WEE reviews May 11, 2006

Proof by Victoria Chang

Julie: This poem delights me. The straightforward diction, open formatting, solid imagery, and a punchy close. The poem never descends to gimmickry, cutesyness, fake cleverness, or bathos. The "perpendicular" lines are chilling. Good stuff.

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Waiting by Brad Davis

Julie: This felt like more than one poem, all struggling for dominance. I kept thinking, "Here is where the poem really starts," and then a few lines later, "No, here is where the poem really starts. No, here. No, here." I don't think that's because the poem is that bad, just that it doesn't build on itself, despite the repetition of the word, or idea of, "beauty."

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I Am My Own Elephant Gun, by Jennifer L Knox

Julie: Really enjoyable, quickfire rockpiles of words that she manages to keep from tumbling on her head. I think a whole book of Knox at once would eventually have me screaming for respite, but one a day is working. And how. Gabriel pointed out an editing error in the first line that I didn't see. I see only what I wish to see! So there.

Gabriel: Of the poems today, I thought this one had the most interesting and inventive language. That said, it is language that can't come to terms with itself. The constructions which are either for sonic effect or to set up a chain of alternate readings, i.e.:

dogged by silent phones, by one ringing
phone in which of the unlit windows,
by all the slits in the meat to be filled
with slivered garlic, by the garlic to be

didn't hold together for me. At the end of my reading I didn't come away with a sense of purposeful disruption but simple cacophony. While it had plenty of sound and fury, it also signified nothing.