From Publishers Weekly
"Filling innocent pastry with rubies"Aas in her masterfully askew poem "Free Refill"AMlinko is at the forefront of a wave of quirky, emotional gesturists currently turning New York City into an off-campus outpost of Brown University's MFA program. Guided by the clear-eyed, big-heartedness of Frank O'Hara and the sensual veracity of Bernadette Mayer, and yet referentially scaled for the "compassionate conservative" mid-to-late 1990s, Mlinko toasts twentysomething meta-urban intellectual sprawl with an "apple-banana-coconut juice" and takes us over a preponderance of overpasses and byways. These unabashed lyrics, with an almost aerobically-trained muscularity of phrase, are peppered with used-CD shops and bookstore visits of college town peregrination, while remaining free of ivy-covered preciousness or any easy condemnation of the banal: "There's snow on every chainlink at the padlocked/ basketball court and cursive Walgreen's logo, and like the fan in your waterglass/ reduced from fancy restaurant ceiling it seems an illusion, these/ propellers on the wings. High wind delayed takeoff, lake effect hits as we land etc./ I don't think about death except in movie theaters." Clearly sidestepping the insistence on formal, performative and typographical innovation of several generations of experimentalist forebears, Mlinko presents an "I" of amused and crafty befuddlement, and parades a host of "types" through its sincere and touching irresolution: "a city girl who compartmentalizes her scrutiny", "clean-cut men and expensive girlfriends" "the shelves in vests" "one-man-band boyfriend" "Old ships-on-his-shirts" localize her speaker in a world delicately between anthropology and people watching. In the more thematically constrained poems, Mlinko's wider power really shines. The deliberately O'Haran "City Story," an account of her own poem "Pop Song" and its odd rise to popularity on the Boston music scene and "Poem Bejeweled with Proper Nouns"Awith a dramatis personae from Heloise to LisztAdemonstrate a conceptual reach that establishes Mlinko as one of the most exciting American poets under 40.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
(columbus Day) Charades
Afterhours
Anniversary
Aqua Neon
Bigtime Printing
Brief
Cafe Algiers
Christina Dreaming In The Next Room
City Story
The Difference Between A Ghost And An Angel
Editorial For Compound Eye #2
Face Painted On A Brick
Falling Three Stories
Free Refill
Happiness In Harness
Immediate Orgy And Audit
Information
Just Dump Me On The Palace Steps
Lush Life
Matinee
N + 495
'no One Shone There'
The North End
Ode To Architecture: Daedelus & Icarus
On The Fly
Paranormal Writing
Patricia & Chris's Annual Summer Solstice Party
The Phenomenon Of Emigrating Brides
Poem Bejeweled With Proper Nouns
Poor Man's Lily For Bill
Pop Song
Salute
Spokesperson For A Lowly Ambition
Stacking Values
There Is A Fabulous House
These Representations Of Peacetime
The Traveller
Valuable Loathing Immortally Superstitious
Wet Book
World News Tonight
World News Tonight: 2. Providence/lambskinned
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
A Best Book of 1999 -- Publishers Weekly
Boston, Providence, New York, Mlinko is a city poet for whom the city is fresh and light-filled, as it is when we leave a matine, pleasurably guilty to have spent the afternoon in a movie. Her work has two qualities that cannot be faked: a sense of humor and life itself. -- POETRY PROJECT NEWSLETTER, June 1999
Mlinko's first collection of poems, Matines, is that rare monster, a book that treats everyday events like operas-- full of passion, boastfulness and crashing music. "I am in Heaven/ never more so than when I take off my ring/ to make love to my husband like Heloise,/ which she didn't have to," Mlinko writes in "Poem Bejeweled with Proper Nouns." She's a gifted worker in simile: the instrument panel of the little propeller plane in "The Traveler" is covered with "gauges exposed in dyed light like a/ headbanger's catscan!" Deftly chosen verbs ("shadows differ on the wing") and lush Shakespearean chiaroscuro multiply the emotional effects, which are to Mlinko's poetry as special effects are to Star Wars. -- Time Out New York, April 1999
Reading the poems in Ange Mlinko's debut collection Matines, one is reminded of something Robert Frost once said: "Inspiration is mostly hostility towards something." Mlinko demonstrates the kind of predatory vision Frost refers to; full of appetite and aggression, her poems take the repeated stance of circling, stalking, and finally closing in on their subjects. Mlinko works like a hunter with a seeing eye. There's a quiet ferocity in Mlinko's easy fluency of detail, and although there are a few weak poems in the collection, the best work in Matines has all the force and play of a good Frank O'Hara poem. With a kind of instinctual rigor that is both admirable and rare in a young poet, Mlinko manages to yank poetry from expectation and carry it forward with daring and stealth. -- Rain Taxi, June 1999
Afterhours
Anniversary
Aqua Neon
Bigtime Printing
Brief
Cafe Algiers
Christina Dreaming In The Next Room
City Story
The Difference Between A Ghost And An Angel
Editorial For Compound Eye #2
Face Painted On A Brick
Falling Three Stories
Free Refill
Happiness In Harness
Immediate Orgy And Audit
Information
Just Dump Me On The Palace Steps
Lush Life
Matinee
N + 495
'no One Shone There'
The North End
Ode To Architecture: Daedelus & Icarus
On The Fly
Paranormal Writing
Patricia & Chris's Annual Summer Solstice Party
The Phenomenon Of Emigrating Brides
Poem Bejeweled With Proper Nouns
Poor Man's Lily For Bill
Pop Song
Salute
Spokesperson For A Lowly Ambition
Stacking Values
There Is A Fabulous House
These Representations Of Peacetime
The Traveller
Valuable Loathing Immortally Superstitious
Wet Book
World News Tonight
World News Tonight: 2. Providence/lambskinned
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
A Best Book of 1999 -- Publishers Weekly
Boston, Providence, New York, Mlinko is a city poet for whom the city is fresh and light-filled, as it is when we leave a matine, pleasurably guilty to have spent the afternoon in a movie. Her work has two qualities that cannot be faked: a sense of humor and life itself. -- POETRY PROJECT NEWSLETTER, June 1999
Mlinko's first collection of poems, Matines, is that rare monster, a book that treats everyday events like operas-- full of passion, boastfulness and crashing music. "I am in Heaven/ never more so than when I take off my ring/ to make love to my husband like Heloise,/ which she didn't have to," Mlinko writes in "Poem Bejeweled with Proper Nouns." She's a gifted worker in simile: the instrument panel of the little propeller plane in "The Traveler" is covered with "gauges exposed in dyed light like a/ headbanger's catscan!" Deftly chosen verbs ("shadows differ on the wing") and lush Shakespearean chiaroscuro multiply the emotional effects, which are to Mlinko's poetry as special effects are to Star Wars. -- Time Out New York, April 1999
Reading the poems in Ange Mlinko's debut collection Matines, one is reminded of something Robert Frost once said: "Inspiration is mostly hostility towards something." Mlinko demonstrates the kind of predatory vision Frost refers to; full of appetite and aggression, her poems take the repeated stance of circling, stalking, and finally closing in on their subjects. Mlinko works like a hunter with a seeing eye. There's a quiet ferocity in Mlinko's easy fluency of detail, and although there are a few weak poems in the collection, the best work in Matines has all the force and play of a good Frank O'Hara poem. With a kind of instinctual rigor that is both admirable and rare in a young poet, Mlinko manages to yank poetry from expectation and carry it forward with daring and stealth. -- Rain Taxi, June 1999
