SAQ was sent a review copy of _The Daily Mirror_, and I found
many worse examples than the two Mark pulled from the web. It's
also particularly distasteful to me when bad poetry is made worse
by the sort of name-dropping that pervades Lehman's collection. In
one poem describing how he met Arthur Miller, for example, Lehman
even manages to drop Marilyn Monroe's name by saying that it didn't
come up in his conversation with Miller (I really HATE that!).
And, to respond obliquely to Stephen Vincent's thoughtful post a
couple of days ago on Jorie Graham: she has been an important poet
for me, and I have often felt en-couraged by her poetry's intellectual
engagements (with Nietzsche and Deleuze, e.g.), but I truly detest
the poet-as-persona role she seems to want to play with her French
Lieutenant's Woman impersonations and fashion statements (the long
black capes, the artfully tangled hair, the gardening in high heels,
etc.). If Graham and Lehman were persona-fying themselves as
_performance artists_, of course, it would make all the difference.
But I don't see any sign of that in either one--nor any sign of a
sense of humor either, with the healthy self-reflexivity it tends to
promote. Graham's writing has always been about as humorous as Agnes
Smedley's (IMHO).
Candice
At 07:57 AM 2/15/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Have to agree with Martin about those two poems. Know nothing about
>anything else about tha man. Was intrigued by the New York School book but
>may now await a better, fuller, one...
>
>Douglas Barbour
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