Customer Reviews

Eternity in a Grain of Sand : The Most Perfect Silence of Jollyroger.com Poetry

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Only one person wrote the poems. Raft and Notthingham are just pseudonyms for McGucken. There has been an article online for years that admits this. I suspect that story from the Tar Heel about 'Jennifer Gross' reading the poems to her roommate is also part of his fantasy world. His poems are poorly crafted, and the sentiments cranky.

...

Pentambs do not a decent poem make
especially when it's written like it's fake.

The crew at Jolly Roger seem to confuse classicism with iambic pentameter. Considering that their title here comes from William Blake, that contention is patently absurd. Blake wrote long, sprawling lines, using pentameter, hexameter and all the other meters imaginable, including (ohmygod!) free verse. As did another classic poet, Whitman. Of course if, like the crew at Jolly Roger, one doesn't explore beyond the "Songs of Innocene," the complexity of Blake's patterns, not to mention his blatant disrespect for other men's systems, one will miss this point entirely.

The crew's disregard -- indeed, resentnik-style hatred -- for literary theory shines through in these poems, but, again, this is patently absurd, given Blake's highly theoretical later works. Literary theory, in fact, dates from the time of Aristotle, and all of the crew's heros not only used it but embraced it, many of them calling on current theory to justify their aesthetic efforts.

Nor did many of the poets of previous ages use archaic diction. All of them, like the best poets of our time, used and expanded their contemporary language. Jollyroger's hero, Shakespeare, wrote plays steeped in an elevated venacular. The crew, however, confuses elevated diction for archaisms. Inversion does a bad poem create.

The crew gets two stars for effort, and because their attempt to revive formal concerns is noble. Their ideas of what "formal" means, however, are limited. It does not mean idolizing other poet's forms. One must go further. That is the canon's only dictate.

The manifesto at jollyroger.com is ambitious in its calls to usher in a new literary renaissance based on classics, where words mean things, in order to clear away the "postmodernist fog." As a fan of many of the classical works name-dropped by Drake/Eliot like Twain, Rand, and Shakespeare, I'd hoped to find some impressive, clear works of art seeking great, immutable truths (I sympathize with Drake's disgust at the Jerry Springer/surviror/corporate music values pervading pop culture and the foggy writing this often leaves in its wake.)

Unfortunately, what we get are awkward verses with predictable rhymes, leaden line breaks, and tortured grammatical arrangements designed only to place the appropriate rhyming word at the end of the line (did this guy not even learn what "rhyme bound" means? Either this guy is thick, or his much hated Princeton professors are the worst lit teachers on the planet.)

Embarrassingly bad mechanics and structure aside, the content of Eliot/Drake's poetry is the real disappointment. Rather than the deep insights we were promised, in the vein of Melville, and Shakespeare, what we primarily get are trite attacks on "gen-X" culture, liberal media, degenerate boomers, women who've slighted poor misunderstood Drake, professors and publishers who have failed to recognized his greatness, the stupidity of college, and horrible, horrible feminists. Drake/Eliot has cited Rush Limbaugh as a big inspiration, and indeed, Drake does a good job of promoting the resentments of that gluttonous drug-addicted baby-boomer (Limbaugh)-despite having declared elsewhere to despise drug addicted boomers and their degenerate, intoxicated ideas.

This is the core of Drake/Eliot's downfall as an artist. He may be correct to an extent in despising feminist academics who reduce literature through their narrow political filters. But Drake has become--by fighting the tar-baby--what he hates, and has created "art" that is fueled and filtered by--not human spirit, love, truth or beauty--but on narrow resentment politics that seeks to lump things in broad labeled categories. He's just another control freak hawking dogma and calling it art. Dogma is always better served by the Sermon format.

It is sad, because the stated ambition is noble--to overcome the ignorance and sloppy, intellectual laziness that pervades a degenerate "just do it" culture. Seeking to create art with higher values is admirable. But what Drake has done is just air his neurosis with girls, his anger at academics who rejected him, his loathing of his school and its President, and spew the most clichéd rhetoric lifted right out of AM radio. He's even so delusionally arrogant as to have stated that his failure to get published (outside of vanity presses) is a liberal conspiracy. Yeah, right--we've all seen the shelves teaming with conservative books. The difference is, they're actually well written.

Rush Limbaugh--one of Drake's stated idols--is a hoot to listen to, but his resentful, name calling divisive hate-based politics doesn't make for good art, literature or poetry any more than does PC liberal historical revisionist feminist dogma. What, does Drake think Shakespeare was pondering Liberal vs Conservative when he wrote Macbeth, or was he writing an indictment against the arrogance of blind lust for personal power--the "Universal Truth" that pride goes before a fall? (not exactly something that is the personal domain of either side of our current political spectrum!)

