chauvinistic-O.

i know this will make me sound uber chauvinistic, but what the heck eh?

i rarely x33 buy female poets. in fact in my entire poetry collection, there was only one. plath's ariel. i just realised that. now, or as of yesterday night, there are 2.

ran out of the house yesterday evening at about 7ish due to early break from work and boredom. (yes, i work on sat, so loser rite?) no one was free and i mean no one; gaston was supposedly zzzing at home, cy had to go to sheo's friend bday party, damien i guess was putting in quality time with prospective ball and chain, becky's not in s'pore, no answer from mat for a while (schola i guess?) carl and kelly eh... lets not go there, etc etc

so i had to go out with self. which wasn't so bad. i popped down to borders to see whether i could pick up the others in the spiderwick series, but the field guide is still the only one they had out to date so went over to the poetry section to see what would catch my eye.

i get quite robotic when it comes to buying poetry books, so in a rough sense, this was how i conducted my search yesterday night:-

insert: eric's rules on buying poetry bookies:

rule no.1: go with the familiar
which means i arrow the familiar poets first; levine, langston hughes, ted hughes, donald hall etc, so yesterday, i did just that:
- levine rejected because levine always writes like levine, after owning 4 of his books, i want the next levine to break new grounds, do something different.
- langston hughes no because ancient fuddydaddy not my taste.
- ted hughes no because the last book i bought here was ted hughes's so i wanted something different.
- donald hall's one = not strong at all. disappointed.
- semus heaney's electric light (new one i think) caught my eye. plus i dun have a heaney so mental note taken, continued with search.

rule no. 2: no anthologies
i also very rarely buy anthologies. it's the same thing why best of's and anthologies cds are not preferrable. the flavour is lost. there's no proper flow. you will never get the feel of the collection or the themes the poet wanted to portray. of the lot of anthologies i surveyed, i am only moderately inclined towards the best american poetry series and only because in that one you get the feel of the guest editor’s taste in poetry. not always good and can be quite sala one.

rule no. 3: the little things
who really has the time to rife through everything? so the cover, spine, thickness, and price will all play a little part in selection. for e.g. unless it's payday, will i shell out 33++ for a thin say maybe 70 pages book or buy the more substantial 23++ 100 odd pages one with the pretty cover and the more appealing spine? of course, all other substances within being equal, meaning both being of equal poetic strength.

rule no.4: gender
like i said i rarely buy female poets. because of a no. of reasons actually.
a) as a rule, i prefer male poets because they generally exert more self control within a poem than a female counterpart. this isn’t a blanket rule, i have read male poets more whinny than your average manja queen. but as a general rule, i have been quite accurate on this point.
b) confessional – i like reading confessional style poems to a certain extent, but if the poem requires me to upload excessive amounts of sympathy, i get irritable. as an odd observation, i find women confessionals require more sympathy from the reader than a male one. not that there are many male confessionals around. off the top of my head, lowell, carver from the borders shelves and i think that’s it.
c) topic – women have different issues. not a bad thing, and actually a very good thing (provide variety) but those issues are difficult for me to fully “get into”. sampling a range of female poets, you will find abuse a pretty common topic, then the ever popular husband/bf’s an ass because he drinks/f-s around/gambles and doesn’t care about my feeling type poem is always a feature. men tend to surprise me more topic-wise. on the flipside, male poets have a higher tendency of being banal and boring, but i always sample before i buy so i’m pretty safe from that.

i had to eat these rules yesterday for supper.

i chose kimiko hahn’s mosquito and ant over semus heaney’s electric light! sorry mr. heaney-sir, i promise next trip i will get that one without consideration, promise. ok, kimiko hahn, she’s a half-jap half americano poetess whose book is “most rigorously women-centred work to date” as it says so on its back cover. so totally unlike me to choose this.

but her writing is strong. surprisingly, i am not immediately requested to surrender my sympathies. the topics are as i expected, but such control exercised in their execution. :)

i was intrigued from the 1st poem: entitled “the razor”.

(i hope she won’t mind if i reproduced it here)

The Razor

I want to return to the moment
father and I brought the canister of mother’s ashes
to the temple in some odd shopping bag.
We then dropped off the remains
to leave for a couple slices down the block
but the reverend pull a robe
over her jeans and blouse
picked up prayer bead
and suggested which was not a question
we say a sutra. Which one was it?
I only recalled I didn’t have a tissue;
that the incense I so dislike
felt sweet wafting into my sweater
and hair; that my whole body
shook without pause
though I did not make a sound
and tears and mucus covered my face and
sleeves because father did not know
I needed the handkerchief
mother had pressed a week earlier.
At times the loss felt like an organ
one could excise with a razor.

cool. and the rest of the book was more of this, sometimes even more brilliant but the thematic feel was consistent throughout.

which i find very attractive in a poetry collection.

btw, i am suppose to upload pics of my niece but my phone uplink is not working as it should so next post then. for now, just believe me when i say she's the cutest.

***
listening to: Yes - i've seen all good people.
reading: kimiko hahn's mosquito and ant