Lit Journal Review: Ploughshares 42.4

It's confession time (one should do that before Lent is over, if one is doing this Lenten sacrifice thing, right?). I don't really read literary journals, not even the ones I submit to. For a while now, I've felt rather bad about this.

There is no way I could actually do what the editors always suggest and read sample issues of all the journals I submit to, but I figure I should try to ingest at least a bit of lit journal fodder now and then. So, a while back I ordered the man-friend and I a subscription from these guys, who will, for a fee, send you a new lit journal every month (or every other month, in our case).

Our first subscription installment was the latest issue of Ploughshares, which we have since read and discussed and criticized and tried to understand as an artifact of the contemporary literary landscape. For you, lovely readers (whoever you are), I offer the following short review of this issue's poetry selection. (I'll leave the fiction reviewing to the guys at wordsworthing. The non-fiction? That's up to you.)

First off, the numbers. Of the 41 poems in this issue, 14 (that's 34%) are by names I recognize as old white men, firmly entrenched (and enshrined?) in the contemporary poetry establishment. A couple of them are past or current contributing editors of Ploughshares. One of them has actually been dead a few years, yet he's still getting published in Ploughshares. Another 16 poems (39%) are by women, a few of whom appear to be older and well-established, though not poets I knew of. The final 11 poems (27%) were penned by men of various pedigrees whose names I don't recognize. A tiny bit of digging reveals that all but maybe one or two of the poets in these last two groups are also white. Going by their bios, all of them are well published and have been awarded, endowed, and granted by various institutions. My only comment on these numbers is that I think it says a lot about the state of publishing at Ploughshares, and most other "big name" journals today.

So, what about the actual poems? The words on the page? Tony Hoagland's poems are boring, with cliched "turns" and unmusical lines. Stuart Dybek's "Sunbather with Mayfly" has some potentially interesting images and lines, but they're spoiled by its overall Humbert Humbert tone. The other old white dudes generally continue in this vein, so I'll give them no more space here.

Among the rest are a good many decent, even interesting, but still relatively forgettable poems, as well as a bunch more boring, unmusical, and completely forgettable poems. Among these are three poems that I found remarkable and enjoyed reading and wanted to read again.

Beth Bachmann's "balcony" threw me for a bit of a loop, being as it is an unpunctuated prose poem with lines and sentences that blur into one another, words and phrases that repeat, and images that contrast one another and only hint at their full meanings. On a first read through of this poem, I was tempted to write it off as unitelligible ramblings trying to be edgy by not using punctuation. The non-use or mis-use of punctuation when it adds nothing to the poem is a terrible, over-used gimmick that really rankles my poetic sensibilities. However, in this case, I think it works. Bachmann actually uses the lack of punctuation to create rhythm, layered meanings, and tone. I've read this poem multiple times now, and each time I see or hear something different in it. I'm still not sure exactly how to "interpret" this little prose poem, but I don't think that's the goal. I like the sounds of the poem, I like the way the images run into and bounce off one another, I like the feeling I get from the voice of the poem. I want to read it again and again, and that's something.

sam sax's "Controlled Burn" actually does the thing that I think Hoagland was trying to do in one of his poems with a "profound" turn near the end. Unlike Hoagland's, sax's lines are musical and the poem as a whole has an energy and flow that actually engages me as a reader. There are nuanced, surprising images, brief asides of honest self-reflection, political commentary that isn't strident or overbearing, and more than anything, there's a soft and insightful humanity. It's a good poem. sax also uses non-standard punctuation and capitalization (even in his name, a choice I usually find pretentious and off-putting). Maybe I should re-think my stance on that. maybe i should try doing something different with such things in my own work

Mairead Small Staid's "A Girl's Guide to Vivisection" is the only poem in the issue actually available to read online. I'd suggest you go read it. Maybe I just like it because it bears a striking resemblance to some poems I've written (like this one, or my own "Girl's Guide..." poems). I admit, though, Ms. Staid does it (whatever it is) better. It's direct, it's visceral, it uses the space on the page in interesting ways. I like it. Just go read it.

I wish the whole journal, all journals, were filled with such poems. I'm going to look for more work by those three poets. I can't decide if discovering them through Ploughshares makes reading through the rest of the journal's mediocrity worth it. Maybe.