The Optimist

Rating:
Summary: An astonishing (perhaps great?) debut
Review: Had we a genuine literary culture I believe The Optimist, the debut collection of Joshua Mehigan, would enjoy the reception accorded Delmore Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" in 1938. These are poems of expressive, never hide-bound formality. In "A Questionable Mother" the realization that every perfectly modulated line of blank verse has a feminine ending can make one laugh out loud, yet also, together with the ghost of a refrain, contributes to a growing unease.
"Promenade" furnishes Mehigan with a hilarious excuse for an overripe rhetoric, as it appears to be a dramatic monologue for a fatuous, middle-aged bachelor, ending on a beautiful, nonsense mock-aphorism. This poem's companion piece could be the brilliant "Another Pygmalion". Both evince the poet's eclat, somehow reckless and modest at the same time. "Promenade" is written in rhyming couplets, yet so sinuously and with such a sure touch at enjambment that the effect is rather peekaboo than Pope and "Another Pygmalion" although printed in a solid block reveals itself to be written in perfect, albeit run-over, terza rima. "A Bird at the Leather Mill" has the eerie quality of a parable by Kierkegaard or Kafka. "Buzzards" feels like it may have its origin in family anecdote, but also reminds this reader of the underappreciated metaphysical lyrics of Leonie Adams. In this poem and many others he can be moving, "In the Home of my Sitter", "The Optimist", "Introduction to Poetry" among them.
That Mr. Mehigan can write such tender, bitter, ruefully comic scenes of upstate New York working-class life and also write very good poems with titles such as "Imperative of the Minor Florentine Chapel" and "Alexandra", about a fourth century anchoress, testifies to his range.
The collection's title may seem sarcastic after so many cynical chuckles, but after closing this book on the lovely "Merrily", I am reminded that stoicism and existentialism are positive philosophies.
I have a personal ascending scale for poetic worth. These poems are worth reading, rereading, memorizing, and then repeating.