Customer Reviews

The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Poets, Penguin)

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Mark Yakich has one of the very best websites among modern poets -- drawings, photos, examples of his work. This example comes from "Peeling Potatoes" and also appears on his website:

PRETZELS COME TO AMERICA

Legend has it that Houdini, the son of a rabbi, picked his first lock
Because he wanted a piece of boysenberry pie his mother was keeping

Dead-bolted in the pantry. A busted closet means trouble. Doesn't it
Seem that as soon as you get one thing fixed in the house something else

Falls apart? Say, I might as well punish myself for Mommy's cancer,
Because who else is there at the foot of the bed to discomfit. Bedrooms

Really are nice in all-white. Sheets, curtains, lamps, laser-white metal.
The most important place for a favorite painting is opposite the bed:

The last impression you see at night, the first when you rise. Upstairs
The house has an expiration date, just as Henry James did. Poor Henry

Was criticized for not liking dumb people. He avoided women especially
Because one lady had fallen in love with him and then committed suicide.

They say that before Henry died he thought he was Napoleon. And it
Turned out that he did know a lot about Napoleon, just not the right sorts

Of things that made dying easier. Houdini, James, Napoleon. Neither
Houdini nor James liked to be called by their first names. But Napoleon

Loved his first name so much he destroyed many lives in order to
Keep it popular. Three great men, three great holes. Like in the pretzel.

Medieval monks gave pretzels to children who had memorized their Bible
Verses and prayers. To reinforce a lesson: the three holes in the pretzel

Represent the Christian trinity. Today there are 28 different kinds of
Pretzels in the world and that number continues, in fits and starts, to grow.

***

I've been following his work for the past three years, ever since I read his letter in "Poetry". His definition of "poetry" resonates with me:

"Experience is a wonderful thing. But the experience of a poem and the experience of "lived life" are not the same wonderful thing. Writing poems should not be thought of as a process of translation, if only because that idea leads too many readers to wonder, "Those were some pretty words about [love, mother, porcupines, etc.], but what really was the experience [antecedent, story] behind the poem?" The experience of a poem is to make the reader experience both language and life, but mostly language!"

As a general reader, I find it almost impossible to review poetry. The language sings to me in this poem -- I've recited it aloud several times, and recorded it on my small tape recorder and played it back. Beyond the words, the rhythm appeals to me. I wonder if the breaks in the sentences represent the holes in pretzels? The "fits and starts" in the last line may confirm that.

I hope my analysis doesn't discourage readers from enjoying his work as much as I do.

Robert C. Ross, 2008

Mark Yakich, The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin, 2008)

I had meant to write a review of this book replete with quotes; in fact, I'd planned a review that was more than 50% quotes, simply because Mark Yakich plays with language in such wonderful ways. And yet I have found myself unable to write that review for the past week. So I guess, since I'm sitting here writing, I've abandoned that idea and will just give the standard book report.

Mark Yakich enjoys playing with language. The best way to figure out if someone's really serious about playing with language is to check the notes section of any given book. Yakich's is as readable as the rest of the book, and that is a wonderful thing. (Seriously, when you read this, just take the notes section as another poem.) This is even more interesting when you consider that the subject matter Yakich is addressing in this book is dark, almost uniformly so. War, depression, death, poverty, you name it, it's all here, and Yakich proves that his language play is incapable of including very black comedy indeed.

There's been a lot of stuff going around over the years about how poetry is dying because poets are out of touch with the real world, both in the subjects they choose to write about and in their use of language. Me, I've always been happy to contribute to that decline, since I am a fervent follower of the idea that poetry is defined as the elevation of language, and a zealot about the idea that "political poetry" is, ultimately, of worth in neither sphere. Upon reflection, after having read The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine, it strikes me as odd that there are such clear lines being drawn. No one uses elevated language for political poetry, so I've never really encountered anything that crosses the streams all that much to make a comparison. That has changed this year, both with Ben Lerner's Angle of Yaw and with this book. Both know how to do it right (though Yakich more so than Lerner), and both pull it off pretty well. But in both cases, that's also only a small part of the bigger picture, and that is another problem one often finds with political poets; there's no room for anything else. Yakich's palette is as wide and colorful as the world, even if every one of those colors seems to be overlaid with a bit of ash-grey. *** ½

This collection of poety is more political than his others. I wasn't expecting that, but it's still amazingly well-written.

Length:: 0:55 Mins

A veritable carnival of "good" "poetry." I don't know what Ukraine is however.