John Poch Buys Some Poetry Books
Thanks for stopping by! If you're new here and want to keep up on poetry and 32 Poems, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Now that John has had a taste of blogging, he just can’t stop! DA
—–
Just to be sure that I’m not a hypocrite and that I’m fully out of poetry cheapskate mode, I ordered two books yesterday. Gabriel Gudding’s Rhode Island Notebook and Cecily Parks’ Field Folly Snow. The latter has been recommended to me by Carrie Jerrell, and one should take any recommendation from Carrie Jerrell seriously. I met Cecily at Sewanee a few years back, so I’m eager to read her book and see what all the fuss is about. I haven’t seen or spoken with Gabe in years, but I still think of him as a friend. We were both winners of the Nation/ “Discovery” Prize in 1998 (ten years ago), and we first met at the 92nd Street Y where we read on that very famous stage. I can hardly remember a thing about that evening. I do remember Gabe reading a poem in the voice of a telephone pole, and from that moment, I knew he was the real deal. We met again several times when I visited him in Ithaca. I was privileged to read his first book, A Defense of Poetry, in manuscript form (that title poem is a great poem to introduce to undergrads who have only read poems by Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Charles Algernon Swynburne). I remember Gabe asking for my opinion on the manuscript. Of course, I thought it was going to be a hit, though my one reservation was that I felt the scatological stuff (peacock’s rectum’s, etc.) got a little old. I said, “I think there’s a little too much “butt” in this book. I’ll never forget his reply: “John, you can never have enough butt.” Well, actually.
I saw that the poem that opens up his new book is “Notebook Made While Driving.Stopping to Gas Only and to Urinate My Pee”. There you have it. I think the charm of Mr. Gudding’s work often lies in his boyish playfulness. But the poems are often much smarter and more touching, more human, than other poets who often seem merely silly to me: Matthea Harvey, Dean Young, Jason Bredle. These poets have their virtues, I’m sure, but I don’t feel their comic effects add up to much in the end. I don’t doubt that I seem merely silly to them. I haven’t read Ms. Harvey’s latest, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
I also wonder what exactly happened to the Nation/ “Discovery” Prize. That prize had so many amazing poets over the years, but The Nation apparently let the prize go (why?), and now it’s run by Boston Review. That’s just not the same thing, it seems to me. If anybody knows what the dirt is on how all that went down, I’d love to hear. All I know is this: Grace Schulman was poetry editor of The Nation for years and headed up the big Prize. Well, I noticed a few years back that The Nation wasn’t printing poems any more. Maybe one every six months or so. But they were printing in every issue this terrible (it doesn’t get any worse) doggerel by Calvin Trillin that was a complete waste of space. But they weren’t printing any real poems. This went on for several years. Apparently, they have a new poetry editor now and are printing poems again, but I haven’t had a chance to see what’s going on there. I do know that Jorie Graham was one of the judges of the new Boston Review/ “Discovery” Prize, so you know that she picked some of her students or her friend’s students to be winners. You know, the Foetry biz. Alas.
Anyway, I had the books sent to my home address since I’m working on some other stuff here in Taos, but I’ll be glad to get to them come mid-August. What books (by living poets) have you bought in the past month? What poetry magazine have you subscribed to? (hint hint)
- July 25th
Poetry purchases in the last month:
Robert Hass. _Time and Materials_.
Li-Young Lee. _Behind My Eyes_.
John Poch. _Two Men Fighting with a Knife_. : )
I am editor of Boston Review, and have been so since 1991. I frankly do not know the details of the new arrangement with the contest, other than that our poetry editors…Tim Donnelly and Benjamin Paloff….were able to work it out. And given the distinguished history of the Prize, we were honored to be able to take it on. I suppose the basic reason that the prize shifted from Nation to us is that we publish more poetry and poetry reviews/essays…have more of a commitment to poetry, sustained over a very long period of time….than any other general interest magazine.
James Hoch - Miscreants
Marie Howe - The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
Maurice Manning - Bucolics
John Poch - Two Men Fighting with a Knife
New European Poets
_Field Folly Snow_ is really something. Its third section isn’t, but the rest, yes.
You are also mistaken about Jason Bredle.
Dear John,
Yes, you must read Matthea’s latest, Modern Life - definitely her most emotionally charged work, and has that internal gravity that makes the playfulness even more enchanting.
Ever since my Amazon.com boycott, my book purchases went down.
Tonight I’m buying — if Powell’s books will ever email me my password — Oliver de la Paz’s Furious Lullaby, Cecily Parks’ Field Folly Snow and Paula Bohince’s Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods. Like several of you, I purchased John Poch’s book, too. =-)
Oh, I also bought Harvey’s Modern Life, but that’s been sitting around waiting for me to read it. So many books and so little time!
Ripe by Todd Davis
Watering the Dead by Jason Irwin
Dear Blackbird by Jane Springer
After the Poison by Collin Kelley
Inflorescence by Sarah Hannah
Velocity by Nancy Krygowski
Do the Math by Emily Galvin
I, perhaps, buy too many poetry books (I haven’t read all these yet — I’m behind a bit in my summer reading).
