May 2024
POETRY Foundation Magazine, May 2024, Volume 224, Number 2
Best poem of the month: CHRIS FORHAN Atonal Breakdown (Rating: 5/5)
ADRIAN MATEJKA
Editor’s Note, May 2024 (Rating 1/5)
Comment:
Unlike politics, social media, and so many other aspects of contemporary western society, poetry is a place where wildly different cultures, opinions, and world views can palaver rationally and respectfully.
Adrian Matejka’s commentary on mythology and her hometown in Indiana is whimsical, and it jogged several similar memories of my own; however, a glaring contradiction was slipped in amongst Adrian’s flowery springtime prose – “anarchist collective.”
“Anarchist collective” is the most ironic phrase in all of politics. The irony of anarchy is that it can only exist in stable Western societies. We can see this blatant irony in the recent university campus Israel/Palestine protests where students demanded to be fed, watered, and protected by the universities they were rallying against, and in some cases, physically damaging buildings and other university property. This is manufactured anger caused by the boredom of living in a stable, safe, and prosperous of society. In other words, anarchists are nothing more than bored people with so little strife in their lives that they feel a need to manufacture problems where none exist. I would also note that most of these universities are publicly funded by the American taxpayer. How ironic is that? People going to work everyday and paying taxes are subsidizing unemployed anarchists.
Anarchy is war, famine, starvation, rape, disease, dehydration, brutality, tribalism, and autocracy.
Let us consider what an “anarchist collective” looks like outside of stable, law-and-justice countries – Haiti, Mexican border towns, Gaza, eastern Ukraine, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia. Do you know who suffers the most in anarchist societies? Women.
There are no female drug lords, no female dictators, no female cartel bosses. How many women have died crossing the US border so that the smuggler can ensure the more valuable clients, men, can reach the safety of our law-and-justice society? How many women have died in the stifling, oxygen-deprived trunks of cars? How many women have had their faces and genitals mutilated in Africa by machete-wielding, cocaine-infused gang members? How many nuns, nurses, and female NGO employees have been kidnapped and sold into sex slavery while just trying follow their hearts to improve the lives of victims in anarchist-controlled societies? Try asking a child born of genocidal rape how they feel about anarchy. Better yet, ask the child’s mother how she feels about anarchy.
And perhaps that is the message of anarchists – that anarchists have nothing thus they fear nothing. They feel they have been victimized by capitalist society - but think rationally about the chaos of anarchy; who dies first? The weakest! The children, the women, the elderly, the sick, the poor, the spineless men – the very types of people who anarchists claim to be and claim to be helping.
Anarchists hate masochist patriarchy more than anyone, yet their ignorance blinds them to the fact that anarchy is the perfection of masochistic patriarchy. At best, anarchy is oppression through violence, and at worst, unimaginable suffering and death.
I will never understand why artistic and intelligent people like Adrian Matejka promote anarchy as a paragon of virtuous supremacy.
Why would anyone wish for such a future for their lovers, children, family, and friends? You think you will attend college, have a career, and raise a family amongst such chaos?
Per usual, I try my best to give writing an objective score rather than allowing my personal views to overshadow high quality writing; however, I am deeply troubled by the flippant admiration of anarchy, and it will be difficult for me to get over the knowledge that the editor of the most important poetry magazine in the world is an anarchist sympathizer. Anarchy is not politics – anarchy is outside of politics and lacks rationality. Anarchy has nothing to do with social justice, liberalism, or left-wing theory.
Anarchy is evil incarnate, and despite the handful of amazing poems that appear in this issue, I cannot in good conscious rate anarchist sympathies anything other than 1/5 stars.
Imagine being a poet who is excited to tell their friends and family that their work was selected by POETRY magazine, only to have their hard work posted in an issue dedicated to the ironic and hypocritical “anarchist collective”. How embarrassing it must be for these brilliant poets to show this issue to their friends and family.
Does the entire Poetry Foundation board of directors support anarchy, or is this unilaterally Adrian Matejka’s editorial discretion?
CATHERINE BARNETT
Restricted Fragile Materials (Rating 4/5)
Comment: Catherine’s voice in the audio version is soft but deep and serious. Her voice adds gravity to this poem, however, the latter half of the poem and specifically the ending are highly cryptic. There is nothing wrong with this in principle, but the risk is that readers will not grasp the meaning. I don’t think reader understanding is necessarily a requirement for poetry, but it’s always going to be hard to award a 5/5 to cryptic poetry. The imagery is beautiful, but the last stanza is confusing – by all accounts this is a negative, regretful poem yet Catherine wants her son to have the same experiences she has? “How will I tell him the river I feared to drink from has come to drink from me?” A powerful line, but without context it is meaningless.
