by Joel Brouwer
(Purdue University Press) $12.95
I have a bias against books published by university presses, especially books of poetry, which are usually as dry and lifeless as a Christmas tree in January: No sparkle and little to connect with. However, when I was introduced to the work of a young poet named Joel Brouwer, I realized that, on rare occasions, my bias could be thrown aside.
I knew Brouwer had smarts -- he's a critic for The Progressive and The Harvard Review -- but what really charmed me was his adroit sense of humor. His book even starts with a Chico Marx quote: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Poems such as "Locking Up the Russian" (where a love-bereft friend has himself imprisoned) and "Universal Studios Backlot" (where tourists mistake the poet riding on a golf cart for a movie star) are full of humor pangs, while other poems such as "Astronomers Detect Water in Distant Galaxy (with the awesome last lines "...staring out at the deep blue water, wondering/when somewhere out there the first shark/will feel its first tooth/rise like a dagger from its jaw"), combine intellectual chuckles with references that reveal Brouwer as a historian.
Brouwer's writing recalls Jeffrey McDaniel, a clever performance poet and the very person who told me to read Exactly What Happened. In the end, Brouwer's work does the opposite of what I expect from an academic press. It sparkles, hypnotizes, connects, and squeezes juice out of the poet's life and into your funny bone. KEVIN SAMPSELL
i listen: a document of digital voyeurism
by the spacewurm
(Incommunicado Press) $13
A 29-year-old techno smart-ass who calls himself spacewurm has spent too much time dipping into the cellular airwaves and illegally recording phone conversations. A sampling of what he's heard over the years is reprinted here in 32 conversations simply titled "los angeles, may 1998," "seattle, february 1997," etc.... The world spacewurm finds -- disproportionately populated by braggart losers with plans that inevitably revolve around drugs and meetings at the Jack-in-the-Box -- is sad and messy. And unmistakably our own.
Sure, we catch playful moments (girlfriends speculating about the size of a boy's cock); charming moments (a flirtatious boy seamlessly dropping Prince lyrics into his conversation); mysterious, titillating moments ("So, you wanna come over?" "Yeah, who's over?" "The boy." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah. Where are you?" "Uh, I'm at.... I'm home. Yeah, let me show up with Chris. Do you think the boy would like to be videotaped?"); and comically sad moments (a woman impatiently scanning through her messages only to find four desperate rants from the same spurned beau. "Contrary to what you believe, Tina, I just wish things could...." [beep -- computer voice] "Next message." "So the point being, Tina, I still think about you all the time....").
Mostly, though, spacewurm's transcripts (usually printed without identifying the race, gender, or estimated age of the players, or the time of day) reveal desperate, accusatory, petty people who are frantic about money and relationships, busy posing and putting on airs, all the while talking in an insipid phone language that is neither subtle nor direct.
The most harrowing conversations turn out to be the ones when Mom is on the line. Listen in on "brooklyn, november 1998": "Everything has been wrong, Mom, that I've ever done in my life. ...All I've ever heard from you is that!" "No... you never...." "It is!" "...But when you say stuff Matt, when I see problems...." "But! But Mom this is the thing...."
I hate to get corny, but if there's anything to be learned from spacewurm's field recordings, it's this: There's a notable absence of capital "L" love in the airwaves -- and, by implication -- down here on the ground. This is not a pretty book. Yes, there are times when you'll be laughing out loud, but eventually -- after eavesdropping on sobbing breakups, insecure respondents to "swingers" ads, and fiery domestic arguments that are ostensibly about car payments -- your laughs will wilt. JOSH FEIT
LOST AND FOUND
Great America
by James McManus
(Harper Perennial 1993) 50 cents, used
One editor here suggested that pulling out an old volume of poetry just to tear it apart is like making fun of midgets. But this book is that rare thing: a volume of poems from a major publisher, boasting a slick cover and portentous title, with all the suggestions of critical acclaim and bardic authority, and still in print to boot. And it fucking sucks! McManus writes as if he had never heard English spoken out loud, but only read it off of computer monitors and the pages of Spin magazine. Cal Bedient (?), in his back-cover blurb, has the stupidity to compare this hack to John Ashbery. If you subtract Ashbery's wit, compassion, and genius for nonsensical verbal music, and throw in an unprecedented density of hip references that make Douglas Coupland look like a classical scholar (the first, unmetrical, three-line "stanza" name-drops Miles Davis and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and several poems have whole pages of band and famous-name lists), then I guess there might be some resemblance to Ashbery -- after a lobotomy. The authors who blurbed this piece of shit must be punished: Norman Rush, I never read Mating, and now I never will! Richard Howard, write some more poems, you old fart -- I won't read 'em! Thomas Lux, blow me! Death to Harper Perennial, "the Ford Foundation, the NEA, the Shifting Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and Arts International for their generous support while this work was in progress." If the paper stock were finer, I would seriously wipe my ass with the pages of this book. GRANT COGSWELL
