A Frieze for a Temple of Love

Rating:
Summary: Depressed, Dogged--but Low-Key Determined After All
Review: "Poor Edward Field." Well, at least to hear HIM tell it. "I'm gay, a Jew, and a lefty...I feel oppressed on several counts." Plus he's depressed--been so, clinically, lifelong except for a short sunny interlude years ago. And now, he's older, too.

And all this shows in his work, his poems? But short of spoiling them? The book offers 40 poems. Subjects include father, politics, Paris, movies, the male member and its long-standing friends, and etc. Their tone often seems only half-affirmative, often more-than-half-resigned. (But he is direct and honest, even if dogged and dour!) And their language seems (to me) non-poetic, flat, prosy--as if prose paragraphs were chopped up to emjamb into poetry-stanzas, and the images de-tuned too. (But they do sing his own voice!)

So maybe one reader will feel that "Edward feels overmuch sorry for himself and it all," while another may feel that Field explores his semi-sorry situation thoughtfully, candidly, complexly, wherever it leads.

Then the last 147 of the book's 228 pages are "The Poetry File," prose-diary jottings. A secondary thread herein is gay-artist gossip entitled "Tales of the Closet." This serves up the dish on such as Ashberry, Auden, R. Brooke, P. Goodman, Isherwood, Kallman, Merrill, Norse, Frank O'Hara, S.Spender, M. Swenson....But the primary thread is poetry itself. Field quarrels confusingly with the Poetry Establishment which he seems simultaneously to reject and envy equally. About his own work, he's laconically-downbeat. "The curse of poetry is that it must be poetry. When I give a poetry reading, I hope they don't notice it's poetry....I have to say again that my poems often embarrass me...." The E-z Cynic and Points-Scoring Critic can easily retort to this: That's because your stuff is indeed scarcely poetic!" But others might say: well, the minor-key tone of his own voice does emerge.

I myself describe "poetry" as "triple intensity." More feeling than usual, first in the poet, then into the language, then in the reader at last. On this score, Field does make it to poetry--just, and modestly.

(Still, don't overlook his feats "Nancy" and "The Moving Man." Although neither is in this volume, both are deliciously transgressive romps. And remember that Field capably edited the overlooked 1975 classic anthology, A Geography Of Poets. Therein he included plain-talky diction...racy pop images...and curlique imagery also. All poetically intense.)

Rating:
Summary: Depressed, Dogged--but Low-Key Determined After All
Review: "Poor Edward Field." Well, at least to hear HIM tell it. "I'm gay, a Jew, and a lefty...I feel oppressed on several counts." Plus he's depressed--been so, clinically, lifelong except for a short sunny interlude years ago. And now, he's older, too.

And all this shows in his work, his poems? But short of spoiling them? The book offers 40 poems. Subjects include father, politics, Paris, movies, the male member and its long-standing friends, and etc. Their tone often seems only half-affirmative, often more-than-half-resigned. (But he is direct and honest, even if dogged and dour!) And their language seems (to me) non-poetic, flat, prosy--as if prose paragraphs were chopped up to emjamb into poetry-stanzas, and the images de-tuned too. (But they do sing his own voice!)

So maybe one reader will feel that "Edward feels overmuch sorry for himself and it all," while another may feel that Field explores his semi-sorry situation thoughtfully, candidly, complexly, wherever it leads.

Then the last 147 of the book's 228 pages are "The Poetry File," prose-diary jottings. A secondary thread herein is gay-artist gossip entitled "Tales of the Closet." This serves up the dish on such as Ashberry, Auden, R. Brooke, P. Goodman, Isherwood, Kallman, Merrill, Norse, Frank O'Hara, S.Spender, M. Swenson....But the primary thread is poetry itself. Field quarrels confusingly with the Poetry Establishment which he seems simultaneously to reject and envy equally. About his own work, he's laconically-downbeat. "The curse of poetry is that it must be poetry. When I give a poetry reading, I hope they don't notice it's poetry....I have to say again that my poems often embarrass me...." The E-z Cynic and Points-Scoring Critic can easily retort to this: That's because your stuff is indeed scarcely poetic!" But others might say: well, the minor-key tone of his own voice does emerge.

I myself describe "poetry" as "triple intensity." More feeling than usual, first in the poet, then into the language, then in the reader at last. On this score, Field does make it to poetry--just, and modestly.

(Still, don't overlook his feats "Nancy" and "The Moving Man." Although neither is in this volume, both are deliciously transgressive romps. And remember that Field capably edited the overlooked 1975 classic anthology, A Geography Of Poets. Therein he included plain-talky diction...racy pop images...and curlique imagery also. All poetically intense.)