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Guest Editor Billy Collins
Series Editor David Lehman (Scribner Poetry, 2006)
I try to read this anthology every year—not because I think that it always represents the “best” of poetry, but it is interesting to read another poet’s picks. More so perhaps than with fiction, it’s really hard to separate poetry from ideology—a reader’s view on what poetry should be certainly shapes the poetry he/she will like. Of course I don’t mean to say that it’s arbitrary; there definitely are poems that are more successful at what they’re trying to accomplish, and therefore better than others. But I don’t discount the role of taste in these judgements.
Billy Collins is certainly not ambivalent about his poetic ideals. In his introduction, he expresses a preference for “clarity”—an issue that is at the core of much recent poetry community backlash against Language Poetry and other work of a more experimental bent. Collins’s choices in this anthology reflect that preference, and are often narrative or humor poems. Though my own preference leans more towards experiment and language than narrative and what I like to call “epiphany poems,” I did find quite a few in this collection that I was struck by. Some of my favorites were Jennifer L. Knox’s The Laws of Probability in Levittown; Terrance Hayes’s Talk; Julie Larios’s Double Abecedarian: Please Give Me; and Bao Phi’s Race.
I don’t think this collection represents exhaustively what poetry is doing in 2006. It largely represents what the Billy Collins–brand of poetry is doing: the authoritative and uncompromised “I” at the center, the casual narrative voice, the plainly-spoken humor and revelations. It’s not my brand, but it was still worth checking out.
Snow
by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage International, 2004)
What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity’s basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kin…Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world—and I can identify with them easily —succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West—a world with which I can identify with the same ease—nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.
—Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Lecture (translation by Maureen Freely)
Set in a Turkish border town called Kars, Orhan Pamuk’s novel is a fiction about crossroads. With a meditative and metaphoric narrative style, it’s a book that romanticizes snow, and explores the elusiveness of cross-cultural and cross-personal understanding.
An exiled Turkish poet named Ka returns to Turkey from Frankfurt, and finds his way to the small, isolated, and poor Kars, ostensibly on assignment from an Istanbul newspaper to cover the recent Islam-inspired suicides in the town. As the story unravels, readers discover that his true motivation is the mysteriously beautiful ex-wife of his friend; Ipek, the daughter of the Snow Palace Hotel owner, becomes the enchanting beauty at the center of Ka’s struggle to achieve happiness.
Happiness, however, is irrelevant to the rest of Kars’ citizens, who are searching for an idealist absolutism. Snow is a book of polemics: east vs. west, atheism vs. Islam, secular state vs. religious state. Some characters define themselves in opposition to Europe, some in opposition to politics or to religion. As Ka struggles to honestly understand each of these ideologies, readers also gain a profound sensitivity to each, as well as to the impossiblity of absolutes. Returning to Kars situates him in a state of ambiguity; he begins to investigate the Western ideals he’d come to town with, understanding how the beauty of atheism, god, and politicism gets sublimated into his true ideal: poetic creativity and romantic love—or his version of happiness (though equally elusive).
The events occur over a three-day period with Ka in town while all roads to the outside world are shut by snow. A coup staged by a revolutionary theater troupe intensifies an already agitated atmosphere in which one may be beaten, spied upon, or even killed at any time. At the center of this is the issue of head-scarves: many women have taken to wearing them despite state opposition. This symbol of tradition and conservatism functions as a tool for rebellion, and a discourse on Turkish identity. Ka becomes the mediator between the factions, meanwhile trying to advance his own personal goal—the love of Ipek.
Told by an exertnal narrator whose only identifier is a friendship with Ka, the tale is woven from Ka’s journals and correspondences. It is told from the future, giving it a meta-narrative, self-aware quality. In a moment of intimacy with the reader, the narrator (named after the book’s author) reveals the heart of the novel: “How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another’s heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world’s rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend’s difficult and painful life: How much can we really see?” This question becomes less prosaic than it could be in the hands of a less skilled author. Rather, Pamuk gently gives depth and purpose to his characters, and endows them with subtlety and heart. Further, it points to the struggle at the base of narration, itself.
Snow is glorious in the novel, referred to constantly, and as much a character as any of the people that populate the book. The people themselves are ecclectic and vivid. Overall, the writing is wonderful, and I highly recommend it.
On the Road, Viking Press 1957
Jack Kerouac
This is another book that I picked up for a book club (A fine book club, by the way. And it came with chocolate).
I’d first read this book when I was 15 or 16, and I remember loving it–being totally filled with wanderlust at all the vivid descriptions of Sal Paradise’s adventures and panoramas. For the second time around, I decided to pick up an audio version, this one read by Matt Dillon.
