Category Archives: Reviews

I Owe One to Robert Eggleton

Earlier this year I was contacted by first-time novelist Robert Eggleton, asking if I would review his forthcoming e-book.  If people knew how many requests of this kind editors get, they would understand that out of self-preservation we sometimes… well, I ignored the request.

Robert tried again.  There was something in the tone of his e-mail: this mattered to him.  So I said yes, I’d take a look, though I didn’t think we could review Rarity From the Hollow.  This is all fogged somewhat in memory:  in the months since then our magazine moved its office, I was hospitalized for a cat bite (yes, they’re dangerous), we’ve published two issues, read hundreds of manuscripts, I went to Africa, etc., etc.  But as I recall, Robert sent me the first chapter, which begins with two impoverished schoolgirls (from the Hollow of the title) studying together and spelling the word for a sex toy.  It was quirky, profane, disturbing.  I said I’d look at the book, not entirely sure what I could do to help. 

He sent me the whole thing by e-mail.  I read portions of the book, which is subtitled “A Lacy Dawn Adventure,” after the girl protagonist, Lacy Dawn. I liked Lacy Dawn, who lives in a world of poverty, classmates with precocious sexual knowledge and/or experience, unemployed men, worn-down women, and cruelty so casual that it’s more knee-jerk than intentional. Maybe I was just too bothered by the content, but at a certain point I knew I couldn’t do anything.  My time was nonexistent. 

So I deleted the book from my desktop.

Robert contacted me again, and I got soft.  You see, there was something about the whole project in general.  Robert is a social worker who has spent at least a portion of his career working with child-abuse victims in Appalachia.  The book was partly about that, and mostly very strange. In the Hollow, Lacy takes up with an android named DotCom, from “out of state,” which really means off of this planet.  Under DotCom’s wing, she decides that she will “save” her family.  Little does she know she will end up saving the universe. The subject was not exactly run-of-the-mill. And Robert was donating the proceeds from sales of the e-book to help child-abuse victims. 

Robert is not a kid; he’s maybe my age, maybe older.  What was at stake wasn’t youthful ambition, vanity or reputation.  This was about some kind of personal calling.  I believe in those.  I also believe in people who are driven to get their writing out there to an audience, through whatever venue.  The e-book idea intrigued me.  The earnestness of the appeal got to me.  Send the book again, I said.  He did.  It’s still on my hard drive. (I suppose I should delete it, since I haven’t paid for it.)

Robert kept after me.  If I liked it, could I write a blurb?  Yeah, of course.  I was fund-raising for my African trip (a Habitat for Humanity build), teaching, editing, raising three kids.  But who is not busy and overwhelmed?  We set our own priorities.  I put Robert, and his book, lower than some other things, which really wasn’t fair because I had said I would do something, and I didn’t.

And it has bothered me.  Here’s another thing people don’t know about editors.  They sometimes have consciences about books/stories/poems/whatever that they’ve allowed to slip through the cracks, to get lost or neglected in the shuffle of what amounts to thousands of pages. 

So I’m belatedly giving Rarity From the Hollow a plug.  Among its strengths are an ultra-convincing depiction of the lives, especially the inner lives, of the Appalachian characters.  The grim details of their existence are delivered with such flat understatement that at times they almost become comic.  And just when you think enough is enough, this world is too plain ugly, Lacy Dawn’s father (who is being “fixed” with DotCom’s help) gets a job and Lacy Dawn, her mother and her dog take off for a trip to the mall “out of state” with Lacy Dawn’s android friend, now her “fiancé” (though as Lacy Dawn’s mother points out, he doesn’t have any private parts, not even “a bump.”)  In the space of a few lines we go from gritty realism to pure sci-fi/fantasy.  It’s quite a trip.

Rarity is published by FatCat Press, which has other e-books for sale as well.  You can find it here. The blurb on the website says, in part:

Lacy Dawn is a true daughter of Appalachia, and then some. She lives in a hollow with her mom, her Vietnam Vet dad, and her mutt Brownie, a dog who’s very skilled at laying fiber-optic cable. Lacy Dawn’s android boyfriend, DotCom, has come to the hollow with a mission. His equipment includes infomercial videos of Earth’s earliest proto-humans from millennia ago. DotCom has been sent by the Manager of the Mall on planet Shptiludrp: he must recruit Lacy Dawn to save Earth, and they must get a boatload of shopping done at the mall along the way. Saving Earth is important, but shopping – well, priorities are priorities.

