Court Green 4: A Review

Tony Trigilio sent me a review copy of Court Green 4, a Chicago-based (published at Columbia College) annual I had never seen before.

This issue was subtitled "Dossier: Political Poetry," because roughly the second half of the book is composed of politically-minded poems gathered into a mini-anthology.

The production values of the magazine are very good. It's edited by Mr. Trigilio, Arielle Greenberg and David Trinidad.

While I enjoyed reading parts of this mag, I was hoping for that gestalt that you get when a magazine is really defining an aesthetic or an aesthetic moment. I'm thinking of a mag like Oblek or The Germ. I think this mag suffers a tad from the plurality or catholicity it wants to embrace, even though I applaud the heart in that openness.

It reminded me a great deal of that other Chicago mag, the Columbia Poetry Review, probably for obvious reasons.

My biggest pet peeve is the desultory in poetry, and this issue did host a lot of desultory talkers. They talked all the way down the page, many of them, but never quite achieved a poem. I know a lot of people feel Frank O'Hara and others gave them this license. But I think he might have revoked some of these licenses.

Okay, bitching aside, let me tell you about the poems and poets I liked in here. I'm not going to mention any uber-famous or even almost-famous poets, since they get enough attention...and that way if I thought their work sucked they will just assume I didn't mention them because they're famous and already had their steak dinner of literary criticism served them elsewhere.

I apologize if any of the people I now praise ARE uber-famous, because I haven't heard of any of you but was happy to find you here. And I didn't read the bios for anyone, so I have no idea who's 18 and who's 80. If any of the below people care to send poetry for consideration to be "published" here, they are welcome (and yes, you can use it as a book credit. My therapist said it's alright).

The poems that stood out for me were....and I'm just going numerically by page number here...

1. Claudia Carlson. Her "Straw Mother" is a creepy little poem about making a doll of her mother (for what purpose? love? voodoo?) from things like "crumpled anthologies, pipecleaners, cigarettes, footnotes, origami creatures," and such. It worked for me.

2. Michael Rerick. He had two pieces that seemed to be part of poems composing a longer work of fiction or a novel, perhaps. I like when poets do that, or even attempt it. It doesn't happen a lot. Maybe Paul Zimmer did it. I think he's obscure now but wasn't once. He crafts some Brautiganesque lines and images here like "He says, I built this whale from drowned whale bone, / put stained glass windows where the eyes should be, / made the brain from a telescope mirror, / and it sails and sings daily, he says(.)" I expect good things from this poet in the future.

3. Joshua Marie Wilkinson. I love small poems done well. That's a really hard feat for any poet to accomplish and he does it here three times.

4. Andrea Dulanto. "No, I've Never Seen The Exorcist in its Entirety." The poem is exactly what the title proclaims. The poem worked for me.

5. Idra Novey. I liked her second poem, "Pausing Outside a Home Used for Torture in '74."

6. Novica Tadic. Translated by Steven Teref & Maja Teref. The first poem didn't work for me...it was too simple and just seemed like a very young person's writing. The childish tone worked very well, however, in the poem "Genealogy of the Executioner" which almost reads like a children's poem, something fun to memorize or sing. For example, the opening goes: "The Blood-Guzzler births the Mild One / The Mild One birth the Just One / the Just One births the Repairman / the Repairman births the Doctor" and this continues on for seven more stanzas. Plus you get to find out where Executioners come from. (Besides their mommy's belly that is).

7. Eve Packer. "Express DVD Video Palace Sex Sex Sex." This was a poem about cute little kittens. Just kidding! It was about what it says, and about the hazards of trying to write a poem from the titles of porn in a porn store. Not bad.

8. Juda Bennett. This poet contributes a Stonewall poem that's rather funny actually. I liked it. The second poem by Bennett is sort of Russell Edson-ish. I think that one works too.

In the political "dossier" section there are some great poems by dead poets like D.H. Lawrence and Muriel Rukeyser and some great ones by living poets like Bernadette Mayer.

So that's all, folks. If it sounds like your bag, snake it up!