poem in the same affective manner. But I find it highly dubious that this is the case for the readers of, say, Gertrude Stein.

The collection is formalistically varied to a pleasant degree. Moxley's love for and hability with the long poem are in evidence again here. And the reader will encounter poems after other authors, including a few longish, long-lined poems after Schuyler--poems which put one in mind of the beautifully expatiating Schuyler of The Morning of the Poem.

This collection is well worth adding to yours. These poems are the opposite of hubris, and that in itself is a delight. The closing poem, "Where To," is particularly moving. Again, there are dark glints of humor, in that the poet can refer to the craft which she so clearly and dearly loves as "a ghastly, ghostly business." But reading poems such as these, one hopes that Moxley chooses never to give up the ghost of poetry. Even if--as the poet is so painfully aware in this collection--that ghost is a total game-player.

Clampdown

Jennifer Moxley

About the author

Jennifer Moxley

Ratings & Reviews

Friends & Following

Community Reviews

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for?