WHAT NARCISSISM MEANS TO ME.

Tony Hoagland’s book has a great title, there’s no doubt. That it’s the title of a poetry collection, rather than a bramble of youthful, quasi-confessional memoir, cements it as such.

Hoagland is exactly my speed of poet, and, given my inconsistent but undying aspiration of writing dialogue that fits within the Jesus paradox--fully human and fully literary--it’s difficult for me to imagine a set of poems coming any closer to clearing its throat and saying ahem, this is for you, hello. Hi. Example One:

COMMERCIAL FOR A SUMMER NIGHT

That one night in the middle of the summer
when people move their chairs outside
and put their tvs on the porch
so the dark is full
of murmuring blue lights.

We were drinking beer with the sound off,
watching the figures on the screen--
the bony blonds, the lean- jawed guys
who decorate the perfume and the cars--

the pretty ones
the merchandise is wearing this year.
Alex said, I wish they made a shooting gallery

using people like that.
Greg said, That woman has a PhD in face.

Then we saw a preview for a movie
about a movie star who
is having a movie made about her,
and Boz said, This country is getting stupider every year.

Then Greg said that things were better in the Sixties
and Rus said that Harold Bloom said that Nietzsche said
Nostalgia
was the blank check issued to a weak mind,

and Greg said,
They didn’t have checks back then, stupid,
and Susan said it’s too bad you guys can’t get
Spellcheck for your brains.

Then Greg left and Margaret arrived,
and a breeze carried honeysuckle fumes across the yard
and Alex finished his quart of beer
and Boz leaned back in his chair

and the beautiful people on the tv screen
moved back and forth and back,
looking very much now like shooting gallery ducks.

And we sat in quiet pleasure on the shore of night
as a tide came in and turned and carried us,
folding chairs and all

far out from the coastline of America

in a perfect commercial for our lives.



That one’s great and I love it. It’s so easy on the ear, yes? Deceptively so, you might say. The stories he paints in his poems are very much scenes, drawn so precisely they seem entirely casual. ..And that’s largely what I have to offer, in terms of insight about Narcissism. I’m not super good at talking about poetry. God, though, this was a nice switch, to just have this slender book to pick up now and again, read a poem, and feel immediately comfortable.

Honestly, that’s my full analysis; and I don’t want to fall into a stumbling praise of his lines and themes and the sounds of his words, because I admire all those, but why would I talk about it when I can just show it here. Maybe the MFA poets can show me some annotations and I can see how it’s done. Until then, let me leave you with Impossible Dream, which I’ve read many times and have yet to hit the summit of adoration for it. (One thing I love, again blatantly relevant to my own tiny world, is the tense-shifting.)

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

In Delaware a Congressman
accused of sexual misconduct
says clearly at the press conference,
speaking
right into the microphone
that he would like very much
to do it again.

It was on the radio
and Carla laughed
as she painted, Die, You Pig
in red nail polish
on the back of a turtle
she plans to turn loose tomorrow
in Jerry’s back yard.

We lived near the high school that year
and in the afternoons, in autumn,
we could hear the marching band rehearsals
from the stadium,
drums and off-key trumpets, brass
smeared weirdly by the wind;

a ragged Louie Louie
or sometimes, The Impossible Dream.

I was reading a book about pleasure,
how you have to glide through it
without clinging,
like an arrow
passing through a target,
coming out the other side and going on.

Sitting at the picnic table
carved with the initials of the previous tenants;
thin October sunlight
blessing the pale grass--
You would have thought we had it all-

But the turtle in Carla’s hand
churned its odd stiff legs like oars,
as if it wasn’t made for holding still

and the high school band played
worse than ever for a moment
as if getting the song right
were the impossible dream.