I'm afraid I'm still too busy to do anything new for this column, so here (late for the first time since I started this section of my website, is another of my contributions to Kevin Kelly's zine, Silent But Deadly. Bob Peters's critiques for this issue got to Editor Longfellow by way of me, so I had a chance to read what he had to say before doing my own critiques, which was lucky for me because it gave me the scoop on the first line of the Cummings poem (which has the number, 54, as its title). I had previously thought that Cummings was referring to someone named Elizabeth Henarub Ardensteil (who was probably Jewish, Cummings having been slightly--and harmlessly--anti- semitic). I thought "arden" might also be a truncation of "garden." Well, Peters made me aware of Elizabeth Arden, and I suppose that "henarub" has to do with the cosmetic use of henna. I'm still stumped by "steil" but assume it has something to do with women's make-up. Anyway, the poem goes on to carry out a fairly straight-forward satirical portrait of "this noN . . . She" who is all got up fit to kill--and kill is what she seems to do, her victims being Nature, and spring.

Here's the poem:

      ardensteil-henarub-izabeth)

      this noN
      allgotupfitokill
      She with the
      &how

      p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y-d-e-a-d

      Unvoice(which frightenS
      a noisy most
      park's
      least timorous pigeons)squ

      -I-

      nts(while showe
      ring cigaretteash O
      ver that scre
      Aminfeeblyoff
      s,p;r:i;n,g

What gives Cummings's poem its special charge is its pre-language- poetry language-poetry brilliance. Note, for example, how perfectly dead "p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y-d-e-a-d" is; and the way "allgotupfittokill" suggests the instantaneous effect of the non-she's dress and make-up--and how the phrase is heightened by the N of "noN," which stops us slightly more than the line-break by itself would have--like a shock hitting us just before we take in what is causing it. There's also the slow-down for a squint (with the added amusement of the two squinting eyes to either side of the "I"). Cummings frequently breaks out of conventional syntax to get extra value from his words. For example, by saying "a noisy most/ park's" instead of "a most noisy park's," he gives the reader a chance to consider how a park might be a "most" park--that is, an extremely parkish park; then the reader will "correct" the phrase back to "most noisy" (assuming he's had some previous experience with Cummings, or is innately clever at solving poetry of this kind). Such manipulations, and the "intra-syllabic line-breaks," also slow the read in the manner of so much modern poetry to allow the poem more fully to seep into the reader's mind. The insertion of punctuation marks into "spring" carry out a similar function but also suggest spring's fragmentation, and its slow tremble off, intimidated by the Anti-Persephone the poem is about. In short, a crackling fun poem, though a little bitter/brittle, and so not as appealing to me as Cummings can be when he rises above petty satire.

John B. Denson's bit of doggerel, below, is the kind of thing one would expect from someone who gets his mail c/o a VFW post.

      When Sister Brown Got Saved

      It was real wild night in church
      When Sister Brown got save
      For years she'd lived a life of sin
      O Lord the thanks we gave
      We shouted, "Sister tell it all"
      She ranted, screamed and raved
      She had to tell with who she fell
      When Sister Brown got saved.

      I wished I'd kept my damn mouth shut
      (To tell her sins was fine)
      I'd been out drinking with her once
      (She need not tell all mine)
      I hoped she had forgotten me
      While strong men wept and cried
      She had to tell with who she fell
      O Lord, I could haved died.

      A member of our choir was named
      Two deacons bit the dust
      Our local minister was shamed
      (O Lord, who could we trust)?
      Church husbands' names were called in droves
      (Her tale of sin went on)
      She had to tell with who she fell
      And half our church was gone.

      I sat there like I'd drank a fifth
      My mind was still in shock
      I couldn't move or say a thing
      I sat there like a rock
      I knew the Lord was always right
      He'd save me fromthe grave
      She had to tell--but it was hell
      When Sister Brown got saved.

      Thank God that gal forgot my name
      (She'd been around so much)
      I quickly joined a Catholic church
      And I don't keep in touch
      This happened many years ago
      My peace of mind's increased
      If they have to tell with who they fell
      They only tell our priest.

I found it amateurish in spots: e.g., "While strong men wept and cried," is a very conventional line with a superfluous word ("wept") and seems in the poem mainly to make a rhyme. I thought the final stanza reasonably well-crafted, though--increased/priest is not as hackneyed a rhyme as many of the others in the poem, and touch/much doesn't seem forced. The poem comes to a proper climax, and is funny. The grammar bothers me but is perhaps proper to the semi-literate persona of the poem.