Yes, priorities are.  I should have had mine in order.  Robert Eggleton’s book deserves your attention.  Check it out.

Risking Delight

[By Rebecca Dunham]

If I were to meditate upon literary matters today, one of the greatest delights that comes to mind is Jack Gilbert’s new book, Refusing Heaven. This is a roughly once-in-a-decade pleasure. Gilbert’s last book, The Great Fires, was published in 1994. As a testament to his popularity, it went through seven printings. It is the very rare book of contemporary American poetry which garners no prizes and yet is deemed essential enough to be read by that many people. In the entire stretch of his career, Gilbert, age 79, has published only two other books: Monolithos: Poems 1962-1982, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Views of Jeopardy, the 1962 winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also published a limited edition of elegiac poems titled Kochan.

I discovered Gilbert’s work only recently, I must confess. I remember people talking about The Great Fires when it was published, but the poems didn’t grab me. I can only explain my lack of enthusiasm by way of saying that sometimes we need to mature ourselves to understand what makes a poem or novel great. I read The Great Gatsby several times as an undergraduate, and frankly, it seemed good but a bit dull in places. I didn’t get what all the talk was about. When I read it again, several years later, in graduate school, it finally hit me—this book was fantastic—and I could understand why it had been assigned so often. Sometimes, we need to change and grow before we can appreciate a work of literature.

But back to Jack Gilbert. I came across some poems of Gilbert’s, from Refusing Heaven, in The New Yorker over the past year. Specifically, the poem “Bring in the Gods.” As you may have guessed by now, I was blown away. I went out and read The Great Fires. Finally understood what everyone had been talking about, a decade later. It turns out, the poems in The New Yorker were the only ones Gilbert even bothered publishing from Refusing Heaven. And the book is filled with other gems, all working together to create a whole which I deem worthy of his reputation—no small order.

Technically, Gilbert’s spare poems maintain a beautiful lyricism, strong in image and sound. They do so with straightforward and direct language, capable of declaring exactly what it is that he means. In the same poem, “Refusing Heaven,” the speaker can state: “But he chooses / against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.” And later, “He is . . . like a wooden ocean out of control. / A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt.” Each time I read, and reread, Gilbert’s poems, I feel I am learning better the craft of poetry, as well as the craft of how to truly live in this life.

For Gilbert is one of the last, real Romantics writing today. And he pulls it off. Refusing Heaven declares its thesis from the start, in “A Brief for the Defense.” Gilbert insists “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, / but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have / the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless / furnace of this world.” He does not shy away from the sorrows and injustices of this world, this life. But he finds ways to see beyond them as well, to embrace life’s beauties as “truly worth / all the years of sorrow that are to come.”

Refusing Heaven. Jack Gilbert. Knopf: New York, 2005. 92 pp. $25, cloth.

Preparing for Mars: Reflections on Nikki Giovanni

[By Kathryn Fishman]

We are going to Mars for the same reason Marco Polo rocketed to China,
For the same reason Columbus trimmed his sails on a dream of spices,
For the very same reason Shackleton was enchanted with penguins,
For the reason we fall in love,
It is the only adventure.

—from “Going to Mars,” by Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni thinks we’ll make it to Mars. This self-proclaimed “space nut” is also an activist and a poet. Therefore it makes sense to me that she favors the whirling allure of elsewhere. Space travel gives both the scientist and the dreamer the chance to redefine possibility. Not only can they consider what is out there, they can also see Earth from new vantage points. When Carl Sagan looked back he marveled that, “every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. …on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” When Sputnik took off, Giovanni writes, we really became “earthlings.”

Last Saturday I had the chance to see Nikki Giovanni. She performed as a part of the University of Missouri’s Martin Luther King Day commemoration. When the members of the committee spoke, they quoted from thirty years of Giovanni’s poetry and prose. They said it was a privilege to finally see this woman they had grown up admiring. And it was.

