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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strong, Remarkable Poems I Read Over and Over, September 28, 1999
By A Customer
NOBODY'S HELL by Douglas Goetsch is filled with the kind ofpoetry I feel comfortable recommending to anyone. High school kids whowould never consider reading a poem are invited in by the every day language, the sense of humor and the way Goetsch accurately portrays the childhood of a brainy, never too cool kid living through his family's disintegration. Fellow poets will be drawn in by the subtle rhythms, the strong, logical narratives that move the reader through each poem naturally, without wasted motion or words, and Goetsch's uncanny eye that always seems to pick precise, perfect details that get to the heart of matters we all recognize but rarely take the time to examine.I go for the poems that are much more than a poet who likes to hear the sound of his own voice. In the opening piece, "Counting," a boy is walking along side a building, running his finger "in the grout/ till it grew hot and numb" counting bricks, floors, buildings, city blocks. We learn he comes from a family of counters: his brother counts cavities, his grandfather compounds daily interest and his father uses "numbers to predict/ when men are going to die." The poem gracefully turns at the start of its close with the unexpected yet inevitable line, "That's all any child wants: to count," and you sense that this boy hasn't felt like he's counted too often and you suspect that a number of the poems in this collection will watch this boy learning what counts and how he can matter in the world. In "Dark Morning" there's a power shortage and the boy's mother hands him a flashlight, tells him to help his father shave. The language is taut and simple like directions that even I can follow. The tension simmers as the boy shines this small spotlight on his father's face and comes to a boil with the penultimate line, "A face I can't ever remember touching." "Walking Wounded" made me remember how much trouble, how laugh out loud funny and how incredibly significant a b**er could be in high school. In the prose poem "Lawyer," despite the divorce lawyer's hesitancy, the narrator's mother brings him into the office and the boy hears things that can only be called cruel. The effect is like a good, clean hit in football that comes out of nowhere and leaves you on the ground stunned. When you go back to read it over again it is still hard to believe that the tiniest of movements, the briefest bits of conversation and a few choice details could add up to so much force. An adolescent is self immersed and tends to paint the world in broad black and white, instantly shifting, stripes. Goetsch gets the details, the feel of childhood and high school so dead on right that I'm fairly certain that things like balance and overview would spoil it. (And the Kirkus reviewer certainly didn't go to my school. No one bragged about high grades. Ever. Even now, I would rather have been, if not "the girl who f***ed " in "Northport," one of the guys who was lucky enough to hang out with her, or the younger dumber kid who could "kick the s**t" out of the brainy geeky narrator in "Rice." Yeah, even if you promised I would grow up and publish a book filled with so many compelling poems.) The second section follows the narrator through college, his move to NYC and his struggles with loneliness as he tries to create a place for himself. In "Such A Good Dancer," the poem that digs the deepest and moves me the most, the narrator loses his virginity, "Disgusted with myself-two years/ in college and still a virgin-I would/ stick my d**k in a girl and end that." Randi Muelbach is the girl and there's not a thing about her the narrator likes. He's on a mission and it is enough that she thinks he is a good dancer and would go with him to his room. I know, that doesn't seem too different than what any guy would do; but while the girl is undressing the narrator says, "After tonight I don't want us/ to ever talk again. OK?/ That's what I said. / She looked down at me and said/ Sure, like it was nothing." And I had to read those lines again, right away, to believe them. And sure, that is often the exchange; but this time, the awkward and honest but insensitive narrator puts it out there in plain words and the girl has to acknowledge this statement, voice some kind of response, and the reader has to figure out how he or she feels about the situation, the two people involved as we all: "hear the whole dorm writhing/ on a Saturday night. Even Kim Putnam/ the born-again who wore only long skirts/ and was losing her hair, was getting banged/ and moaning like a wild woman. Sometimes it sounded like a crowd/ ooh-ing and ahh-ing at a car accident;/ sometimes I heard the night as one f**k/ xeroxed and traveling room to room." That's what the best of Goetsch's poems do: they take familiar scenes and show them through a fresh lens, they take the reader a little further, force you to stop and think and feel, explore things that would make you uncomfortable, things you ordinarily would happily pass by. And by the time I made my way through NOBODY'S HELL, I had lost count of the number of strong, remarkable poems I would be reading over and over.
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