MICHAEL KRIESEL'S FEEDING MY HEART TO THE WIND:* SHORT POEMS

Michael Kriesel has reviewed

a number of my books, so I cannot in good conscience review his new collection, Feeding My Heart to the Wind: Selected Poems 1999-2005* (sunnyoutside, 2006). I can, however, announce the book here and, I think, let my sense of the short poem collide with Kriesel's. Writing a short poem, I think, is like trying to drive a nail in with a single blow of the hammer. Either you hit it square and deep, or you hit a glancing blow and bend the damn thing irreparably. You make a single stroke, and it's right or it's wrong. You don't get a second shot.

You may have deduced from my interview with Kriesel last year that I appreciate his work. That would be correct. He is a fine Wisconsin poet, something of a hermit who is currently serving public duty as a member of Wisconsin's Poet Laureate Commission. He is a past winner of the Council of Wisconsin Writer's Lorine Niedecker Award. He enjoys a well-deserved and growing reputation.

And yet like the rest of us, he can stumble. I have to be honest about my sense of the poems in Feeding My Heart to the Wind, for - in terms of the short poem - I find my aesthetic is sometimes at loggerheads with Kriesel's. That's okay. We can differ in our understanding of where and how poetry occurs. Still, I want to mark some of the differences.

In some of the poems here, I think Kriesel says too much. In a short poem, you must say everything with less, not more. Here is his "Bad Knees," with my emendation:

Oak leaves bright as rubber noses
tumble across the lawn

reminding me
I'll never be a rodeo clown

Here is "Yellow" with my editing:

I
laugh

the
wind
is
spending
all
September's
coins

Some of the poems leaving me saying "Huh?" or "So what?" I'm thinking of "Heaven's Nail," which is good as far as it goes:

Hawk
hangs
like
a nail
driven
into
the
sky

You've got the image: now do something with it.

And in the title poem, I'm concerned about where the metaphorical language is going in the final lines:

... and hope

that dandelion of the soul
a river in the air
that flows from me
like seeds

A river in the air like seeds? I don't know.

In "Highway 52" Kriesel uses a construction which is unfortunately common in American haiku, an -ing clause whose real subject is other than the apparent grammatical subject:

Picking up cans
by the road

someone ran over
this snake...

Admittedly, someone picking up cans could have run over the snake, but I don't think that's what is meant. And, as I say, this is not just a failure by Kriesel, but by many American haiku poets. I always wonder - if one can't be clear about the subject of a clause, how can we expect the poet to be clear about anything?

NOW - let's talk about the poems that seem to me exactly the right size and perfect, those where the reach matches the grasp. A poem such as "Scrambled:"

White in a
pale blue
styrofoam
carton

divided so
they know
the joy
of union

And "Rented Room:"

Fall window sill
the beer's cool

watching a maple
I start to pay attention

to the light
the way trees do

Poems like these are the reason Kriesel has appeared in more than two hundred magazines. This is the Michael Kriesel I appreciate. And you should too. You judge a writer by the best that he or she produces. By that standard, Kriesel is a poet we should continue to read, don't you think?

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*Michael Kriesel, Feeding My Heart to the Wind: Selected Short Poems 1999-2005. sunnyoutside, P.O. Box 441429, Somerville, MA 02144. $6.00.

Comments

[Nick Meitner]

I really like your work, but I was wondering if you have ever heard of Mariam Rewey. I really like her work and I was wondering if you knew where I could find some of her work. Please email me back. Thanks again, Nick