C. Mulrooney's "the great gate of Kiev" lost me:

      his eyes sailing off into the blue
      of senility
      her acrid youth turning vinegary
      undecanted

      it is all of life to them
      the progress of peoples and nations
      the beauty of nature
      their miserable art
      their artlessness
      for this I lose
      sleep and sunlight
      unbowed to Baal

I rather liked the way "his eyes sailing off into the blue" made a slightly unexpected turn into "of senility," but wondered how something already acrid could turn vinegary. If it did, wouldn't it be improved? The second stanza puzzled me because it seemed to condemn the two people of the poem, but why should they be disparaged because "the progress of peoples and nations" and "the beauty of nature" was important to them? Hurrah for the narrator for not having false gods, but what does he have? The title doesn't help me, but that might be my fault since I don't know that much about Kiev, or its great gate. I rather like the power of the final three lines. What I most dislike is the poem's telling us about the man and woman's "miserable art" instead of showing us their art and letting us decide for ourselves how bad it is. I'm left with a crank who states his superiority to two other persons, and reveals the Tragedy of it all. But he gives the reader nothing but sputtered anger, and trivial bitterness.

Jake Berry's poem, quoted below, is--I shudder to say--one of his EASIER ones. So I only needed to read it nine times to be able to get some kind of grasp of it. But I have to admit that the mere sound of his words and the imagery produced by them was enough to keep me entertained throughout my nine readings. (I especially liked his making a "backward rhyme," wept/wet, something few people are willing to agree with me should be considered a legitimate FULL rhyme.)

Plasma Incarnation

   Gathering face from criminal
    fugue - congregation whose
  wings beat the roof, squeal
       furnace dirges
           & rip through the pulp
  of my dreams for nectar. I'm
 void as a window hung nowhere,
  leap beyond numbers' epiphanied
   coil, shedding snakes like vaudeville
         when the bowery bloomed
 virtuous whores & toreador wept
   belladonna in taxi backseats wet
 with $20 strange
       I'll surface again, goggles &
   fins, two corpses beyond concern.

Here's what I so far make of the poem: it's about a kind of excited gaseous state (a plasma being a kind of smear of ionized gas particles) that has become human. It gathers "face," or identity from a "criminal," or lawless fugue-state of mind which can account for the disordered images that follow--but the fugue is music as well as psychological state. Anyway, the plasma/soul that is being shaped has churchly characteristics, and its (angelic?) congregation flies against the roof of the narrator's dreams, while singing furnace- hot dirges, and ripping through the flower or fruit of the narrator's dreams for nectar--which makes its members more butterflies or birds or bees than angels . . . While all this is going on, the narrator is passive--as "void as a window hung nowhere" (which I count a particularly fine image). So, a kind of plasmic infestation is going to town on the narrator--to his detriment, it would appear.

In any event, the narrator leaps "beyond numbers' epiphanied/ coil" or beyond the reassurance of numbers and scientific understandings. He races through changes like oldtime vaudeville shows whirled through acts in their heyday. I haven't worked out an explanation for the toreador, but think of Carmen, the whore murdered by a bullfighter in the Bizet opera. Certainly lines 10 through 13 have to do with whores, sold sex ("$20 strange") and the toreador's weeping a poison where that sex was sold, which suggests his feeling of betrayal over some whore's actions. It is here that the poem is a shade too disunified for me--I can't yet connect the whore-section with the text prior to it, and would like to. The final two lines work well for me: the narrator has been drowning from the plasma invasion, and perhaps as well from sexual betrayal. But he'll resurface, properly equipped--and "beyond concern"--because he's already shed two lives, and no longer fears dying.

Needless to say, that's only a rough working out of the poem's fore- burden. Other equal interpretations are possible. What's important, though, is the wonderful fizz and swirl of sounds and imagery--like the phrase "two corpses beyond concern." Just that is enough for me to give this poem my seal of approval.

So much for my critiques. I thought I'd have a bunch of thoughts, too, but have already used so much space, I don't want to steal too much more so will only say that I, like Mr. Longfellow, would really appreciate feedback to what I and the other reviewers say. Critics can use criticism as much as poets. I especially want to know if I entirely missed what some poet was trying to do.

So far my only large negative criticism of my fellow-critiquers is that SOME of them are too content merely to express approval or disapproval of a poem. Please say why. I'm pleased with the variety of responses poems have been getting, and am always glad to see takes that are different, or even opposite, from mine.

I was also pleased with the attention Bob Peters paid SbutD in a recent issue of Small Press Review (and not only because he had kind words for me personally). I'm not sure I agree with one suggestion of his: that better poems be chosen for critiquing. Sometimes analyzing a poor poem can pay off in ways no analysis of a better poem would. I think maybe a mix of good and bad poems like the four on review for this issue is best. But I'm an analysis-addict, so I'd be happy with ANY poems!