Ars Poetica (Rating 3.5/5)
Comment: Again, Catherine’s voice in the audio version is lovely and contributes to the beaty of the poem – but the vagueness and cryptic nature of her poetry is a turn off for me personally.
“Have You Ever Written a Poem about Death?” My Mother Asks (Rating 5/5)
Comment: What I found most interesting about this poem is the title. Catherine’s mother is questioning her, yet Catherine does not mention her mother at all in the poem. It is as if Catherine is so overcome with thoughts of death that her mother (who presumably sits at her side) is completely forgotten. Death is the most common subject in poetry, a trite and overdone subject that becomes boring very quickly; however, Catherine has written a beautiful poem that is creative enough to make me forget about how trope-y and generic death poems can be. I especially liked the line, “…and drank his coffee black to avoid the inconvenience of milk.” Wow, that really gave me a good laugh! It is so annoying to prepare coffee only to realize I am out of milk! It is a crushing blow to the spirit that threatens the very stability of my entire morning. Inconvenient, indeed!
ABDULKAREEM ABDULKAREEM
Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces (Rating 3/5)
Comment: I find myself torn about this poem. On one hand, I enjoyed the wordplay and imagery; on the other hand, I am confused by the epigraph of Salvador Dali. I reviewed all of Dali’s paintings and failed to find any relevance to this poem. The only solution I could think of is that Abdulkareem is not speaking about a particular Dali painting, but rather about Dali’s unconventional approach of using oil paint on canvas. As previously mentioned, gimmicks like epigraphs are a risk. The risk did not pay off, as it distracts from an otherwise solid poem.
ANDREA COHEN
Matinee (Rating 4/5)
Comment: This is a subtle and tricky poem; thought provoking. A matinee is a play or performance held during the day or specifically the afternoon. I’m struggling to understand the relevance of a matinee as opposed to an evening play, but perhaps Andrea Cohen is using matinee as simile for middle age? Most of the poem is self-explanatory until we reach the final line, “There will be no intermission.” I believe this line is a subtle way of describing the non-stop onslaught of problems we must deal with in middle age.
Fable (Rating 3.5/5)
Comment: A weak poem in terms of its complexity and depth, but sometimes the poetry reader just wants something fun and light-hearted. I am fairly certain that Fable refers to The Jungle Books, which of course are adolescent books. Fable is a bit sinister if you read between the lines, but in the end, I find it simply to be a fun little poem that achieves its intended goal.
JODIE HOLLANDER
Avenue of Plane Trees (Rating 2/5)
Comment: The idea and intent of the poem is interesting, but the execution is misguided. The first half of the poem is solid but devolves into generic lines about weather. If I were beta-reading or editing this poem, I would advise the poet to delete everything after, “Perhaps Van Gogh should have left us out entirely.” Avoid using lame weather tropes as a crutch and stick to the unique ideas that were already working. Unfortunately, I’m getting major first-draft vibes from this poem.
STELLA WONG
dramatic monologue as Beatriz Ferreyra (Rating 1/5)
Comment: I don’t know who Beatriz Ferreyra is, and after some Googling, I concur that this is probably for the best. I wish we could get an explanation from the Editor as to why this poem was selected. Silly, pointless, and meaningless - nothing redeeming here.
CHRIS FORHAN
Atonal Breakdown (Rating 5/5)
Comment: Contemporary writing is the tip-of-the-spear of revolutionary social justice, often resulting in low ratings and upset readers. Contemporary writing isn’t inherently bad writing, but quality writing usually doesn’t accompany social justice “keyword” poetry. Conversely, Atonal Breakdown is one of my favorite poems of 2024 so far.
DAVID BAKER
Small Weathers (Rating 5/5)
Comment: Poetry stands alone as the only artform that doesn’t suffer from plagiarism, but probably not for the reason you are assuming. Paintings, novels, songs, photography – they are all ripe with fraud. Poets are a selfless breed; we freely give pieces of our hearts and minds to strangers. Small Weathers is an example of how poets do not plagiarize, but instead utilize pieces of other poets to build upon their own ideas. Poets are like bricks – we build walls, borrowing from one other and strengthening one other. No other artform can say this.
GERARD BEIRNE
Elegy for a Marriage (Rating 4.5/5)
Comment: Elegiac couplet, not a haiku. This is a difficult form of poetry, and I applaud Gerard Beirne for his efforts; however, I am a bit perplexed about the meaning of the poem. We are mourning both the death of a marriage, presumably by divorce, and the death of the dream of having children. The common theme here is the “unknown” – what could have been that never had a chance. It feels like a stretch to compare a divorce to the death of a child. We can move on from divorce, but death (even death of a dream that has yet to materialize) is permanent.