http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/04/elaine-equi%e2%80%99s-book-party/ Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:40:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/04/elaine-equi%e2%80%99s-book-party/#comment-130 Jeffrey Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:19:41 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=92#comment-130 Hi Daryl, I try to stay out of the is or isn't poetry debate. It's more useful for me to consider if and how something is or isn't working as a poem. Elaine Equi's poems are often fun. Not funny ha-ha like a clown. But smart, dark, sometimes subversive fun. Like the poem I quoted. The first stanza is a direct statement that makes our head wiggle a little, as we try to process it. The poem is kind of like a riddle. It gives us this strange equation in the first stanza, and then the second stanza rips the blanket off the joke's birdcage. We laugh instinctively, but it's an uncomfortable laughter. I'd say her poem fits into the tradition of short poems. (Do you think short poems are poems?) (Are there any 5 line poems that you enjoy?) I was glad to see her book review in the New York Times. I like a wide variety of poems. I don;t read Elaine Equi expecting an intense emotional experience. I expect to see the world in a new way. To see something that I've looked at many times before, in a new way. Hi Daryl,
I try to stay out of the is or isn’t poetry debate. It’s more useful for me to consider if and how something is or isn’t working as a poem.
Elaine Equi’s poems are often fun. Not funny ha-ha like a clown. But smart, dark, sometimes subversive fun. Like the poem I quoted. The first stanza is a direct statement that makes our head wiggle a little, as we try to process it. The poem is kind of like a riddle. It gives us this strange equation in the first stanza, and then the second stanza rips the blanket off the joke’s birdcage.
We laugh instinctively, but it’s an uncomfortable laughter.
I’d say her poem fits into the tradition of short poems. (Do you think short poems are poems?) (Are there any 5 line poems that you enjoy?)
I was glad to see her book review in the New York Times.
I like a wide variety of poems. I don;t read Elaine Equi expecting an intense emotional experience. I expect to see the world in a new way. To see something that I’ve looked at many times before, in a new way.
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]]> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/04/elaine-equi%e2%80%99s-book-party/#comment-129 Daryl Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:22:56 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=92#comment-129 I had never heard of Equi until just recently in a quick review of this book. I picked up the book and was a little disappointed. Much of the work is fun, but it doesn't seem much like poetry to me. The poem you quote (which I quoted in my own blogged review -- it's definitely a stand-out poem) is a great little piece of humor, but is it poetry? This was my general feeling about much of the work in the collection. A few of the selections in the book from earlier collections did have some really lovely poetic stuff in them. Perhaps my view of what constitutes poetry is too narrow. I look forward to giving Equi another read in a few months or a year to reassess, but for the moment, I can't help thinking she's someone with some interesting things to say, sometimes in interesting ways, but that her pieces aren't often terribly satisfying to me as poems. Many of them felt like exercises that would better have been left on the cutting board. I had never heard of Equi until just recently in a quick review of this book. I picked up the book and was a little disappointed. Much of the work is fun, but it doesn’t seem much like poetry to me. The poem you quote (which I quoted in my own blogged review — it’s definitely a stand-out poem) is a great little piece of humor, but is it poetry?
This was my general feeling about much of the work in the collection. A few of the selections in the book from earlier collections did have some really lovely poetic stuff in them. Perhaps my view of what constitutes poetry is too narrow. I look forward to giving Equi another read in a few months or a year to reassess, but for the moment, I can’t help thinking she’s someone with some interesting things to say, sometimes in interesting ways, but that her pieces aren’t often terribly satisfying to me as poems. Many of them felt like exercises that would better have been left on the cutting board.
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