Escape from Combray

by Rick Snyder

Poetry. ESCAPE FROM COMBRAY presents an intimate cycle of poems exploring the growing sense of urban ennui and dislocation affecting a generation of Americans. Snyder's poems evokes a psychogeographic landscape where quotidian symbols of the working class juxtapose with the timeless profundity of Proust, Virgil, and Dante. "Stan Brakhage writes 'The American inherently struggles to be gentle and at the same time not to be taken advantage of.' Nowhere is this notion more evident than in Rick Snyder's remarkable poems, whose sweet-bitter speakers reveal the numerous states (both territories and conditions) with which--and in which--to fall in love and take issue. I'm very glad this book is in the world"--Graham Foust.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2009

About the author

Rick Snyder is a poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of Here City (Parlor Press, 2021), Escape from Combray (Ugly Duckling, 2009) and six chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Conduit, Fence, New American Writing, Oversound, and other journals, as well as in the Poetry Society of America’s Poem-A-Day project and the syndicated column American Life in Poetry. His translations of Catullus have appeared in Circumference, jubilat, Ping Pong, and Verse Daily, and his articles on modern and contemporary poetry and translation have appeared in Jacket, Occasion, and Radical Society. He currently lives in Long Beach, CA, and is an associate teaching professor in the classics department at the University of California, Irvine.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the publisher's website, "Escape from Combray presents an intimate cycle of poems exploring the growing sense of urban ennui and dislocation affecting a generation of Americans. Snyder's poems evokes a psychogeographic landscape where quotidian symbols of the working class juxtapose with the timeless profundity of Proust, Virgil, and Dante."

On first my first read-through of this collection (it's just 75 pages, and easy enough to read on the train to work and the train home), it was the quotidian landscape of the poems I liked best, the convenience stores and sidewalks, Chicago weather, the sun in winter "setting fast/as if it too were cold," as Snyder puts it in "Decoy" (52). I like the poetic persona here: someone who stays up late reading Dante (in "The World Below"), who notices words and signs: signs for cold beer in Spanish and Polish, or a sign looking for temps "a las 4:30/en la fucking manana" (61), and who captures the image of an empty store at closing time (in "How Are You Doing") with the images of "a bin of flip-flops/and Tasmanian Devil/baseball caps," "freshly-mopped floors/and fluorescent lights" (16).

But on a second reading, I liked the literariness, too, which comes with a certain amount of wryness and play: like when, in "Postpoem" (it might be an ominous sign for that to be the name of the first piece in a collection, but it works), Snyder talks about a "periphrasis so elaborate/that even Virgil gets a little cross,/though he won't show it, or wear it" (9).

One of my favorites, both times through, was "Erasmus," which you can read here, on John Latta's blog (and while you're there, read the letter immediately after it, plus the passage from Preserved Smith's Erasmus that follows it.

[pozharvgolovu · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is summarised with the following quotation: Reading onward/into the underworld,/where no matter how dark/it gets, I can still hear/the train rattle/to Logan Square,/think about someone/who hasn't called,/and I know I'm going/to be tired/tomorrow.

I think the poem belongs to the kind of texts that need the intervention of geographic knowledge. In that sense, it needs an active reader, a kind of poetry which needs to be explored a bit more by critics.

[Sav · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been so much nicer as a personal essay or memoir. The poems with images I liked lacked real poetic presentation, and the more artistic pieces described generic images that were pleasant, but did not seem significant.

[Sally Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

First rate collection! I've had this book out of the library since the summer, (no kidding). Glad I hung on to it. Snyder has some of the immediacy and personality of a poet like Collins, but I found his poetical sensibility even sweeter. Highly recommended.