Word: poem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...FIRST came upon a style similar to Orr's while sitting in the waiting-room of a doctor's office. Appearing in the New Yorker was a single poem by Mark Strand called "The Room." It describes a place much like that waiting-room: antiseptic, empty, bereft of any outward emotion, full of silent anticipation. A sense of detachment in the short, simple lines emphasizes an underlying presence of death and sorrow. And Strand's dreamlike collection of everyday objects paradoxically works to produce a coherent poem. Orr's poetry used the same simplicity, the same etherial contrast of commonplace...
Conveniently, Orr has also written a poem entitled "The Room." Since both poems are statements about poetry, the room being the poem, a comparison between the two can show how Orr departs from reality, and what makes that departure so attractive. As you "enter" Strand's "room," a strange one-sided dialogue ensues: he puts questions to you are thinking. While he recognizes his own place in the poem, he remains "at the back/of the room." The words themselves have to do the job of the poetry, to 'fit' the reader...
...mysterious way, something does happen. The idea of the poem as a room where the poet lingers but can never be fully seen sets just the right mood of alienation for its message. It's a simple statement, but what could not work well alone, comes off nicely here...
...collection of worn-out retreads now. The old man recommends selling the whole country to Japan, because "they're going to get it anyway." He urges a halt to the spinning of the earth, so that "we all won't be so dizzy and nauseous." And he recites a poem that looking back on it I enjoyed...
...witness to one of the age's most massive and systematic assaults on individualism, she also salvaged an era of epic hardship and courage from the limbo of censored history. The book began with Mandelstam's first arrest in 1934 for a poem that described the dictator as a tribal hetman savoring each death like a raspberry. Thereafter, the impoverished Mandelstams were hounded all over Russia by vengeful bureaucrats...