I’ve had to put myself on a budget!
P.S. John Poch’s book is on my “To Get List”
Replying to all these: Joshua Cohen, thanks. I’m glad someone is keeping the “Discovery” contest going, but it’s a mystery why THE NATION turned their back on poetry over the past few years and gave up the prize. Greg Dyer, I bought Time and Materials, as well, and I thought it good but not as good as everyone else thought. Perhaps a little overly “virile” for me. Robert Hass seems very virile. I need to get the Paula Bohince book, as I’ve enjoyed all her poems I’ve read all over the place. She’s a fine poet. I’d be interested to read Do the Math by Emily Galvin, but just from reading what the book is about and who she is, well, I remain very very skeptical. I’ll check out Modern LIfe at some point, but I absolutely KNOW that those other two books of hers were completely overrated. I wrote a review of one of them that appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, I believe. And I stick by my opinion that Pain Fantasy is pure fancy, and very little imagination of the first order. Nevertheless, it’s fun. The cover is a gas.
Oh, I bought New European Poets, as well. I’ve been reading that for the past month. The Italian stuff is the best. The German and French stuff way disappointing. Everyone should buy this book.
books:
Breach, by Anne Haines
Rappelling Blue Light, by Laura Rodley
Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields, by Ashley Capps
The Armillary Sphere, by Ann Hudson
journals:
Low Rent
Caketrain
5 AM
(of course I already have a subcription to 32 Poems)
I’ve too wondered about Discovery Award switch to Boston Review. I’m glad the Award didn’t end. I’m looking forward to reading the work of the winners in the Boston Review pages. Change is good.
I won the award in 05. And I won the Colgate fellowship in 07/08.
I’m following your footsteps!
Books:
Theories of Falling by Sandra Beasley
Ashes in Midair by Susan Settlemyre Williams
Breach by Anne Haines
The Royal Baker’s Daughter by Barbara Goldberg
The Temple Gate Called Beautiful by David Kirby
Journals:
Poetry
Poetry Northwest
Natural Bridge
Eduardo,
Those 2 gigs are nice, but if you keep following my footsteps you’ll end up in West Texas. Change is good, perhaps, but not if you’re choosing Jorie Graham to judge a contest (and you want that contest to be legitimate/ethical.)
Dear Joshua Cohen:
I see that you are a Harvard professor and have studied and written on “distributive fairness”.
I decided to look at this year’s Nation winners, and lo and behold a former Harvard prof is one of the winners. One is also a former Iowa student (Jorie’s from back when she was teaching there?) Since you’re the editor of Boston Review and ostensibly interested in ethics, why don’t you try to make sure the contest is run legitimately? How about no more Jorie Graham? I know she teaches there at Harvard, but you, of all people should know better than to run a “contest” that is fixed.
As a 32 Poems subscriber and the founder of Foetry, I’ve been following this blog and particularly this post with great interest. I have some of the same questions as Mr. Poch and a few others: why was Graham asked to judge the Boston Review/Discovery Prize when in the past she had repeatedly proved herself both unable and unwilling to do the work necessary to pick legitimate winners? Why did she accept the opportunity to judge after she was quoted in a major national publication that she would no longer do so? When she called the job — “mind numbing”? I think that’s the phrase she used. Frankly, why haven’t poets asked for their money back in the contests in which she selected friends, students, lovers, and at least one husband? These questions still trouble me, but I’ll let the poets continue to bestow upon her the accolades and power she does not deserve. It’s up to you.
I see that Mark Strand is one of the judges this year. Clearly Mr. Cohen is uninterested in clean judging.
Reginald Shepherd, who has been seriously ailing but still brilliantly lit-blogging, has a fine poem in the Sept. 1/8 2008 issue of The Nation titled: “Along With Whatever Has Not Yet Been Named.”
Calvin Trillin’s Deadline Poet doggerel in that zine is not even amusing; more of an embarrassment than anything.
It’s good to see Alan Cordle on the Boston Review/Discovery Prize case! We need some clones of Alan to keep contests honest.!
Belatedly, a few points of information regarding the Boston Review/Discovery contest. Joshua Cohen is not, as John has suggested, a professor at Harvard. He teaches at Stanford. He also has no hand in the administration of this contest, which is run by Timothy Donnelly and myself in cooperation with the 92nd Street Y. Entries for this past year’s contest were read anonymously by Timothy Donnelly before finalists were passed on to the judges, also anonymously. Running these contests requires a huge investment of time and energy, all for the sake of highlighting work that jumps out at us during the process. Real people, taking time from their real families and obligations, do this because we believe in it. To suggest that this was somehow “fixed,” and to do so on the basis of misinformation and innuendo, is to assert that the many, many hours Mr. Donnelly, Ms. Graham, Mr. Tate, and the late Mr. Shepherd devoted to this were mere ritual. As a longtime fan of 32 Poems, I’m highly disappointed.