Avoid Drake's "poetry" unless you just want to wet your pants laughing at the juxtaposition of this man's arrogant manifesto and the reality of the drek he sees as the poetry of a new renaissance.

Since Drake so loves the Sonnet form, I see it as only fitting to summarize this review in a quick sonnet I dashed off for him:

FOR DRAKE, WHO LOVED SONNETS, HATED LIBERALS,
AND FANCIED HIMSELF A BRILLIANT, MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST.

Politics and art don't really mix,
but you mix them anyway to mask the pain
you feel at failure, like a junkie's fix
you shoot up rhyming hate into your vein.

You think you own the truth and rise above
those whose art finds truth and love in everyone;
embrace the war-like hawk and shun the dove,
spiritually your pen is like a gun.

The rhythm in your verse is just plain bad,
stale rhymes structured by a rattled Yoda--
you're like that German artist who went mad
and composed the sounds of war as his art's coda.

We know you by the company you keep,
regurgitating Limbaugh like a sheep.

--PJ Church

Simply put, this is a great poetry anthology for our generation. I met Drake Raft while he was out filming his "What is Your Favorite Great Book" documentary on 6th Street here in Austin, and I had I read this book, I would have probably given its title as the answer. I greatly enjoyed the fluidity of the poetry, how the strict structure never compromised the meaning nor aesthetics. And there's a subtle, yet powerful messages which echos throughout the pages, along the lines of "to he who has, more shall be give, and to he who has not, even that shall be taken away." I felt like a lot of the poems had been written about me; it at times made me defensive, and at other times I wish they had been written for me. I especially liked "Poetry for a Pristine Girl," "In the Name of Freedom," "Eternity in Grain of Sand," and "The Most Perfect Silence."

This poetry collection is another fine addition to the "crew's" renaissance. Becket's verse is perhaps the most refined as regarding prosodic elements, while Drake's subject matter and tone tend to be darker and thus more interesting (for me).

The general theme of this book is a renaissance, achieved via a revival of classical ideals and art forms, and thus it is fitting that the "Great God Abosolute" is consistently paid hommage to with a fairly adept iambic pentameter throughout the collection.

I felt that I was somewhat older than the intended audience for many of the poems, but the ones concerning the interplay between science, religion, and philosophy were my favorites, as well as the ones devoted to the silicon technology upon which all modern literature rests.

It is a good seafaring book, and if you're not on a beach when you read it, it'll take you there. I also enjoyed "The Most Perfect Silence."

I was introduced to McGucken's poetry a couple weeks ago, when I read "In The Name of Freedom" on the Wall Street Journal's website. It was passionate and profound, and I have since read a lot more of McGucken's poetry. It seems he is Drake Raft and Becket Knottinghman (after studying jollyroger.com), which makes him quite prolific. While some of the poetry falls a bit short of what it could and should be, I'd take him as our poet-laureate over eminem any day.

I loved this book for its profundity of spirit, for its marriage of rhyme to reason to the deeper, everlasting, permanent things.
This is simply the best modern poetry book I've read to date.

As a girl, perhaps I am in better position to judge the love poems, written by men, and they work. The iambic pentameter which pervades throughout perhaps got a bit old, but it seems that the crew was sticking to a method they set out with--not an easy task. If one approaches the poems as a critic, or with a postmodern chip on one's shoulder, they will be sourly disappointed, or perhaps exhilarated, as postmodernists need things to deconstruct.

Three cheers for the three sonneteers--this is the poetry that will blossom when the postmodern inquisition relents.

Terrible, mawkish trash posing as a return to some sort of "conservative" aesthetic; in short, hallmark-card level tripe aimed at Generation X.

Visit jollyroger.com, and you'll see that the only thing that matches McGucken's lack of talent is his bloated, gassy ego.

-Autolycus

As the past is prologue, these poems are ahead of their time. Beyond postmodernism, beyond pretentiousness, beyond the meaninglessness and emptiness that is the hallmark of today's literature. I was mesmerized, reading these late one winter night not long ago. I was reminded I wasn't alone in wishing for quieter, deeper, gentler, more romantic times. Sign me up for the renaissance.

This book reads like no other. So many sonnets telling the truths of life. Friendship, love, love lost, and everything else that goes along with life. I've read this book many times over, and I find soemthing new each time. Some of the sonnets are just so beautiful, they alone make up for the price of the book. At least, I think so.