13 POETS FROM LONG ISLAND is the fourth collection of works from the members of former Nassau County poet laureate Evelyn Kandel’s poetry class. As such, it is a mixed bag with much promise, a few good poems, and one or two exceptional ones. The cover and overall design of the book is good and the poems push hard in several different directions. John A. Valenti III’s works borrow rhythm and meter from the Beats, and are frequently indifferent to capitalization and punctuation. However, the subjects of his poems are more politically engaged than those of his postwar predecessors, ranging from contemporary politics and homelessness to reminiscences of departed family members. “Grandma’s Kitchen, Mine” sees him ruminating on the “painstaking death” of his grandmother from ALS – that hateful wasting disease named after “Lou Gehrig, damned Yankee.”
It is almost de rigueur to claim that rhyming is out of fashion, even though everyone who reads poetry seems to like it; and so it’s good to see some poets here bucking the trend. Hank Bjorklund uses rhyme and pararhyme to good effect in “Gunmakers Rule” and the tender “Only Scars,” while Sheila Saferstein finds inspiration in Greek mythology for poems such as “Medea” and “Ode to Antiquity.” Some have the feel of classroom exercises, being too lightweight to admit repeated readings, though even here one finds diversion in artifice – as in Victoria Bjorklund’s “How To Fall Asleep.” At its best, the collection touches on greatness. Lila Edelkind’s “I’m in a State,” which ostentatiously plays with the word, is the sort of poem that crams a surprising amount of meaning into its six brief stanzas. It is the work of someone beset by climate anxiety and the tumult of having to live in an endlessly accelerating, post-truth world. The poet is in “[a] state of anxiety/for those who spout piety/A state of concern/for those who won’t learn.” It is said that poetry doesn’t change anything, but Edelkind’s willingness to meet such issues head-on lends her work gravitas and poise.
As one might expect from the product of a poetry class, the main failing here – and it is a general one – is editing, or the lack of it. There are too many poems here that would have benefited from a little more drafting, too many ever-so-slightly unwieldy lines, and poems that are a couple of stanzas too long. But the collection has interest, and, in the case of some of the students, there is potential to go further.
Though uneven, the anthology 13 POETS FROM LONG ISLAND has plenty to amuse and provoke thought among lovers of poetry.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader