Poets Daniel Thomas and Thomas Smith read poems recently published at Magers & Quinn, an Uptown Minneapolis bookstore, on June 26 , 2019. The well-attended reading was about an hour long, both poets presenting between 8 and ten poems each. The program reminded me that poetry is immeasurably deepened and amplified by the human voice -- a carefully read poem has considerably more urgency when recited aloud than the text holds on the written page. This principle may not apply to densely constructed and complicated verse -- I would guess some poems by T. S. Eliot or John Donne or, for that matter, Geoffrey Hill's late work would not be succeed in recitation. The complexity of allusion and syntax requires print and the reader's ability to slow reception until it is commensurate with understanding. But both Thomas and Smith write beautifully honed, articulate, and lucid lyric poetry -- the works are reasonably short and, most importantly, preserve the grammar and syntax of ordinary, if heightened, speech. Therefore, these poems seemed wonderfully encased in their utterance.
Thomas read from his book Deep Pockets, a publication gathering writing from several decades in the poet's life. The verse is personal, autobiographical in tenor, even to some limited degree confessional. (Confessional poetry often seems cringe-worthy to me -- Thomas reveals just enough to catch your attention but is sufficiently decorous and wedded to poetic form to avoid embarrassing himself or his readers.) His poems are short and intense, generally about a page and a half as printed in his book. The verse is intensely alive to sensation and, often, exemplifies the way that some closely observed impression or transient feeling becomes defined first as an emotion and, then, blossoms into an idea inseparable from the tactile revelation of that idea. I read Thomas' book with close attention and great delight -- indeed, I have re-read the book several times. However, this oral recitation or reading was surprising to me, disclosing elements of the poems that I had forgotten or overlooked when perusing the words on the page. In particular, reading gave these poems a more piercing topicality -- they seem more precisely descriptive of the experience of the poet. (As an additional bonus, the out-loud reading of these poems revealed wit and humor that had not been the focus of my literary reading -- several of the poems are quite funny.) "Meeting You" is an exquisite poem about the impact of love -- eros as disruptor and destroyer of cities, but, also, of course, builder of relationships and families. "Home Pregnancy Test" is a bravura celebration of life. A quartet of poems about Mr. Thomas' children -- "Nothing New Under the Sun," "A Look out the Window", "Away at College" (a moving verse that contrasts complaints about a boyfriend by the poet's daughter with the writer's own divorce), and "The Quiet", a short and quietly devastating poem about the poet's son and his service in Iraq comprised this suite of works. "Dog as Master", "Happiness" and "Learning Italian" are lighter in tone and funnier. "Learning Italian" is the most purely sensual of the poem's read, a celebration of the taste, as it were, or mouth-quality, of Italian. (The poet's mother spoke Italian and came from an emigrant family.) "Happiness" is a poem about facing uncertainty, written in the wake of the poet's mid-life change in profession -- it is a powerful work and, even, inspirational in tenor. "Ice Storm", the last poem on the program, shows Thomas' range -- beginning with close observation, the verse transforms in the course of a few lines into a meditation on the fragility of civilization. Mr. Thomas read these poems unpretentiously, with great deliberative intent and flawless articulation -- his work is humane, lucid, enthralling, and consolatory.
Thomas Smith is a self-described nature poet. Of course, he finds much to mourn in contemporary politics and the threat of climate change. He is also, however, quite witty and his poetry did not slip into mere admonition or despair. Smith read from a new book entitled Windy Day at Kabekana, a collection of prose poems. These works are short, about a half page of prose, and tightly focused. Smith seems more influenced by surrealism than Thomas and I detected hints of Lautreamont and, even, Baudelaire in his verse. (These echoes are possibly imaginary -- Smith was apparently closely connected with his mentor, Robert Bly, and, later, translated letters by the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. I recall, however, that some of Bly's verse, for instance, "The Tooth Mother naked at last," a semi-hysterical poem about the Vietnam war and the figure of the vagina dentata had strong surrealist inclinations.) Smith also seems to have a wide range -- his poem "Breath Together" ("Con - Spire") about conspiracy theories was disconcerting: I couldn't tell whether Smith was mocking or endorsing such theories, an extremely interesting and unstable stance for a poem of this kind. "First Guitar" is autobiographical as is "Waiting Room St. Mary's" (about the illness of the poet's father). "Praying Mantis" invokes 1950's horror movies like Them and Mothra. "This Abundance" attempts, plausibly I think, to give voice to the rationale, flawed as it might be, for climate denial. "Martin's Ferry, Ohio" about James Wright was densely allusive.
After reading, the two poets answered questions from the audience. Thomas Smith made some interesting observations about "prose poems", a form that I don't particularly admire -- I think the form has, more or less, ruined Anne Carson. Smith noted that the order of the sentences in prose poems doesn't really matter -- there isn't an exact cadence to these works and you can stuff the syntactic elements into the paragraph in any order. I don't think this is literally true but it is an interesting concept. Smith was adamant that prose poems are a wholly different genre than verse poems. Smith is concerned that each of his books have a thematic coherence -- however, he views this editorial obligation as less pressing when compiling a book of prose poems. Both poets noted that they came to verse through music -- indeed, each attributed an early interest at 13 or 14 in poetry to acquiring a guitar and learning to play that instrument. (I know that Dan Thomas is a gifted composer and has developed some verse intended to recited against ambient musical accompaniment.) Thomas doesn't write "prose poems" because he is fascinated by line-endings and the formal techniques involved in creating cadences in his work. Thomas reads his work aloud while composing; Smith does not publish a book until he has read the whole text aloud and listened carefully for lines or transitions that don't work. Both Smith and Thomas are good friends and, indeed, workshopped poems together for many years -- Thomas makes his home now in Santa Barbara,California; Smith has taught poetry for many years at The Loft, an institution for writers in Minneapolis.
A disclosure: Dan Thomas was my roommate more than 40 years ago. I haven't seen him in person, however, for, at least, 35 years. I know Mr. Thomas to be brilliant and wonderfully gifted.
The reading was enthusiastically received by the forty or so people gathered to hear these poets recite their works.
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