And The Poet Said..., now available

Whether by accident or fate, as Hole in The Head Review wends its way through our fifth year, we go to print, though I use the we loosely. It’s really about 14 poets, revealed in depth by the poet, teacher and critic Michael Hettich, in his interviews for our online journal.

Here you have the thinking of these poets, some well-known award winners, some lesser- known, about their own writing and process, about their favorite poets, forms of poetry, “schools” of poetry, and about themselves and their lives. For any serious student of poetry—or just poetry-lover—And the Poet Said… is a trove of creative, intellectual, and artistic treasure.

We think it’s a little bit like being invited to be at home with the poets, listening from the kitchen, as they chat in the dining room about the inner workings of their poetry lives. Isn’t it what we’d all, secretly, like to do?

So, please join Michael as he deftly relates what the poet said….

- Bill Burtis, Associate Editor, Hole In The Head Review

Poets interviewed:

• Mildred Barya

• Cyrus Cassells

• Jim Crenner

• Jeff Davis

• Denise Duhamel

• Merrill Gilfillan

• Marie Harris

• Elizabeth Jacobson

• Peter Johnson

• Stephen Kuusisto

• Sebastian Matthews

• Eric Nelson

• Joe Paddock

• J.D. Whitney

Purchase your copy here: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/ELMCFCCGT6472

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Jocelyn Ulevicus

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One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean (Reviewed by Andrew Periale)

ELJ Editions; Standard Edition (June 11, 2024)   

ISBN-10 ‏: ‎ 1942004710 , ISBN-13 : ‎ 978-1942004714,

available through ELJ, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble

Anton Yakovlev’s latest book of poems, One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean, is, on the one hand, difficult. That is, the meaning of the lines are not obvious – lexical Rubik’s Cubes that need to be turned ‘round and ‘round before their intent becomes clear. On the other hand the poems are easy, the way opening a great heap of presents on Christmas morning is easy for a child – one delight after another along with the knowledge that the toys unboxed can be played with (the clothes worn, the books read) time after time from the initial delight in their newness through to something familiar and, finally, treasured.

The collection is divided into four sections, with thirteen poems in each section. There is, however, an introductory poem that lets readers know what they are in for. In it we meet a couple, sitting on opposite corners of the bed, facing away from each other. What are they doing there? Are they simply tired from the long flight?

It was dusk, and the statue of Edward Snowden

was working overtime to track the deletions

in my last email to you.

All those words I had refused. [At the Airport Hotel, p 3]

The narrator wrote his love an email, and not an easy one. But why Snowden, the CIA operative who exposed our global surveillance network? It wasn’t Snowden, though, but a statue of that whistleblower. Only Russia would erect a statue to Snowden. Yakovlev, originally from Moscow, chooses his words carefully. “Refused,” is a weighted word in Russia. “Refuseniks” were denied the right to emigrate from the old Soviet Union. Here the poet has refused to let certain words go out with the email. The narrator had deleted words before sending his email, yet they did not completely disappear, but were still there on the bed:

…slowly

crawling off the edges,

stinging our bare feet.

And so the collection begins. Throughout the fifty-two poems, Yakovlev refers to both the “we” that was and the “you” that is now apart. (Though, as with the meaning of any given line, the state of their relationship is not obvious.) At times it seems as if the other has perished. At other times, she is living just across the street. Now she seems like a callous human, the cruelest of tormentors, while elsewhere she seems more like Goethe’s Ewig-Weibliche – the eternal feminine. I feel that I will be turning that Rubik’s Cube through many more readings.

            Even if I knew the meaning of these poems, I would not tell you. Where is the fun in that? This isn’t a Masters Thesis after all, it is an enticement to read this collection out of all the other collections published this year, and, anyway, meaning isn’t everything. What about emotion? What about music?

Certainly there is – or was – joy in the relationship:

And all the cashiers in the chocolate store loved us.

No occasion to dream of poison. So much was said

through eye contact, even when there was none.

Our little corner welcomed blossoms while

we sat speed reading. [Anxiety, p 10]

As the reader progresses into the book’s mid-section, there are ever more scenes rife with despair:

When the only person who understood you wishes you dead,

the smell of an approaching forest fire feels like a footnote.

And

Each morning the dogs found skeletons of burnt songbirds.

Each morning you looked at the vodka bottle under your window.

[The Self-conscious Gorgeousness of Sunsets, p 39]

By section IV, though, we start to see a relationship that has moved past both infatuation and the wounds of rejection into something more… mature? Resigned?

And so, after all that cheeky volcano stuffing,

after all those wannabe Bastille manifestos,

we finally find our shared history in a place

that yields itself to sequels, alternate versions… [Exhibition Match, p 66]

As for the music in Yakovlev’s words, well, it’s simply everywhere. Though the lines I’ve cited to this point don’t seem particularly to be written in form, there are familiar forms here and there – a prose poem, a pantoum, a couple of triolets and a Spenserian sonnet that begins:

I Zen my way through your legato tale

of balding Mensa men you’ve grown to hate.

I nod and clasp your hand but know I’ve failed

to grasp your zeitgeist. Plus it’s getting late. [Bedtime. P 12]

Turn to a page at random, and you will find lines and couplets that cry out to be read aloud:

Tomorrow’s most remarkable phenomenon

will be the titanium texture of honeysuckle. [The Line Between Our Lanes, p 16]

or

I window-watch the ladies on the highway each morning,

driving to their jobs at electrical corporations,

with their revealing dresses and gothic hair, [The Grass Highway, p 48]

What more can I say to tempt you? The poems are full of enchanting imagery and evocative allusions: James Joyce, Monty Python, Nabokov, Saint Kilda’s sheep, Charon and Cerberus, Marconi and Stravinsky. Finally, if you are new to Anton Yakovlev’s poetry, you will find an artist with his feet firmly planted mid-career, but you are still early enough to become a fan before he has ascended to the pantheon of our great writers, known to all, a household name. And if you want to ignore my peroration and discover Yakovlev unaided:

That’s okay, I’d say to myself.

At least you are here. [At the James Joyce House, p 68]

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