The American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review et al                                                    For other reviews, consult BookReviews.

Reviewed by Mather Schneider

 

Lately I've received in the mail copies of the journals Caketrain, The Missouri Review, The American Poetry Review, Struggle, Atlanta Review and The Sun. They're all equally banal. The American Poetry Review has a big fat photograph of Tony Hoagland on the front, right next to the bar code. I had been under the impression Tony Hoagland was a woman, although the spelling of "Tony" should have been a clue. I’m a little slow sometimes. But you should see this cheesy Kodac. Large as life, nearly, and he looks like he's been worked on by a make-up artist, and he's wearing a dark shirt over bony shoulders, with his head tilted slightly forward and to the left. He's got this smile on his skinny face that seems to say "Don't worry, I understand that your little rabbit-brains could never comprehend the totality of the universe as I know it, and it's ok, I forgive you" and he's got these pointy ears like an elf. He's balding but someone has done up what remains of his blond/brown hair in a spiky kind of way, to set off his ghostly white and bulbous forehead, which is naturally an indication of massive cerebral power. Note the purple vein wandering up the right temple like an ivy. He's pale as a mushroom and doesn't appear to suffer from the need to shave. His eyes are angel blue, crystal clear, so deep and wisdomy, so put-on, the entire face free of wrinkles, blemishes, freckles, bruises, bumps or imperfections. He makes you want to smack him, you know?

     Hoagland's poems are clever and cute, like Billy Collins except longer winded. All the poems are well written but none of them do anything unusual, all the subject matter is standard and the approaches are standard and the imagery and metaphors are standard, albeit outstandingly so, and with just enough added flare to make them seem new. Hard cheese, eh? Yawn. It's all very pretty and soothing, and even when Hoagland talks about the asshole of a dead girl it doesn't seem real. He's a real writer, no doubt about it, a real pro, he's a flit, a flounder, a fool, an insufferable effete of the status quo.

     Some of the other headlines on the cover of The American Poetry Review were: "Paul Valery: Poetry & Abstract Thought," "John Felstiner,” “The Syllables of Emily Dickinson."  Boy, howdy! I'm gonna curl up under the comforter with a cup of chamomile and let the words just whisk me away! The table of contents reads like a role call at an Elk's lodge: Hirsh, Bass, Eshleman, Ostriker, Boland, Dubie, Kaufman. Then look at the board of advisors and who do you see? Hirsh, Ashbery, Beattie, Dove, Forche, Hall, Mailer, Oates, Roth, Updike... Look at them rubbing and worming against each other, maggots in a rotting macaw. And they think they're keeping poetry alive? They're tossing shit, that's all, working the system like professional welfare cases, popping out books like crack-babies, just to get a fatter freebie every month. They prop each other up, climb on each other's backs, build their pyramids, convince each other they are doing something fresh and meaningful; but it's all just stale backwash.

     The Missouri Review: same old crap: self-important pattern-making, little webs of cleverness, forced humor posing as wit, bad stand-up comedy, irrelevant details of uninspired lives, contrived imagery, maudlin doily making. There is no flow, no human voice anywhere, no motion, no steam, no spark, only awkward sentences and paragraphs that have been revised so many times they no longer have any connection to each other, if they ever did. The writers polish and polish and polish, and then emerge like women pink and shiny from plastic surgery, expecting people not to guess it or talk about it. They are terrified of offending, wanting only to fit in and to please. And the editors are so happy, drooling contented with the same old tricks, the same old tricks perfectly done, like a tired cabaret with actors who are ignorant enough to think what they are doing is original. Then again, some people finish a jigsaw puzzle and think they've really done something special.

     The table of contents of The Missouri Review is complete with photographs, which are essential. I especially like the way 22 year old Seth Fried leans his head into his palm and looks into the camera as if to say: "Take the photograph, if you must, but hurry, for I am so very bashful! "

     And look at Terrance Hayes! He couldn't be happier with himself! Happy with everything! He looks like fashion model. Nice mohawk, bro.

     This issue of The Missouri Review features Bob Hicok. Hicok is a poet I've admired in the past, but these poems are too long and rambling. And then he tries to shock me with sex. Good luck on that. He's too smart-ass and full of himself to say anything interesting, sexual or otherwise. Nothing ever changes.

     I also got a copy of the magazine The Sun. I'm a new subscriber, a new sucker. Every fourth word in the magazine is "Zen" or "Alchemy". A real new-age bomb shelter. No wonder they rejected my poem where I made fun of the Dolly Lama. I don't think I'll ever be published in The Sun, though it is a slick magazine, and published monthly, which is something.

     Valium? What the hell is a Valium? I'm pretty ignorant, you know. I hate journals with the bar code right on the front cover. Why do they do that? Do they think it's a badge of honor, a sign that they've finally made the big time?  I always concentrate on the superficial aspects, don't I? Where's the depth? It's true, I don't like to get in over my head. I'm stuck in the baby pool. What's in this issue of Valium, anyway? Hmmmm. Hey, there's old B.Z. Niditch! I don't know if B.Z. is male or female. In fact, I don't even know how to pronounce "Niditch", though I've seen it written a thousand times. Nevertheless, let us see, on this fair day, what bounty of language has bloomed beneath the moniker:

 

METAMORPHOSES

I

connected civilizations

101 myths

in a kinetic orbit

spaced out

by time proved immemorial

is in an uneven

undotted reality
 

     I have no idea what this poem is about and have been given no reason, by the completion of the first part, to continue reading. In fact, I would be a fool to finish it. Metamorphoses? Does B.Z. think shit turns to gold just by being written down?

     Paul Muldoon is interviewed in this issue of Valium. Wow. I guess I should say something about that. Old Paul Muldoon. There's a little picture of his fat head. Where'd he get those cheeks? Is he storing acorns for the winter? His mouth's hanging open, too, real sophisticated like. Catching flies, are you Paul? His eyes are blank, blank, miles and miles behind his glasses. I read one of his poems a few years ago. It was like a dying nursery rhyme kept alive by an IV of perverted erudition. He could be ignored except for the fact that he is considered by many, and considers himself, to be a genius. Dig his false humility as he says: "I don't write these poems. I really don't." What cloud of Irish mescaline is he shamming from? Later he says "And frankly my position is that only if one accepts that notion (that poems are written through, not by, the poet) is there a possibility of anything interesting happening." How spiritual! Later he compares himself to a Shaman! The fact that he has to get all mystical and psychic about poetry betrays his con. He falsely inflates the whole idea of poetry via his circular elucidation and practiced sophistry. It's just poetry, for fuck's sake! It's not gonna make you a saint, it's not gonna change human nature, it's not gonna last forever! Even our goddamned sun's gonna burn out one day! But, the truth is, Muldoon's work is so weak it could never stand on its own without this velvet-voiced rhetoric, without this contrived additive of profundity. Without his education and his wool suit and his brogue, his work would be laughed at, as it should be.

     One question of particular insight was this one: "if you could experience what it is like to be any animal, which would you choose, and why?" Am I a total psychopath? Who cares what kind of animal Paul Muldoon wants to be? How is this possibly relevant to ANYTHING? By the way, it was a hedgehog. At one point the interviewer quotes 2 separate lines from Muldoon's poetry, to site examples of his lyrical genius, and specifically to show him being "irreverent" and "wily and mischievous." Here they are, so hang on to your hats:
 

"with a clink and a clink and a clinky-click"

"with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick."

 

Holy cats! I'm not sure which one is supposed to be "irreverent" and which one is supposed to be "wily and mischievous." Later, the genius of Paul Muldoon is summed up for us dummies like this: "It seems one of the effects of your (Muldoon's) poetry is putting the reader in the position of an awareness that is heightened, but at the same time he or she is often insecure because he or she's not quite sure what's happening." Talk about putting a spin on! These

interviewers should work in the west wing! They should be on tv! There is no original soul in Muldoon's poetry, no original music, and yet they are successfully holding him up. He makes it so easy. Do they really believe it? Does he? The poems are cold and dead, my god, he's a false prophet, can't they smell him? And now someone's claiming his poetry can heighten your awareness? It can heighten your awareness of stinko verse, maybe. Are flowers gonna smell better after reading Muldoon? Is everything gonna be Jim dandy? Will you pretty much be a Zen master after reading Muldoon? At one point the interviewer asked Muldoon, very seriously, why he sometimes used the same word to rhyme with itself. Muldoon answered with his typical genius: "Well, I don't know.”   

     As is common when prominent poets are interviewed, there are no poems to go along with the interview. We are left to assume the poet's work is at such a high premium the journal could not afford to buy it. So we are spared a little, after all.