Before Giovanni’s performance, a young woman approached her and asked if she could have her picture taken with the poet. “I am such a huge fan. You don’t understand,” the young woman said in a rush, “I’m like freaking right now.”

There weren’t, however, many people from the university’s English department at the event. And when I mentioned Giovanni to some of the poets I know, their responses were, “Oh yeah, I’ve never really read her.” I think these people are missing out.

I admire Giovanni’s tenacity and boldness. Her poetry and prose is often an intentional affront to racism, classism, sexism, and ignorance. Going to Mars, writes Giovanni “gives us a reason to change.” No one would ever accuse Nikki Giovanni of being shy. Her demand is clear-ending racism. About this she is blatant which makes her a good activist but not necessarily a good writer. What makes her a good writer is her honesty, her care and her bright sense of humor. “If Mars came here it would be ugly. / Nations would ban together to hunt down and kill Martians. / And then the stupid, undeserving life forms that we are, we would also hunt down and kill what would be termed Martian sympathizers.”

Giovanni writes, “I like to tell the truth as I see it. I hope others do the same. That’s why literature is so important.” She goes on to say that you can’t rely on someone else to tell your story. In this way, writing is political, historical, social, and imperative. Her voice and her prose are smooth and bold and never fail to tell it like it is. At the performance I attended a nervous woman in a black suit read an eloquent introduction where she compared Giovanni to Dr. King. Amongst other comparisons she said, “…like King, Nikki Giovanni is for non-violence.”

“I don’t know,” said Giovanni when she took the stage, “if I would call myself non-violent. I mean violence isn’t a particularly good idea, everyone knows that, except maybe George Bush, but sometimes….”

A friend of mine missed Nikki Giovanni’s presentation. He’d been sick all week with respiratory problems. He wasn’t too sick to sit through a performance. The trouble was he’d seen Giovanni before and knew that she was “so damn funny” he thought he wouldn’t be able to stop coughing. Right off the bat I learned what he meant. Giovanni wore a red suit and a tie to her performance. She said well-dressed people behave better. She suggested that everyone be required to wear a tie to sporting events. Nikki Giovanni is a big sports fan. I didn’t know this before her performance. I now know it because she spent the first five minutes of her act doing what might have been a stand-up routine at any American night club.

There are perhaps only a handful of people who can flow effortlessly from the funniest propositions to the ugliest injustices. At her performance, Nikki Giovanni said she wanted to bring King up to date. If he were alive today, Giovanni thought Rev. Martin Luther King would have braids. She thought he would probably have a tattoo. “Everyone has a tattoo these days,” she said. “I do. Mine says thug life.” Nikki Giovanni rolled up her sleeve and showed us her tattoo. A teenage boy in the orchestra almost fell out of his seat. Giovanni said her tattoo was in memory of Tupac Shakur. Giovanni told us she’d like to hear someone rap Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Giovanni writes, “The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.” In her “Mars” poem, Giovanni suggests that those journeying by rocket for a year to the red planet ought to prepare themselves with the stories of slave ships. These stories could teach the astronauts how to endure. Even those of us not set on the fourth planet from the sun would do well to learn from the history of Black Americans.

I have enjoyed Nikki Giovanni’s poetry for many years. I can’t remember when I first came across her. I imagine it was my grandmother who introduced me to her. My grandmother passed away last year, so we can’t ask her. But it would make sense. Giovanni is my grandmother’s kind of poet. My grandmother was a New Yorker, a tough Jewish woman who spoke a few languages and spent her life fighting for civil rights and telling Yiddish jokes. I’m fairly certain Giovanni struck a chord with my grandmother; regardless, she did with me. My degree is in sociology, not English. When people ask me what I want to do with my life I tell them I want to write. Most people don’t get it. I think Nikki Giovanni gets it. She gets why I thought an education in social inequalities would make me a better poet than an education in 17th century literature.

I owe Giovanni another small debt for high-jacking her love poems into Valentines and other cards for Chris, my fiancé. “How do you write a poem / about someone so close / that when you say ahhhhh / they say chuuuuu / and does the paper make it / any more real / that without them. / Life would be not / impossible but certainly / more difficult.” There aren’t any topics Giovanni is afraid to handle, from social justice to sex, from having a baby to protesting racism. When a writer is finally willing to discuss life honestly he or she is able to write his or her best lines. Giovanni is honest.

