Some Cursory Thoughts on Michael Gizzi's New Depths of Deadpan

I received a review copy of this book.

I've only read it twice through, so these are definitely cursory thoughts.

More and more, I come to hate poetry reviews. All poetry reviews.

The pseudo-narrative way they're constructed.

The jazz hands.

Everything about them.

Maybe if it were all structuralism.

Old fashioned structuralism come back.

To look under the bridges with flashlights again.

Nah, that would probably suck too.

Anyhoo.



1. Michael Gizzi is Peter Gizzi's brother, but he might as well have been born Clark Coolidge's brother. The real stylistic commonalities, affinities, tonalities are shared more with Coolidge than with the kin. It makes sense that he has published a collaboration with both Coolidge and John Yau (both poets I admire greatly and talk about on the ole blogstead quite a bit) because that constellation of writers shares a number of traits and gifts, and shares a belief that idiom should be forgetive idiom--that you should make the English language completely your own and even retool the normative grammar.

Another writer who would have probably sailed on in that constellation, if AIDS hadn't taken him out, would be the nearly-forgotten Jim Brodey.

2. Michael Gizzi has written in many styles throughout the years. His gyptian in hortulus (paradigm press, 1991) appears to have been influenced by French avant-garde poetry (an influence consonant with brother Peter's) and is arty but elegant and mythological, rather in that weird Charles Olson way.

Another book I enjoyed is his Species of Intoxication (Burning Deck, 1983) which reads like a whack novel in prose poetry fragments.

Avis was also very good I thought.

3. When Michael Gizzi's poetry doesn't work for me is when it skates off into the halfpipe of pure sound display. Yes, to borrow from another dazzling sport, he can do the triple-lutzes and land perfectly. But there's a certain type of poem he likes to write which rams the mind with bragadoccio. Did I spell that wrong? Sonic the Hedgehog. Michael Gizzi would actually put Sonic the Hedgehog in the poem. Because he could make it work sonically, and because he is a humorist. At times, he is a great humorist in poetry.

4. I say a poetry collection is worth owning if it has more than ten strong poems in it and this collection definitely exceeds that number with readworthy poems.

5. I was surprised that he was interleaving some wistful lyric poems that showed him moving into terrain we might expect his brother to be mining more.

6. Here's the rub. This collection is filled with a plethora of nasty insult poems. Hostility in poetry is so prevalent today it's almost getting to be hilarious. I think Gizzi put far too many of this type of poem in here, because they are all so alike and they try to puncture what the poet (or the poem?) perceives to be different types of failure--vanities or excesses or just pitifulness.

I know somebody might say the poet is speaking to himself and these are self-excorations but even if they are, it still grates because of the sameness and the shrill tone and the pathos is missing any sort of leaven really. Nothing makes it rise above rancor and small-mindedness.

I realize it might sound as though I'm making a moral argument here and call me on that, but it's not that. I'm making an aesthetic argument on tone and tonality just as much. This makes a collection boring; it drags it down.

The poems begin to sound whining. Puling even.

Are poets really so bored today that they feel that lambasting (Ashbery's word in one of the blurbs on the back) is really worth any reader's time?

That's what we have blogs for.

I would tend to think the page is an elevation, and I could only see one or two of these getting through.

It would depend whom he was lambasting as well, right? I mean the venerable tradition of polemic poetry, of rhetorical poetry, when the poet is speaking in the name of abuse of power....

But these seem to be attacks on other writers and poets (some women, some men).

Yes, they could be imaginary people.

But again, my argument is not about intent. It's about aesthetic result. The finality of the poem on the page is dissatisfying when it contents itself with these meager ends of settling scores in poetry.

Even if the poems have a great ear. They pretty much always do have that.

But Swinburne had a great ear.

7. Why are poets so filled with bile these days? I mean, I know I'm often nasty (and so are many of the readers of this blog lol...sometimes!) but I wouldn't put that in a book.

I understand the tradition going back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome, but again the alternation of the various sentiments in Catullus is what makes him interesting.

Let's mourn the sparrow and the brother out on the stone spit as well as tell ole rabbitface he brushes his teeth with his own urine.

8. I apologize that I will stop here for now, as I have something else I have to do. That is not a cursory thought on his book. That's a cursory thought on me. I realize I have been derelict in not giving you words he has written to assay yet.

Here are some words I liked, the closing line of "Night-Blooming Gramophone."

(What a great image of a bilious blogger or poet!)

The closing line is "Witness the window grappling with the body."

I think that's a great image of a human's relation to a computer and a computer screen, and of course it extends beyond that to language itself as schematizing perception.

9. There are some strong poems in here and I'll try to talk about some of them in the near future. But right now, I have to admit I'm turned off by the encounter with the more bilious aspects of the collection, which are pervasive and drag down the other poems which seem to want to engage aspects of the cultural moment.

That could be interesting.

When poets today choose other poets as subject matter for poetry, it's only going to lead to bad poetry. Because poets are so underappreciated, they all have their fangs ready. It's funny though, really, isn't it?

But not funny in poetry. No. Write, enjoy, delete.

Save your words on that poet for an elegy.

Maybe you'll be kinder or at least more thoughtful then.

Why are so many poets so afraid of more bracing subject matter, like developments in the sciences and technology, say, mathematics, space exploration etc.

Okay, admittedly that's a bit of an albatross to put around the neck of a poet who's placed himself or herself squarely in the service of the lyricism of the self and its disasters.

Not all his poems are about that. But all the whining poems certainly are.

Is there really that much of a difference between the sort of whining Ashbery does and the sort of whining Charles Bukowski does?

They both have routines and schtick, pet peeves.

Admit it. You know what they are for both poets.

But aren't disasters in the Sun more interesting sometimes?

10. I'll say nicer things later about this book, because there are pretty poems. Right now, I'm disgruntled. I was in a good mood and the kvetching brought me down.