The Sore Throat and Other Poems

by Aaron Kunin

"How about someone from another planet?"—Peter Gizzi

"This would make a great chorus for 'Nosferatu.'"—Marjorie Welish

"It's the real thing."—Keith Waldrop

Combining formal procedure with a kind of automatic writing, The Sore Throat produces poems of unlikely, and heightened, sensitivity to nuances of feeling.

Genres: Poetry

126 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

7 STARS, IMAGINE I CAN GIVE THIS 7 STARS INSTEAD OF ONLY 5! Here's an amazing sample poem:

GO TO THIS LINK AND LISTEN TO THE SORE THROAT, IT'S AMAZING: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/...

And here's another of my favorite (a DIFFERENT poem in the book called THE SORE THROAT, there are actually eight DIFFERENT poems in the book titled THE SORE THROAT):


THE SORE THROAT

I'm inventing a machine
for concealing my desire.
And I'm inventing another
machine for concealing the
machine. It's a two-machine
system, and it sounded like
laughter. And I'm inventing
a machine for concealing
the sound. You, to me: "Why are
you concealing the beauty
of your machine?" Every machine
has more beauty than the last,
for everything whose purpose
is to conceal seems to change,
in the end, into a sign
of what it's concealing. And
now the sound that once sounded
like laughter is so loud that
it seems more like sobbing or
laughter concealing sobbing.
All my inventing is a
complete disaster. It's not
concealing my desire, it's
talking about my desire
to conceal my desire, like
a voice on a message machine
that would say: "Hello. About
desire, I'd like to say a
word or two. It's not your eyes,
it's not the word you say, it's
not your complaining voice that
I desire. All I desire
is your applause." It's hard not
to hear what the message is
saying, also it's hard to
keep myself from inventing
another machine to keep
from hearing it. So invent
a machine for disinventing.
This will be the last machine
I ever invent, and its
purpose will just be to change
every machine into shit.
No more inventing (for me).

--What a shame. It once was a
wonder of a machine; now
it's more like a disaster.

--I think he left a message...

--You're wrong: he just left a mess.

-------------------------------------------------
Aaron Kunin is a visionary with expert skills for conveying the worrisome wrong we've done to one another in this world, the wrong that continues, seemingly without end THIS WRONG. He's brilliant, truly brilliant. Everything he writes is remarkable. I look forward to everything he writes, and he's unlike any other reader of their poems, you have to hear him to believe him. Listen to that link at PENNSOUND.

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sore Throat by Aaron Kunin, poetry
I'm not sure how old Aaron Kunin is, but even if I hadn't seen his author photo, I'd have guessed he was youngish...there's something about the words in this collection that feel youthful. I'm guessing he's a bit of a punk. Maybe the kid in the back row of the classroom, making smart remarks behind the teacher's back?


In any case, The Sore Throat has been an intriguing read. He analyzes words in a way that twists them inside out, and the repetition of some words makes you look at them differently. The same word can be read differently, and I'm not just talking about synonyms. It's a feel of directness, and the collection almost feels like an accusation...there doesn't seem to be a divide between poet and reader.

For example, in "No Word, No Sign", he toys with what is a word.

everything I once was sure of seems wrong;
for what you do to my way of seeing,
so that I start to doubt my own eyes if
what my eyes report isn't just like what

I hear you say; and for what you do to
my voice to keep it from talking, to keep down
every word somewhere where I can't remember
it: for this, there's no word. To me

you're like a machine without a purpose,
whose purpose is to cast doubt on every
idea that my mind is thinking, and
the end of every idea is you.

You, to me, are a kind of fault in the
mind, a complete system of bad habits,
a video that I keep seeing or a word

I keep saying (do I have a choice?), and

this word has no meaning, and anyway
it's not a word, for there's no
word that contains what you are....

There's an ambiguity here that feels like this could be a romantic poem or one filled with hate. What "word" defines it as such?

In "For Pleasure", a similar ambiguity or disconnectedness is felt...is he commiserating or insulting?

"Sigh no more," moron, sigh no more!
Let laughter have voice, for a change;
Let there be pleasure, let there be goodness;
Be kind, be kind, and be knowing!

Let like keep with like, and no more
Weeping; let rats dance with rats and
Not be sorry; let laughter last
Longer than weeping.

Rain Taxi magazine (Vol.15, No.3) had a review by Sumita Chakraborty that explained that Kunin uses only about 200 words in the entire collection, and that some of this is a nod to Ezra Pound. I'm not familiar enough with Pound to have caught on to that, but I did notice the limited use of words and the repetition. Maybe it's more an allusion to Mies van der Rohe, "Less is more." I don't think it ever translates as cramped; Kunin feels very comfortable within his own confines. And the lack of the expansive verbosity that appears in some poetry makes this collection almost pop in it's brevity and forthrightness. This is an intricate collection that is bold and unhesitant.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Kunin's writing, and the best way to approach it is to see and hear it. But you should know this, from his intro:
"I really believe that the part of yourself that you're most ashamed of is interesting and can be used as material for art."

In the same intro, he admits to having an "obsessive sensitivity to nuances of feeling".

He does good with it.

I was going to type up the same poem C.A. Conrad did, but you can already see that, so here are some other excerpts:

How will the machine remember us
When we have left it? And then,



To change one word into you-know-what
To change the soul into a machine
Of yourself, and rats into rats
Of the mind



When god would not let you have
So much as a damn.
- Right.
But don't.




It's a pleasure to be on the earth in the age of talking rats.




I wish I
had a machine that would say what to do.




Your dick in my ass, music, and I don't like, but I desire it.





To have a mind that only
seems to doubt all that it would like to think.





YOUR MONEY'S NO GOOD IN HERE
it's all about that "in". that's the exemplary action of Kunin





Disaster: he left a mess.
Music: why don't you just say you were wrong?
Too much beauty: conceal beauty.
Too much talking: no pleasure in talking.
Too much shit: change to shame.
Incomplete word: conceal hole in word





A BUSINESS IDEA
invent a machine
to can laughter




She envisions the hand-alphabet as a secret that she and her friend could share. Her friend, however, shows no interest. She then turns her hand-alphabet into a secret that excludes him by teaching it to another friend. Now he starts to get interested. he imagines that everyone around him is sending messages he can't intercept. Calculated to disturb him, their smiles disturb him. Unable to read the hand-alphabet, he imagines that every gesture is part of a language.





"The canto in Book II of The Faerie Queen where Hellenore's husband becomes, uh…" "Jealousy?" "The only instance in the poem of a character actually losing substance and becoming an allegorical figure." "The idea that certain emotions make you less human, less interesting, or simply less complex: you become a type."

[Anne]

Still constrained--I think Kunin has a thing for tying own hands. The Sore Throat was much more fun to read--I enjoyed the humor of many of the poems.