Verses That Hurt: Breakthrough Anthology of a New Poetic Owwww!
Dateline: 7/1/97Jordan and Amy Trachtenberg’s Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets (St. Martin’s, 1997)is the anthology of the moment. Masquerading simply as a collection of wonderful, accessible poems, the book rates a place at the top of the antho ladder because it is the first major work to lay out the perf-po/spoken word aesthetic nakedly on the page and say, read for yourself. This is poetry that works.
Works because the editors are not poets, but people who fell in love with the New Poetry world via Todd Colby (who contributes a high octane Intro as well as a dyno dose o’po) and worked their way forward to such as M. Doughty and Lee Renaldo and back to John Giorno and Penny Arcade, and thereby stumbled upon a heretofore unrecorded tradition. Rock, performance, shouts, hiphop, Beat, GenX, and sound intertwine in a living poem, with the book pages serving finally as bread slices, not death shrouds.
Works because Jordy’s Foreword, "From Polyester to Poetry," should be required reading for those who wonder where the new audience for poetry is coming from. This man sweats and eats poetry, leaving a high-powered career in the Garment District to devote his life to it.
Works because the whole design & layout of the book enhances the poems. B&W photographs of the poets by Christian Lantry are as beguiling, entrancing, astute as the poems, full of analogies to the poets’ aesthetics and styles. They, and the whole book, kick us back to Paul Carroll’s landmark 1968 anthology, The Young American Poets (Big Table), which posited a world of poetry outside the academy. The book is out of print, but you can find copies at better used book and poetry stores.
Works. . . aw forget it. I’m tired of this works thing! Because I haven’t even mentioned how the Trachtenbergs culled these works from poets who recorded for their Poemfone Free Poetry service (212-631-4234) during its first year. So it’s the voice that kicked these poems into existence, and the text where they reside is beautiful and wild.
And yes, Allen Ginsberg resides herein, his last anthology before his sweet, sad transmogrification. His poems, "I Am a Victim of Telephone," "Please Master," "Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby," and "Old Pond," mix old/new, classic/tossaway, but always surprise inside entertaining and stretch the def of the po.
Or even that the book was preceded by a CD, The Poemfone Poets (Tomato Records) aka New Word Order (Rhino Audio CD:1996), which has poems and squibs of responses left on the Poemfone answering tape.
How does the world fit together? It fits together the way that Verses That Hurt demand to be heard, which is read hard, which is art with heart.
From the book, here is Shannon Ketch’s great exemplar, "Cantaloupe":
I used to write very dense poems
Turning up my collar
Inking my quill pen
And smoking my Chesterfield Kings
But the one day I entered the mad scientist’s
lab coat, picked up a spoon and began to eat his cantaloupe,
I found it very tasty, very sweet and very dry.
I then discovered I was eating an eraser, instead, and had
erased half my tongue.
Well, note this in your book, doctor,
I was not dreaming.
I was on roller skates for Chrissake.
Look! I still have them on.
The doctor rolls up her sleeves and begins amputating.
I smell burning wood.
Later, this very same day, as I’m walking in the everglades,
I spot a huge turtle eating a dog.
Now I know, I’ve entered the world of fine ligature.
*DISCLAIMER: I’m in the book. Jordy and Amy are friends. Amy works for the Mining Co. These are the facts. If they keep you from the poems, let me know, and I’ll send an unbiased committee to your home to discuss, frankly and without charge, the quality and meaning of the poems. None of this 0-10 Slam stuff, either.
--Bob Holman
