This is a Short Review I Just Did at Goodreads of Dorothea Lasky's New Book

There were other things I was going to say, but my mind is too scattered today.

I wanted to say something about a few poems from Awe too, but now it vanished like clouds in milk.

I am hungry for food with fresh garlic in it right now.

I tried that pre-chopped garlic and that shit is nasty. It's better to just peel the garlic yourself and chop it yourself. I can just sit and eat it raw like that.


BLACK LIFE, DOROTHEA LASKY. WAVE BOOKS. 2010.

This just arrived today and I wasn't supposed to be reading poetry. I was supposed to be arguing about money on the telephone. But I'm glad I took the break and read the poems. I can argue about money later. This money's better.

The truth is, I simply couldn't stop. Once you step on a train, you don't get off the train until it stops. Well maybe you do, but I don't. I'm a little sentimental about my bones.

As powerful as Awe was, this book is a major ramp-up.

The poems are sometimes deliciously cocky. The poet's got total swag and knows it (she even has a great poem about the "playuh" archetype, but that one turns quickly and stilettos the reader).

You can do the "Say my name, say my name" thing if you're giving the reader the goods...

"Say it
That's Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don't care."

Ay Mami. Ay Papi.

Could Lasky be a rapper who slipped in under the wire? She does have a Puffy poem too, but I'm not sure it's the same Puffy. Although he is wearing a white coat.

But there's major detournement going on when she uses these tactics. Role reversal in the sex club.

Is Lasky talking about an orgy in the following lines here? If so, what a great way to describe what's really happening!

"All of us so millennial in our exacting pulchritude
Piling on top of each other, no longer one author amnong many
But one author as many
One author as full of everything
Of many as a grand God
Would be at the time of the apocalypse
Of the great judgment."

The perhaps not-so-strange forms the search for spirituality takes in today's world are all through here.

Perhaps the orgy is not an orgy. Perhaps it's the search for love through sexual desire in our lives seen in the fourth dimension of time. That too could offer a workable read of those lines.

Sex has a lot of lines in this play. But love comes first in this collection. Love is reverenced. It's so good you turn back to it even after it's gone. Just like poetry.

Lasky writes poems so intimate that some might wonder at her delicous brazenness. Sometimes she's a beautiful mess. And that's something we haven't had in poetry for a while. It's why we keep digging out the O'Hara. Not many gay poets today are a beautiful mess. Well, the guys anyway. Or they won't share it if they are. That MFA can be like a boulder on the tongue, I guess. So it's nice that Lasky exists. To help "the gays" with the drama we're sorta missing in AmPo lately. Lasky is here to bring the drama.

People say you can't do confessional poetry anymore. Well, you can do confessional poetry if you can write like this. If you can't, I agree, don't do it. Because you will only be airing dirty laundry. You will be a laundress. And that's a very nineteenth century thing to be.

The first thing Lasky is is honest. The second thing Lasky is is perceant. The third thing Lasky is is flammable. There are a lot more "is is" things, but I'll let you discover them.

"The people
They only ever believed in their own similar bodies
They only ever believed in the things that were similar
They only ever believed in the cold"

What poets come to mind as Lasky's peers? Lots. Plath. Myles. Sappho. Rukeyser. But I am segregating. Frank O'Hara. Oh, great declamatory poets like say Mayakovsky or Esenin. Dorothea Lasky's poems are often in declamatory mode, and that in itself is exceedingly refreshing. That's usually considered such a non-American thing, the declamatory. Well Ginsberg was a notable exception. Russians do that better, right? Exception alert! Why do poets so often avoid this direct mode of address? You have to have chutzpah and nerves of steel, okay. That might explain some of it. I don't think you have to be Jewish though. Lots of non-Jews have taken degrees in chutzpah.

I'd put the strongest emphasis on the Myles and the Rukeyser there, since the feminism is of the variety where the poetry is so rich that to call it merely feminist would be condescending--but to miss it would be obtuse. The same was true of her Awe.

"I am a politician
Just watch:
I will be very nice to you
But when you turn around I will write the creepiest poems about you that have ever been written
Or worse yet,
I will write nothing about you at all
And will instead
Write about the water cascading endlessly in the ocean
Full of flowers and lovers at their very best
That is because I am a politican
That I do it this way"

She reminds me of Prevert a lot too. They both have that inalienable directness and in-it-ness. Sorry, that hyphenate doesn't exist. But it's what came to mind.

Her relationship to God continues to be interesting. It's certainly not a simple relationship. It's closer to the sort of relationship Anne Sexton had with God--or William Blake. The remote control keeps clicking. Off/On. Mostly On.

I think it's classic that she started her "Ars Poetica" with the line "I wanted to tell the veterinary assistant about the cat video Jason sent me."

"I Don't Remember the Talk of Men" is pure Sappho.

Here's just the beginning of that...

"I don't remember the words of men that talk
I don't remember the words of men who have led me
From beach to bed
I don't remember the talk of men, their bitter talk
I don't remember the bitter lemons that have left
The talk of men
I don't remember the bitter lemons
I don't remember"

"I Love a Mathematician" is pure Sappho...

"Oh how I would identify with the sickly nature of love
And sweet sticky kisses
That never go away."

Do yourself a favor and pick this book up.

Pick up more WAVE BOOKS too.

It's one of the best we have.