Oh, my, what a sad collection of poems this is. The sense of sorrow, longing, and farewell that pervades so many of the poems in Hanging Loose 100 is truly haunting. I don't think there was any editorial intent here. I think this is just what turned up in the selection process.
Take this line from the middle of Keith Alexander's “The Lost Face”: “She was the first woman I was sad from wanting.” There it all is in ten words—sorrow, longing, and, ultimately, farewell.
Have you ever seen a stranger, perhaps inadvertently eavesdropped on a stranger, and found that the memory of that person lingers for years afterwards? This is the situation and the woman presented in “The Lost Face”:
A dark-haired woman,
around her wrist a radio,
on the wharf where sea lions doze
and boats troll ashore at dusk
under squadrons of seagulls.
The poem's persona wants “to study the woman, to remember her face for all time.” As for the woman, she herself is longing, but not for another person.
I heard the woman say to her friend it was
impossible to live here. Tell me where
I would live a better life...
Thus is the poem pervaded by sorrow and longing as articulated by the only two characters. (The woman's friend plays no part apart from what you just read.) Even the title tells us that, sadly, even the woman's face will be lost to the persona. Such a sad poem, sad and lovely. I looked for the next poem worth noting to shake me out of this mood, but it was not to be.
In Jack Anderson's “The Pausing Moving On,” one character is separating from another, and the feeling about this isn't mutual.
“Come back,” I called
“I can't,” you said,
moving on
The question here is, why can't the second person come back? Is it because his or her mind has been made up? Is it because of circumstances, such as the Wizard leaving Dorothy behind in Oz because (speaking of his hot air balloon), “I don't know how it works”? Probably the former, as the second person is pausing “in the light of the street lamp” and not on, say, a departing ship. But whichever is the case, the persona is not going to get his or her way:
“Then pause again
a moment more,” I begged
“let me catch up with you”
Even though it's clear he or she is begging, the verb “begged” works beautifully here and not as overkill at all, because the poem is imbued with such a sense of loss that there really can't be too much begging at this point. I don't know about you, but characters who beg unsuccessfully (like Oliver Twist's “Please, sir, I want some more”) kill me. And our protagonist is unsuccessful:
“You can't,” you said
and kept moving on
out of the light
And I thought “The Lost Face” was sad. At this point, I would have been happy with a dirty limerick. What I found instead was Robert Hershon's elegant farewell to youth, “Hotel Lucchese, on the Lungarno, 3 AM.”
and the years pass and I am
still standing there
still there
It's a nearly motionless poem, just an old man who
meant to walk past the window
and return to bed
but here I stand looking out
at the silent street
and the barely moving Arno
He stands at a crossroads in his life, his youth behind him, death somewhere ahead, and yet there is in this poem, unlike the previous two, something glorious, even victorious, about the persona's situation:
still there
as though nature had planned
this reward for an old man's
urgent nocturnal risings and
I'm still there
still here
The moment of revelation is not a bummer but rather a “reward.” It's not that he has been on the earth for so very long, but that he still inhabits it. It's a farewell poem, but one imbued with wisdom and gratitude.
More loss greets us in Ann Rosenthal's “Exit,” a prose poem about a woman whose husband has died and is being carried out of their apartment building by two strangers “from the 24-hour Brooklyn Crematorium Liberty Park.” She can't watch.
The young policeman watched me kiss your forehead and gave me this advice: “If I were you, I wouldn't want to be here when they prepare to carry your husband out. I was there when they took my grandfather out and it's something I'll never forget.”
So she waits in the lobby downstairs but imagines the somber deed, the “struggle when they pushed your heavy Buddha-shaped body [. . .] into a black bag.” What distinguishes the poem is the almost flat matter-of-factness about what has to be done, the widow holding the door open for the two men with their load, escorting “them to their unmarked truck as if they were relatives leaving after a long Sunday visit.”
I could not stop myself from asking, “How did you get him into that bag?” Oh,” one said, “we had to take a green towel we found in your kitchen to tie his arms together.”
Something about the word “green” distinguishes Rosenthal from many other poets and guarantees I'll never forget that final image.
Are we having fun yet? Just to prove I haven't stacked the deck, here are excerpts from the many poems I skipped over:
From Keith Alexander's “A Brief History:
Where is Luis? What became of Luis since
the day he wandered room to room
wearing his dead wife's negligee,
his ass visible and luminous,
saying goodbye to every piece of furniture?
From Marie Carter's short story (the only one here) “That Gold Ring”:
I feel some sadness; I wonder if I will eventually have to leave the city I adore.
From Michael Cirelli's “The Glass Eaters”:
The night before he died,
we ate glass.
From Marie Harris's “Tweets” (a sequence of haiku):
Midsummer heart pang
Both mother and mentor gone...
(In another haiku, Harris writes, “Deep blue birdshit stains / On the lips of front porch stairs...”--the use of “lips” is beautifully appropriate, reminiscent of Delmore Schwartz's famed “lip of snow” in his story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.”)
From Robert Hershon's “Stay Home”:
That movie came and went and the theater is now a Walgreen's.
(I can vouch for this, as I recall Walgreen's taking over the Sunny Isles Twin Theater in North Miami Beach, Florida.)
I could go on, but you get the idea. The thing is, I love this issue of Hanging Loose. I'm a sucker for sad poems, and while not every poem here is sad, a preponderance of them are.
The magazine ends with four poems by three writers of high school age, and each poem is commendable and worthy of mention here.
Annakai Geshider Hayakawa's short character study “The Words Have Eyes” shows a marked flair for observation. I especially like the description of her uncle as being “like a thick and sweet wood-smelling guitar with shoulders.”
Abby Spasser's “Sleep Poem” is an impressive flight of fancy. The persona, on the edge of sleep, begins to “sire offspring, / each character with an overwrought name / like Penelope or Darlene. // I give each child a story, / and a flaw.” She plays God with these characters and indeed is “more still than a / carved / Greek god.”
Richard Yu's “End of the Road” experiments with language, testing to see just how many references a single poem can make to the color blue. The answer is, a lot, and the cumulative effect is almost as much a painting as a poem. It's also very witty. I could quote anywhere and be left frustrated by what I didn't quote.
Now, finally, back to Abby Spasser, whose poem “A Prayer for My Father” is the best of the four, in fact one of the very best of this issue. Spasser is gifted beyond her years, as this ode to a father illustrates right from the get-go:
i'm watching you shave
your
pumpernickel seed beard
frames a frown
on your face
i know you doubt yourself
even now
and i know you're afraid of dying
She wants to reassure her father that he was a good enough father for her, and she does so eloquently, but finally we learn
i can only think all this
while you stand there shaving
regretful eyes
as pumpernickel seeds
fall down to the earth
they sprout into fields of rye
each plant outstretching
like a little girl
reaching out
to her father
When I was in high school, I was writing bad poems that emulated Rod McKuen. Ms. Spasser has the talent to be a force in literature. If she has equal discipline and tenacity, she is sure to go far.
This issue of Hanging Loose also contains some mighty fine artwork and a Mark Hillringhouse interview with the poet Paul Violi. It reminds me of the best craft interviews of the New York Quarterly, but transcends the nuts-and-bolts aspect to encompass larger themes and topics. Violi himself is a fascinating character, and prone to surprises.
MH: Do you think about your readers?
PV: I don't think it's a healthy thing to do. I'm not writing for them directly.
MH: Whom are you writing for?
PV: Myself.
That not only takes moxie, but it's sound advice for young writers.