Customer Reviews

And (American Poets Continuum)

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Michael Blumenthal's AND is that rarity among recent books of poetry: a book that functions on two distinct levels of literacy. First it engages the reader aurally, the high lyricism lilting and soothing; next it invites the reader to, at his or her leisure, explore the glades and backwaters of its world by defining words and connecting ideas in a chain that afterwards binds the reader to self-reflection. At times Blumenthal's lyrics, and his delicious juxtaposition of ideas ("Nothing more remarkable has ever smelled of the stars than this," "semicircles of perambulating wings and hoots") seem almost chimerical, but when an author takes 12 years to write a book of poetry, even the improbable becomes likely. His language is (sometimes distractingly) latinate and intellectual--possibly a result of his legal background--but he counters with a poem like "And There Was No More to Give the World," where he says, "in the bayous of Louisiana, the mix was ready to welcome feud victims and alligators." Some readers may find Blumenthal's poetry overly wordy and even sentimental, but he speaks in a clear voice that is both entertaining and intellectually stimulating, and poetry needs more poets like this.

Michael Blumenthal's recent book AND attempts to evoke a Whitmanesqe sense of life, full and exuberant, using an Eliot-like, or rather modern, grasp of vocabulary and syntax. At first glance, the occasional four plus syllable Latinate word seemed out of place, pretentious maybe, though in the last poem, "And the World After All Is a Good and Gentle Place," I thought, perhaps after reading the word "tintinnabulation", these words are strange, strange in the way of the world, and here it didn't matter really what the word meant because poetry can be expressed without denotation, thus without language. The foreign word, though not fully comprehended, still communicates euphonic or cacophonic syllables, metrical or improvised rhythm, constant or various, among other elements of the sound of poetry. This particular poem, which can be seen and heard on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z7MgIIyFXY, expresses modern Whitman, though Blumenthal deliberately states "I am not Whitman..." toward the end, and even Whitman was not himself.

Aside from the prologue, which in its definition-like structure alludes to several genuine connotations of the word, particularly "its lust for listmaking" which forever holds its place in American literature with Emerson's essay "The Poet", but in its italicized monologue seems distant and not quite together (I've never known anyone to feel "revivified", and if they did, they did not say this inexpressive word), the poems move very pleasantly, from one to the next, one person said, like a piece of classical music. At least, this is the idea of it. It seems like one person one time said, "In poetry, one can only come so close," and one might agree; in Blumenthal's book, he comes close to the idea several times. Two of my favorite poems are the last two in the book, as he embarks on his long "and-ish" good-bye.

One final thing, "And There Is So Much Ink in the World. And So Much Shit." follows a long, never-ending line of contemporary poems written by English professor / poets about the bad poetry of the world. I find this phenomenon very interesting, and I find the line, at least most recently, beginning with Kenneth Koch's "Fresh Air". The thing I like about Blumenthal's poetry is that, compared to many contemporary poets, he shows a little more restraint, and a genuine appreciation for the words he is using. In fact, in this poem he seems to be satirizing the talkative nature of some of the poems in the current scene: "meanwhile there was so much ink waiting / to be spent, so many trees to cut down, to hell with the screech owl / and the pileated woodpecker, there were stories that needed to be / told, every I crying out its I into the world...". Blumenthal adds a fresh variety, and ambition.

After dipping my toes into Blumenthal's book of verse and casually wading across his first poem/prologue "And" in which he summarizes all the uses of that said conjunction - how it can "simply introduce the next thought, or the next item on a list, or suggest that there is more to the story" - I wondered if I could really call this poetry. I thought to myself, "This guy's just simply listing what he thinks about an insignificant little word - who cares?" But even as I continued to the next page and the next poem, I wondered if I was missing something - if Blumenthal's seemingly trouble-free words do more than what first meets the eye. Critics have accused Blumenthal of sentimentality, with language that is sometimes too stuffy (i.e. "when it comes to amour, we urge what we can/ out of the resonant silence, the forced tendresse, the dress lifted passionately..."), his terminology too restrictive ("prearranged for davening" and "pileated woodpecker"), and even, too an extent, too philosophical and vague ("what could be better for us than to simply allow the voice to speak,/ whenever it wishes, its little sympathy of regrets and inadequacies?"), etc. etc. and so on and so forth. Like any good poet, though, Blumenthal chooses his words carefully and their stifling flowery-ness is completely intentional. Daringly, Blumenthal dives headfirst into the pool of past exhaustingly romantic poetry and rather than swimming along on the surface with those other poets who have been accused of sentimentality (i.e. Whitman, Frost, Joyce Kilmer), Blumenthal sinks to new depths. The themes and messages hidden underneath the murky exterior of his poems jump out at you ever so subtly and force you to look inward, remembering forgotten things about yourself, nature, God, love, sex, fate, free will, and really -above all else- the possibility of something more. You will find that "and," that deceptively plain three-character conjunction, "[carries] many times its own weight," "has its own priorities," and makes "whatever has been said thus far [suffer] from congenital incompleteness." Certainly, it should be noted that Blumenthal has much in common with the title of his work.

