Customer Reviews

Lovely, Raspberry: Poems

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

 

 

There is an uneasiness about comedic poetry, that it is neither poetry nor comedy; that their aims are too different to be bred together, a bastardization of pigs and petunias, but nothing could be further from the truth. Poetry, like comedy, makes the world strange again; it breaks through the quotidian whitewashing, making us alive to smack talking worms and the fun of saying the word "banana". Poetry, like comedy, is about misdirection; the getting you to look one way, then surprising you from behind.

Few poets understand the serious business of sacred hilarity better than Aaron Belz. There is a wryness running through the entire book, from the title to the authorial photo (its preening stoicism in knowingly bathetic grandiosity). The first poem is titled "Direction" but in its pseudo-mathematical tri-irregularity it confounds any rational solution. It begins:

You expect me to tell you about the interior of the room
in which I'm typing this, and connect that to my feelings,
but I'd rather tell you about the interior of your room
and use that as a symbol for something less abstract.

But this is nixed in the very next line with: "Actually, here's a better idea." and ends with the speaker as a dime store manager and the reader as a movie director.

This comedic misdirection makes for a lot of missed jokes if you're looking for a certain type of poetry. Perhaps the worse fate is the one who must endure the dreariness of explaining the jokes to others. But do not mistake me, dear reader, this is no pony of one trick. If you cannot find what you are looking for in "Lovely, Raspberry" then you aren't looking hard enough. There is romance (La Vie) and lost romance (Alberto VO5); you could get lost in the philosophy of "Reinventing the Wheel" and the Ars Poetica of "Asking Al Gore About the Muse". If you are a collector of lines, you will find plenty with which to line your pockets.

"Lovely, Raspberry" is full of math word problems and unfinished jokes. It is the challenge of otherness and the thinking man's silliness. Few books will expand your ability to see the world and chuckle anew.

"Lovely, Raspberry" is a book without precedent. Except for "The Bird-Hoverer", Aaron Belz' other collection. Other precedents may include Dada, the Beats, Protestant Hymns, neon green windbreakers, Costello sans Abbott, Johns both Donne and Ashbery, and so on. It's a book with some precedents.

Belz commands language like a comedian, and makes it surprising and delightful. Like comedians he makes language strange. Unlike comedians, he also makes language beautiful. He climbs into folds of ambiguity and sets up a house and garden there, between green hills of meaning.

Another reviewer has mentioned that the cover is beautiful. That is true. Everything else that reviewer said is wrong. He said that the book is frivolous. I think what he meant is that it is light. Or if he had read the book for the purpose of delight, that's what he would have meant.

If you like to be delighted, why would you not purchase this book?

You can be philosophical without ruining someone's day. "Lovely, Raspberry" is a collection of poetry from Aaron Beltz, designed to be light in nature with a powerful message lying beneath. "Lovely, Raspberry" is a fine set of poetry, and a solid addition to any collection. "Smocks": "Bella et her smock, what had paint on it,"/grumbled Ferocio. He had been/omitting cadavers all night//Trial by Ferocio, epoxy nightmare (feminism).

This is a great collection of poems -- and, like all of Belz's work, it can be read just as easily for belly laughs as it can for its intelligent, tender, and radiant engagement with the contemporary avant-garde. It's really difficult to make poetry that is both funny and that maintains an integrity of craft. "Lovely, Raspberry" manages both, as it celebrates the everyday while revealing all that is wonderfully strange about it.