Six Poets

Various

Perhaps I should just give up trying to figure out what poetry is, because it's obvious either I have no idea or the rest of the world has no idea. If I allow myself to believe the former, I end up with the strong desire to simultaneously retch, burn everything I've ever written, and huddle in the corner in a quivering ball. If I believe the latter, I often end up with the same response, because I have roughly a 95% chance, whenever picking up a book of poetry, of finding the usual unreadable crap that really has nothing to do with poetry.

Six Poets has an unfortunate mixture of not-poetry and stuff that ranges from the half-decent to the downright good. Whether you're willing to wade through the swine to get to the pearls is pretty much up to you (but I'll tell you, so you can save time, that all the book's pearls come in Ann Menebroker and Lyn Lifshin's sections). On the other hand, if you're fond of reading political prose broken up into lines to make it look artistic that passes itself off as poetry, you'll find no end of stuff to love here.

I originally bought this because it was illustrated by the late Charles Bukowski (and that no doubt added a great deal to its value when I recently sold it). The illustratins are, in many places, the best thing here—and to call Buk's drawings “naïve” is doing them a service.