Blumenthal's And proved a much different read than I expected. Initially, I had to overlook the "AND"s that screamed to my attention after his first poem; however, I have to give the poet credit for bringing a simple conjunction to life, accessing the combination of ideas that definitely reflect Whitman's work. The more I read, the more involved I felt with subject matter--Blumenthal continuously brings subjects of love, nature, divinity, sex, animals (birds), to full circle to explain the ups and downs of human nature, i.e. human relationships. At first, I felt as though I were reading William Blake--like the times I read without cognition and I feel that Blake is rolling over in his grave, laughing "Ahahaha, you silly uninteligable human, how dare you try to understand me!" Blumenthal repetitively uses elevated, almost inflated language that sometimes distracted me from the actual content. And that's the main issue I have with the book--until a specific mind-blowing image or ingenious line completely overtakes me, I feel distracted and almost sleepy with some of the language. However, the deeper I got into the book, the more involved I found myself. His repetition of phrases, such as "sort of...out of sorts, " etc. bring such amazing emphasis to small, subtle ideas. Most of all, I found his creation poems brilliant with characterizing God, Adam, Eve, etc. in such bizarre ways. The strongest poem I found is "And the Army of the Separated Shall Drown in Tears," as Blumenthal uses little punctuation and short snippets of details to create a strong sense of separation. Details such as "Cracker Jack wrappers and Dr. Pepper cans", "and Berkshire Transit and Long Island Railroad and Delta Shuttle", along with "industry for therapists and counselors and support groups" bring the title and point of the book--AND--to completion. This poem left me thinking, I had a wonderful time a wonderful time a wonderful wonderful time.

Michael Blumenthal's And is at once celebratory, sensual, and sad. Blumenthal uses images of nature to explore numerous pleasant themes, including love and romance, but underlying many of his poems is a powerful sense of melancholy uncertainty about the world in which we live, the larger universe of which it is a part, and the mysterious powers at work beyond our experience. Furthermore, the book is very readable, if not immediately elucidatory. The poems are written in a soothing tone and rhythm that relax the reader and resist the analytical eye while they surround one in the feelings and sensations of specific moments and events--A wonderful book to go to bed with that also bears the scrutiny of the critic.

The poems in And put me to sleep. It was as though the pace was so slow that I was lulled into a dreamstate. Each poem I read, I felt more and more tired. I think this was the case because the pace of the poems seems so very slow. I was suprised to find them to be slow because, normally, poetry with little punctuation reads very quickly for me. These poems just barely pulled me from line to line. Because the poems were broken up into long wordy sentences, I was shocked they read so very slow. I think the poems were slowed by the compound grammatical structure of the sentences. There were places where the language seemed lofty or pretentious not because the word worked, but it seemed like the words were chosen to make the reader look them up. There were places where I would have an emotional response to a line, but I notice after having a few days to simmer on the poems they have been forgotten. They are lost in my mind with no reference other than the word "And."

When I first picked up the poetry collection, And, I was excited and the first "prosetry" style poem entitled "And" grabbed my attention. The idea of the single word "and" being so powerful was very intriguing. But once I started to read the collection of poems I was surprisingly let down by it. Although, Blumenthal weaved together beautiful images I was left wanting something a bit more real to his thoughts. The poems used beautiful imagery to describe a world that Blumenthal questions and wants more from. In most of his poems I felt as if there was an image or two that I loved and felt was amazing but then he tried to link it to something completely different that I could barely, if at all, find the similarities. Most of the poems consisted of lovers, birds, stars, and space of some sort. I felt while I was getting emotion I was not getting REAL emotion among the poems but just emotion described through nature and love like many poets have done before. One poem that I did thoroughly enjoy out of the whole collection was "And the Army of the Separated Shall Drown in Tears". I think I enjoyed this poem so much because it was a realistic topic that he described beautifully but yet captured the raw emotion of the pain the army can cause for someone in it or for the loved ones. I also enjoyed that he did not use punctuation in this piece and I think that pushed the excitement and intensity of the piece. I wish that more of the book would have been in this style with realistic topics not with flowery images to describe the harsh reality of the world.

First off I would like to say that I like the idea of him focusing on the word "and" in his poems. And is a very commmon word that everyone uses from day to day and that is why I thought it was interesting. I thought it was neat that he started each of the titles of his poems off with the word "and" and named the book AND. Although I liked these aspects, I did not enjoy reading the poems. I felt the poems were very slow paced and never stated a point within them. Different kinds of birds were used in his poems and I felt he over used the birds because birds have already been used in other poets work, which were much better written. I did like the imagery provided with the poem that used the woodpecker pecking. Overall I did not find the poems enjoyable. Sorry.

CJT

AND threatens the average

AND flustered me within my fleeced blanket confusion

AND speaks of God, sex, joy, sex, gods, regret, sex, God, puberty, arts

AND transcends my memories, long ago adventures, emotions

AND challenges vocabulary of a well-read, well-educated college writing student

AND pushed my perspective of poetry intriguing poetry, romantic poetry, poetry to romance with

AND produces classroom debate: love? or hate?

The book came on time, as a matter of fact it came early, and was in excellent condition.