Both Giovanni and her sister have battled with cancer. At her performance last week, Giovanni told us her sister was still undergoing chemo treatments. She said her sister was self-conscious about losing her hair. She thought she looked ugly. “You don’t look ugly,” Giovanni said, “you look like me.” Soon after, Nikki Giovanni shaved her own head to make her sister feel better. “I have a nice head,” Giovanni told the audience. “You never know what kind of head you have until you shave it. I was kind of nervous about that, but as it turns out I have a pretty good head.” Her fans agree.

And as you climb down the ladder from your spaceship to the Martian surface, look to
your left and there you will see a smiling community quilting a black-eyed pea, watching
you descend.

On Recent American Poetry

Each time I come into the office, I find them in my mailbox. Sometimes they’re shrink-wrapped. Sometimes they have nice notes from the publisher, sometimes just Review Copy printed across the cover. Six or eight books a week, I would guess, new collections of poetry, some of them with true significance—new books, just this month, from Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, along with the selected works of Peter Everwine, Michael Ryan, Nicholas Christopher. Mostly, though, they are books by people I’ve never heard of, many of them winners of first-book contests (often, I haven’t even heard of the contest). If I read them all, there’d be no time to read anything else, not submissions, not student papers, the books I teach, the hundred or so books I’ll need to pass my comps, not all those classic novels that have eluded me all these years, or Tim O’Brien’s new novel, or the new biography of Goya, or other literary magazines, the paper, websites, e-mail, etc. With almost everyone in academia having this same problem, it’s no wonder so many fine books slip between the cracks. With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of recent books of poetry that were well worth my time.

1) Rodney Jones’s The Kingdom of an Instant is a clear-sighted and dense look upon, among other things, contemporary southern culture, politics and religion. Jones is both critical and nostalgic for the south, while infusing his work with contemporary references to George Bush and 9/11. The book’s politics is secondary to its language though, and in several longer poems in sequence Jones expands on the stylistic range he demonstrated in Elegy for the Southern Drawl.

2) Beth Anne Fennelly’s Tender Hooks finds Fennelly writing with the same authority and grace that made her first book, Open House, a bit of a phenomenon. The book, much of which deals with childbirth and motherhood, not only avoids sentimentality, but actually infuses the mother-daughter relationship with all the violence, sexuality, tenderness and grief that lies at the human core.

3) Balancing realism and surrealism, in poems with titles like “When I was the Moon” and “The Boy with His Mother Inside of Him,” Kelle Groom’s Underwater City introduces us to a voice that is both ghost-like and full of wonder. Her imagery is as fantastical and as clear as Magritte’s and in poems like “Butterfly Dream,” which uses the fantastic image of a thousand butterflies alighting on the skin to move between sexual fantasy and abuse, the tone is elegiac and celebratory at once. At times, Groom’s poems are so powerful that they seem to touch at undiscovered emotional centers that both shake and comfort us.

4) Richard Terrill’s Coming Late to Rachmaninoff, winner of the 2004 Minnesota Book Award, brings the sensibility of a musician to poems, not only about music, but about love, family, and “the part of life/ that’s not music.” Even landscape is informed with a sense of jazz, as in these lines from “Solstice,” which move almost improvisationally down the page: “how much/ can we gain how much/ we long to lose to this cold/ garden under a hard snow/ once in each school of days we note.”

5) Lyrical, oftentimes formal, Nick Norwood’s The Soft Blare takes on subjects as daunting as Jan Vermeer and, more idiosyncratically, the life and reign of Ludwig II of Bavaria. Norwood wears his learning lightly, though, never stepping on the toes of his subjects and allowing his insights to rise naturally ought of the fascinating scenes he creates. The story of Ludwig himself, told in a section of poems that moves through a diversity of voices, would be a remarkable book in itself, but there’s plenty to adore in Norwood’s shorter lyrics as well, which are as witty as they are wondrous.

More complete book reviews can be found towards the back of each issue of The Missouri Review.

–Steve Gehrke