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Hotel Imperium: Poems (Contemporary Poetry (Univ of Georgia Paperback))

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I loved the poems in "Hotel Imperium", which manage to be topical, witty, passionate, tender, and elegiac-sometimes all within a few stanzas. Rachel Loden speaks to-or channels-Richard Nixon and (Little) Richard Penniman, Svetlana Stalin and Marilyn Monroe; I would call these poems political, but only in the sense that Auden meant when he wrote "There is no such thing as the State/And no one exists alone." As for the style, I hardly know what to call it except "bebop Augustan," if that's any help. Read the poems yourself.

Rachel Loden's HOTEL IMPERIUM is the best kind of political satire: passionate, wildly comic, and aimed at the language and mentality which make possible the folly and cruelties of the twentieth century. The poems are witty, as the poems of Donne, Dryden and Pope are witty--agile, musical, possessing an elegance of form that is put to use in the service of this poet's moral indignation, which often manifests as irreverence. "She is not there, except her body/ is the specter in her Living/Underwear." Or "EMPIRE'S the thing/ that totters forward with its mouse/ears on, paterfamilias/ of so many little feet." Like Swift, she is often savage, while at the same time exhuberantly clever: "I remain the rhapsodist of cunning, blithering/songbird of iniquity, and while-u-wait/ the law I love moves through here/ like a wall of fire, and it is leaving/ everything exactly as it stands, and/ saving nothing in its wake.

The poet's enterprise is weighty, and though the poems are a romp, beauty has a place here as well. Take the following from "The Rowboat at Vladivostok:" "Now your voice is full/ of what it was to leave the Marianas. on that morning. Antares graying in the sky,/ the tradewinds blowing through the porpoises.

I could not put this book down, once I started it. Then I went back and re-read at random, for pure pleasure. Loden has accomplished a rare feat--she has taken on the enormous foolishness behind evil and harnessed it in these tight, energetic, and graceful poems.

"The heart's a mouth" running a "rivulet//of chatter." But make no mistake about it. Rachel Loden may be talking as fast as she can but what she has to say and how she says it is neither idle nor trivial. The poems in HOTEL IMPERIUM are brilliant, sassy, boldly irreverant, disarmingly subversive. Nothing and no one, from Chinese terra cotta warriors in Xian to Richard Nixon, from Dead Sea Scrolls to Elvis Presley, escapes her relentless yet "amiable eye"-an eye honed by a keen intelligence determined to cut everything down to size as it stalks and demystifies the "irrational exuberance" which seems to afflict our end-of-the-millennium world. In the HOTEL IMPERIUM of Rachel Loden, guests "sleep uneasy." The "terrible beauty" of William Butler Yeats undergoes a stunning metamorphosis/incarnation as Cruella de Ville: a "terrible beauty/is bored" while she plots "on her red/bedside telephone." The revenant of Psalm 23 becomes a "beautiful murderess" asking, "Who is the victim? That is so hard to say/Male or female, mineral or vegetable" as she draws "a hot bath/in the presence of her [my] enemies." Indeed, the HOTEL is a "break and enter paradise" in which Loden, "rhapsodist of cunning," "songbird of iniquity," doing time among "plump/and ripening perfidies" and "masterful deaths," test markets "our epic innocence." Reader beware: The poems in HOTEL IMPERIUM will crawl under your skin as they speak their way to your heart.

Rachel Loden's HOTEL IMPERIUM is the best kind of political satire: passionate, wildly comic, and aimed at the language and mentality which make possible the folly and cruelties of the twentieth century. The poems are witty, as the poems of Donne, Dryden and Pope are witty--agile, musical, possessing an elegance of form that is put to use in service of this poet's moral indignation, which often manifests as irreverence: "She is not there, except her body/ is the specter in her Living/Underwear." (Lingerie Ads in the Sixties) or EMPIRE'S the thing/that totters forward with its mouse/ears on, paterfamilias/ of so many little feet. . .(Poetry and Sorrow in a "Right to Sing State.") Like Swift, she is often downright savage, while at the same time exhuberantly clever: "I remain/ the rhapsodist of cunning, blithering/ songbird of iniquity, and while-u-wait/the law I love moves through here/like a wall of fire, and it is leaving/everything exactly as it stands, and/saving nothing in its wake. (Revenge, Like Habanero Peppers)

Though the poet's enterprise is weighty, and the poems a romp, beauty has a place here as well. Take the following from "The Rowboat at Vladivostok:" "Now your voice is full/of what it was to leave the Marianas/on that morning, Antares graying in the sky,/the tradewinds blowing through the porpoises."

I could not put this book down, once I started it. Then I went back and re-read at random, for pleasure. Loden has accomplished a rare feat--she has taken on the enormous foolishness behind evil and harnessed it in these tight, wildly energetic and graceful poems.

Rachel Loden talks with the second half of the 20th Century using a wealth of tones, creating some of the smartest, most aesthetically pleasing, social poetry of our time. Interesting both in its subject matter and in its engagement of poetic structures, Hotel Imperium is a must read for anyone interested in what poetry can accomplish. This is truely the sort of poetry that presents the "news that stays news," where the voice of Richard Nixon can speak (from within others): "This is the new socialist brain. This is the statue / of Dzerzhinsky falling over. This is my wife Pat. / This is an ode to the Bratsk Hydroelectric Project. / And I just want to say [abort, retry, fail . . .] / / the kids, like all kids, love the little dog." --from "The Death of Checkers"

Rachel Loden's elegant writing transported me. I was challenged by the political and historical references, touched by her tenderness and reduced to giggles by her wry humor. This book is a "must read" for readers interested in American history and compelled by incisive writing.

This is more than a great collection of poems. It's the story of our century, compelling us to look beyond facile moral judgements and cliches to the cruelty, bewilderment and pleasure of our lives. Read it a few times and it will open your eyes.