If you’re in the mood for an audio book, I’d recommend this one. Matt Dillon’s voice is as easy on the ears as his face is on the eyes. It was really a great way to get the story, especially since I listened to it while at a horribly boring temp job. While handwriting a high-powered executive’s Christmas cards (you know, for the *personal* touch that only a temp can bring), I was transported to the open road on the backs of pick-up trucks and in the passenger seat of speeding beat-up sedans. I rode with Kerouac through the great Western frontier, and watched the drug-induced manic version of freedom that these fellas were chasing. The vistas that Kerouac described were just as vivid and enjoyable as I’d remembered from the first time around. In a book where plot takes a backstage, I realized just how much Kerouac’s powers of description really shine through.
This is most true of the last third of the book, when the characters take a trip down to Mexico. One of the book club members mentioned that Kerouac felt that his writing had improved as the book went on, and I’d agree. The last third of the book, in fact, is where Sal’s character really shows any growth. And the Mexican jungle is so alive and sensual in his hands.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story: Loosely based on Kerouac’s own experiences, Sal Paradise travels back and forth across the country, hooking up with the spirited and lunatic Dean Moriarity–a character modeled after Beat poet Neal Cassady. Much of it was culled from Kerouac’s journals, but the actual manuscript was apparently written over three weeks’ time, on a large role of teletype paper with no paragraph breaks. This novel became the breakout book of the Beat Generation, a movement as infamous for its counterculture as for its literary productions.
Characters are a less refined species in Kerouacland than scenery. And you’re not expected to like all of them. Though Sal is the narrator of the novel, the real “hero” in Sal’s eyes is Dean–a passionate, irresponsible womanizer who leaves marriages, children, and some amazing nights for his buddies, in his wake. Woman play a role much like drugs and jazz: that is, they’re highly coveted, intoxicating, and entertaining. But they’re also discarded when they interupt the pursuit of the true drug at the base of this journey: the freedom to pursue directionless adventure; to be untethered.
It’s always interesting to write commentary on a book that has become a classic among both academic and leisure readers. Reading it as an adult, and as a relatively experienced reader, I found it still to be a solid and passionate piece of writing. There were parts when it dragged a little, and there’s a bit of naive overglorification (of Dean, for instance), but it’s really worth it. And listen, sportsfans: they’re making a movie. Of course, I’m A#1 skeptic of movies made from books. Though the movie may end up being lovely and all that jazz, I only ask that you read the book first. It’s really wonderful to be able to visualize the places that Sal visits, and to let yourself sink into Kerouac’s descriptions. It’s something you should not miss.
The Emperor of Scent
By Chandler Burr
Think about how many times you smell things on any given day. If you’re as sick as I am right now, that number is going to be down just a little from normal, but scent is a mysterious but wonderful sense that is unjustly overlooked far too often. Without scent, to name just one instance, you would be unable to taste any food. That’s two of your sense down, right there, and what a miserable existence life would be without taste!
Scent is also inextricably linked to memories and to emotions, since the nasal passages lead directly into the brain. When you smell certain scents, they immediately trigger memories, feelings, sensations that you may not have felt for many years, but these scents revive them instantly.
This is partly why The Emperor of Scent is a joy to read. In it, Chandler Burr profiles at great length a man with a near-superhuman ability to distinguish, dissect, and most importantly describe in plain English (or French, or Italian) the way something smells.
But it’s not every work of science journalism that contains a 13-page author’s note nearly two-thirds of the way into the book. But then, there’s a good reason for that note: In The Emperor of Scent, Chandler Burr spends the first third of the book delving into the life and times of Luca Turin, glorifying his intellect, his talent with words, and most importantly, his exceptional nose.
And yet another rare feature in a supposedly balanced piece of science journalism, there is very little counterpoint to Turin’s point. So when that author’s note pops up 227 pages in, I felt no small relief to read that this perceived lack of balance is due to the fact that no one would comment on Turin’s life work — a revolutionary and deeply controversial theory on how humans perceive scent.
It came as a surprise to me that scientists are not exactly sure how our noses process those smell particles, and that the long-held theory, that scent receptors feel the shape of the particles and translate that to an odor, is less than perfectly explained.
So when Luca Turin, who has come to great acclaim for his Encyclopedia of Perfume, proposed an entirely new theory of scent based on the vibrations of the specific molecules that make up a perfume, for example, the scientific community was far less than welcoming.
The Emperor of Scent is as much about Science as it is about Scent. Burr chronicles the long, uphill battle that Turin has to wage to get his theory heard, the rivalries, the betrayals and the small victories and big losses that make up Turin’s theory of scent. The book is riveting and well-paced, but until I hit that Author’s Note, it felt artificially constructed, that Burr was playing with time to tell his story more dramatically, and that he’d gotten entirely too close to his subject, to the exclusion of opposing opinions or viewpoints.
Nonetheless, The Emperor of Scent was an entertaining, educational read, although I’m dying to find out either Chandler Burr or Luca Turin’s response to the fact that a competing scientist mentioned in the book won the 2004 Nobel Prize for her theory of scent.
