Poet: Carol Berge
Book: "An American Romance" Copyright 1969
ISBN: PS 3552. E716. A8 c.2
Available at NMSU's Zuhl Library

There's little that's axiomatic about her work--no stark epigrams in the service of some omniscient (or at least uber-cognizant) speaker.  Instead the voice flows naturally from a weaving of the daily profundity of being with somebody so that Berge achieves an earnestness, aware only of its own baggage and the implications of the "Romance" in question.  Readers of "An American Romance" will find that its poems rarely revel in scenery; rather, the positioning of the poem's tension concerns a limbic area between the speaker and the romantic other with whom she wishes to connect.  Because of this, the language of the poetry often evokes an aural intimacy--perhaps by dint of its tandem of opacity/closeness.
Participating with Berge's speakers here is like hearing a loved one talking to you or someone of concern through a wall.  And there's definitely an arc to the dialogue the reader overhears, with love poems beginning in a jovial, almost naively warm place that is gradually shaded over by complication; and as hackneyed as this arc may seem in terms of depicting romance, Berge pulls it off.  I recommend this collection for its craft and refreshing warmth.  And as mentioned earlier its earnest voice salts it with a lack of pretension.  Check it out.      

Here's a short sample:

The Loving

Turning it aside with your hand,
saying: you do not like
those things that tremble.
But it is the softer beasts
who, walking through your life
perhaps furred or
glistening like humans,
having given you sustenance...
The loving
is contained firmly in you,
in the beautiful
bones of muscles of you,
cupping the gentleness
holding it safe...
You go to some private room
to tremble; to give love...

Pondside: 27 Poems

Book: 27 Poems (1966)
The Swallow Press, Chicago
Author: Roger Hecht
ISBN: PS 3558. E3. T9 1966
Available for Checkout at the Zuhl Library at NMSU

Speaking of svelte, although not quite as trim as Piero Heliczer's aforementioned staple-bounder, Roger Hecht's 27 Poems delivers its goods with the spine girth of a Vincent Price mustache.  But hey, big things small packages, yada yada yada.  Seriously though, Hecht's 1966 debut collection is worth a look.

Poems often feature egos meeting a riptide of concern involved with positioning one's self in relation to other forces, whether those be natural or societal.  Hecht sanctifies the former creating a familiar Romantic binary, but his speakers never quite hug the sublime.  Like Timothy Donnelly's Explanation of an Oriole, nature is often a visiting salve that lights on the speaker and then flies away, not a purifying alembic for consciousness. Then again, there are poems within the collection that might contradict this interpretation, like "Summer's End" for instance.  So, grain of salt.  However, it's hard to disagree with Hecht's preoccupation with circumscribing the external forces that harry the individual; many poems like the long narrative "The Last Crusade" feature the speaker engaging other psychologies beset by the same problem.  In "The Last Crusade" the speaker throws in with Woodrow Wilson, speculating on how he dealt with his position as President and as arbiter of the U.N.'s formation.  There are a few telling lines to that end in the poem on page 57:


"Everything is persistently impersonal.  I am administering
a great office, but I do not seem to be identified with it:
it is not me and I am not it.  This impersonality of my
life is a very old thing, and perhaps robs it of intensity    


Overall, Hecht's 27 Poems is a nice (and quick) read.  However, if you're looking for anything experimental or out of the ordinary, I wouldn't suggest it.  The collection's very tame, in many ways, old fashioned even.  My friend and fellow poet, Jennifer Eldridge, who's always concerned with trashing adjectival modification should stay away from this one.  But if you're itching for something that sounds great when read aloud, Hecht's work might be for you   I'm interested in the way Hecht uses the word "boredom" in the collection--shades of Baudelaire or Dostoevsky, maybe.  But I wasn't able to tie any kind of knot between them.

-Paul French

Piero Heliczer's Svelte Rarity

                                                                                  

    

Book: & I dreamt I shot arrows in my amazon bra 
Poet: Piero Heliczer
Copyright 1959, Dead Language Press
Call # PR6058. E48. A5 (Special Collections in Branson Library at New Mexico State University

This is another signed copy, a rare collection published by the poet's own press, Dead Language in 1959.  Because of its fragility, (it's staple bound and very thin), it's tucked in a protective folder in Branson's special archive at NMSU.
For those not familiar with Piero Heliczer, Winston Dixon's delving essay/review of his collected works, Purchase in the White Botanica (2001) delivers one of the few comprehensive bios I found after scouring the web.  I highly recommend you check it out:  http://www.granarybooks.com/article/76 .

Heliczer's poetry has been described by reviewers as "impenetrable" and this is something that the poet apparently touted as a success, often appropriating lines of critical ill-favor ( "as it is, they read to me like translations of poems from a foreign language which I would like to understand. Forgive me" ) as blurbs for his work (Dixon).  As for me, I don't believe that any poetry's impenetrable.  Unfortunately, since I had a good clutch of books to examine for this blog, and, once again, since you can't take these rare signed copies out of the archives, I was unable to approach anything resembling trenchant criticism.  I will say that his poems never idle; and there's this roaming grammatical mischief working in tandem with a reach for sensuality: e.g.,

"to be spoken by one who lies
        on his back
christ says the girl in a
        collapsed heat
present says a voice from a
        small erection"

But lest this entry lurch into that vague grandiloquence I despise in glossy pseudo-reviews, high flown overprocessed ick whose sole ambition seems to be to make it onto the back of a jacket--"Glue Factory Press explores spaces between spaces between spaces" (that's a joke from Rodrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater), I'll stop there.  Because I know Heliczer would be okay with, even exhilarated by, "I don't know what he's saying right now," I'll stick with that.

