• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Podcasts
  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Short Fuses
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Books / Poetry Review: “A Word For It” — Poetry, From out of the Dictionary

Poetry Review: “A Word For It” — Poetry, From out of the Dictionary

December 14, 2017 Leave a Comment

Warren Slesinger’s approach to poetry is experimental but skillful as well as entertaining.

A Word For It, by Warren Slesinger. Dos Madres Press, 50 pages, $16.

a-word-for-it-cover-428x642

By Ed Meek

One way to took at poetry is to see it as an attempt at exactness of expression. It finds le mot juste for a thought or emotion. “This is the hour of lead,” writes Emily Dickinson, articulating the feeling that follows a death or a “great pain.” Dylan Thomas, reminiscing about his childhood, observes “Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea.” Warren Slesinger treats poetry as a means of defining words and feelings. And he sticks with it. His slim volume has twenty-six poems arranged in alphabetical order (of course). Each poem begins with what sounds like a dictionary definition of a word’s form or function.

Glass (glass) n-es 1. A miracle that occurs
in the mineral world when a white hot mass
of silicates, oxides and potash fuses to form
a bright and brittle substance that is clarity
itself:  a thin, square, rigid pane of glass

 

Slesinger goes through four definitions, concluding with an example:

… 5. An object
made wholly of glass; hence, its’ contents:
Before he sipped the bubbles of champagne,
he raised his glass: “To Life!”

 

So, although the poems seem like dictionary definitions, the lines are arranged as a poem with attention to sound and rhythm. At the end of the poem there’s a leap, as Robert Bly would say, to something insightful and often surprising. You may have noticed the apostrophe after the s in the word “its.” There are a number of those in the book along with quite a few other typos: a K missing from Knowledge, an e left off of secrete, an r missing from sandpiper. There should either be a comma or a hyphen between white and hot in the above poem. Proofreading — unless Slesinger intends these mistakes — is going the way of the dodo.

Some of the poems are self-contained and funny, like this one called “Shirt.”

Shirt (sh.irt) n-s 1. An
article of clothing with
a buttoned frontal
opening, two sleeves,
a collar and a tail for
tucking into the trousers
thereby covering the
buttocks and the genitals.
2. One’s most prized
possessions. Self-
composure when exposed
to risk or injury: keep
your shirt on.

 

One’s most prized possessions indeed. One can also find commentary on language in a number of poems.  “Letter” begins with “a form of written expression,” then includes a reference to Maupassant, moves onto “love letter” and ends with Letters … Literature in general. B. Learning and/knowledge esp. of literature: ‘In truth, / I prefer a pretty woman to all the arts/and letters.'” The latter is a paraphrase of Maupassant’s comment: “I prefer a pretty woman to all the arts.”

A few poems make political statements: “Vapor” succinctly captures the awful nature of the current state of warfare.

Vapor (vay.por) n-s 1. Something
in the air: a mixture of suspended matter
that makes it difficult to see down the street
in Baghdad. 2. A mist with a man in it.Vaporize: (vay.por.ize) v. 1. Only
to convert into a vapor with the heat
of a high explosive. 2. To detonate
a mess of manhood high-strung on hate.

Vaporous (vay.por.us) adj. 1. What
is collecting in a cloud of Middle-Eastern
malice. 2. Rising from a blast of body
parts on the ground.

Many literary magazines today are obsessed with ‘innovative’ hybrid forms that are often just a lazy mash-up of poetry and prose. Slesinger’s approach is experimental but skillful as well as entertaining. Just don’t pay any attention to those typos.


Ed Meek is the author of Spy Pond and What We Love. A collection of his short stories, Luck, came out in May. WBUR’s Cognoscenti featured his poems during poetry month this year.

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Arts Fuse Editor Filed Under: Books, Review Tagged: A Word For It, American poetry, Dos Madres Press, Ed Meek, Poetry, Warren Slesinger

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Rock Concert Review: Bruce Springsteen at TD Garden — Largely Choreographed and Celebratory So yeah, mortality was a heavy theme in Bruce Springste... posted on March 22, 2023
  • Book Review: “Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time’s Journey Through Rock & Roll History” Even more impressive than the sheer amount of raw knowl... posted on March 14, 2023
  • Classical Concert Review: The Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays Wolfe and Górecki Brimming with edge-of-seat intensity and fist-waving th... posted on March 17, 2023
  • Rock Concert Review: Elvis Costello — Proudly Flaunting his Dependability and Unpredictability Elvis Costello loves to visit various regions of the pa... posted on March 10, 2023
  • March Short Fuses — Materia Critica Each month, our arts critics -- music, book, theater, d... posted on March 2, 2023

Social

Follow us:

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." -- Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2023 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz