Official Assignment Ranking Thing, Finally

1. “Rape Joke” by Patricia Lockwood. I tried to imagine what this was from the title but I was way off. It is far more devastating. You laugh a little uncomfortably at the beginning – the goatee, the wine coolers line, his best friend Peewee – because it’s trying to be a little bit funny, right? “Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.” The second person is perfect. It shows how different it is to live the event than to deal with it from the outside. This poem has such force. It really builds. I just love the voice, urgent, unapologetic. “Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends – haha, just kidding!” The repetition of “the rape joke is” seemed too much but that’s exactly it. There’s unease everywhere in a way that is poignant to it as art and as cultural artifact.

2. “Why We Must Support PBS” by Bob Hicok. This is a poem I wouldn’t have liked two or three years ago (I would have much preferred Szybist’s pigeons) but it is adorably bizarre with an unexpectedly resonant turn at the end. The moment it captures seems so natural: something inconsequential that turns out strangely profound. Felicity stuck in your memory.

I can’t get over: “people were falling/but still laughing, falling but still believing/there was a reason to put umbrellas in their drinks,/that otherwise their drunkenness would be rained on” I am reminded of some news segment I saw (possibly on PBS?) when I was about eleven years old of some balcony collapsing at a celebration (wedding?) and dozens of people plummeting to their deaths. There was video footage of it and it was pretty traumatizing at the time. I dreamt about it. I guess this poem feels haunting to me in the same way.

3. “John Clare” by Michael Dickman. I love the strong images here – “a worm eating the dark” “They were someone’s sweethearts shitting on the sidewalk in the sun” “Ferns ferns ferns//The loves of my life” “Holes in children/Holes in trees” “And wasps/eating entire families of deer” They are almost like images in a gallery. They don’t seem disconnected but each section’s energy/action belongs firstly to itself. I guess I read them more individually than cohesively. Actually, I think I wanted something more explicit but it doesn’t need it, I just needed to go back to it. Several re-readings later, I like this piece more and more.

4. “Too Many Pigeons to Count and One Dove” by Mary Szybist. My completely uneducated reaction to this is that it is too poem-y. I guess I mean to say that it is pretty traditional in what it offers. That’s not to say that it is poorly written or unenjoyable. Comparatively, it doesn’t feel urgent or provoking in a new way like the other poems. I don’t care for the time stamp; it’s distracting and it doesn’t do anything for me to know that it has been thirteen minutes.