But it's not satisfactory to me.  So this entry is a call to arms.  Go to Branson and take a look.  Let us know what you think.  As for me, I'm going to provide a few more in depth reviews before I come back to the special collections.  Next week, we'll take a look at a book of poetry from the Gotham purchase you can check out from Zuhl.  In fact, it'll be on the shelves as soon as I'm finished with it.  Next review, our wise men will be fishing pondside.

-Paul French

Book: Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals
Author: Allen Ginsberg
Located in Special Archives in Branson Library at NMSU
Call # PS3513. I74 A67

I'll start by saying that Ginsberg's autograph (this is a signed copy) is remarkably legible.  For all of Ginsberg's unconventional political leanings, his John Hancock here is textbook.  Not encumbered by flourish nor slack-handed, it reminds me of Babe Ruth's or Mickey Mantle's. A kid could spell it out, and it's geekily refreshing to see all those letters post-initials penned equally--not razed by the quick swish of the illustrious book signer. Sorry, Salman Rushdie, but:

Signature burn!  Take that, successful author.  (Honestly, mine's more than a scosche worse, Mr. Rushdie, I mean Sir.)  Anyway, I should probably talk about the book.  

Airplane Dreams was published in 1968 by House of Anansi Press, located in Toronto Canada.  Interestingly, this book was exported to the U.S. along with five thousand other copies to protest the Manufacturing Clause of American copyright laws.  From what I've read, it was a convoluted piece of legislation (the book's editor's note hints at this), and I couldn't quite figure it out--something about an excessive importation of foreign books resulting in the legalization of relevant piracy, but don't quote me. 

Ginsberg's prefatory note nods to this Canadian origin and also provides some explanation for what follows:

These are compositions from journals kept decades 1948-1968, a few solid fragments typed up, published out of context, not exactly poems: journal notations put together conveniently, a mental turn-on printed across the border by long hair youthful exiles disunited from these states by the war of sighs and spears.

-AG March 30, 1968

Personally, I'd rather get hit by the sigh.  No, we all know which war Ginsberg's referring to.  But it's an amusing note; "mental turn-on" just gets me.    

So these aren't poems...exactly.  Well, they kind of are.  At least the last two of the three sections (Understand This is a Dream and Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake) could be read as poems.  The first section is almost journalistic, a comical inside scoop of a fish out of water--in this case, an FBI infiltrator caught in the fracas of a radical gathering of the Jewish Socialist Party.  My favorite part occurs when Ginsberg, high on Napthaline fumes, entreats the FBI man to remain with the group: "Smell it & get high.  Maybe we'll all get the Answer that way.  Don't give up the Ship."  (I wonder if Ginsberg knew he was capitalizing "answer" and "ship" when he said that).  It's a fun read to say the least, offering readers a vantage not only for the time period, but for Ginsberg's psychology.  The same thing could be said for every section in this slim volume.  What's more, there are some beautiful, striking lines, as in the last part of the second section: 

"the cocks crowing/ in the street./ Dawn truck/ what is the 

          question?

Do I need sleep, now that there's light in the window?

I'll go to sleep. Signing off until/ the next idea/ the moving 

          van arrives empty

at the Doctor's house full of Chinese furniture."  

(Pg. 9)

And in the third section: (I want to crib this one)

"That which pushes upward

               does not come back."

(Pg. 35).  

I'd invite anyone to check this one out.  I mean, you won't be able to check it out.  But feel free to examine it in NMSU's special archives.  It's an odd book, and I don't think you'll find any of this in a Norton anthology. But that's what gives it intrigue and demands our attention.  

Next time we'll be looking at a fairly obscure piece: & I dreamt I shot arrows into my Amazon bra by Piero Heliczer.  For great poetry you won't find anywhere else, fish as the wise do.  

-Paul French

Reviews Start Tomorrow!

Greetings from the special collection archives.  NMSU has a store of rare books of poetry acquired through the Gotham purchase and today marked my first chance to feel out the trove.  On the fourth floor of Branson Library there’s a small room set aside for viewing the books; you can look, you can touch, but you can’t take them with you.  None of the books can be removed from the building, at least not by your humble blogger.  No flash photography; in fact, no photography at all—otherwise, those copyright laws can get thorny.  So armed with pen & pad, excuse me (no pens allowed), pencil and pad, I began poring over some of the rare editions for which I’ll be posting short descriptions throughout the week.  So at long last, tomorrow this bookish blog sets out in earnest.  I’ll begin with several autographed copies residing in the Gotham collection.  First, a familiar face: on the morrow, it’s Allen Ginsberg’s Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals (1968).

Preface:

During 1974 the NMSU Library purchased a large portion of the book stock of the Gotham Book Mart in New York. Frances Stelloff founded the Gotham Book Mart in New York in 1920 and the collection reflects her interests — poetry, literature, the theater and fine arts. Several thousand volumes, including all of Miss Stelloff's personal copies, were placed in Special Collections. Many of the titles are first editions signed by such authors as W.H. Auden, William Burroughs, e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Diane Wakoski, and Tennessee Williams.  --From an NMSU newsletter written by Dean Charles Townley , April 1997.