It started with a mysterious email from Luke Armstrong asking me to read his poetry and provide a review. He had stumbled upon my own poetry on my blog, but I couldn’t recall ever having any interaction with him, so I was skeptical of the request. After some thought, I decided to invite him to send the book. About a week later, it showed up all the way from North Dakota.
When I saw the cover (I know, we’re never supposed to judge books by their covers), I immediately felt this would be a fun, light read. The “award” emblem on the cover reinforced this presupposition, as did every page in the foreword, especially with Luke’s summarization of “rules”:
1. Most people don’t read poetry for fun
2. Plenty of poets aren’t too keen on that fact.
3. Many poems are a cleverly cloaked way for complainers to complain.
4. People like clarity; poems like to get all wordy and verbial.
5. Verbial is not a word. Only English majors know that.
And so it begins. A fun, lighthearted read of poetry, right? Wrong. You progress a few pages and end up reading something like, “When you find richness in [poems], you are discovering a completeness in yourself. You predicate something beyond yourself.” Next, you’re off through iPoem reading alternately light-hearted and heavy-hitting verse.
As I reflect back on what I’ve read, it’s very hard to not (as an English major) want to provide a critique from one perspective, and Luke does hit on many. There’s the heavy emphasis of Catholicism in his poems and the elements of loss and death, hope and rejuvenation that keep reoccurring. What I realize, though, is that this is a book about all of those things, about life. Light and upbeat, hardcore and serious. That is life. This is what makes the book inherently great: It is an experimental compilation of poems built around life experiences.
From the start, there’s the fun, Frost-inspired “The Drink Not Taken.” There’s the alliteration-on-crack “Love affair in the color L.” There’s the whimsical, alluring “Writer’s Prelude,” which probably contains one of my favorite lines: Tired pen, with ink exhaust / If not a friend / Then I am lost. And these are just the first three poems. ”What Paradise Lost” is the fourth poem, and one of my favorites that contends with the course of life, loss, and hope, or the lack thereof. Or the wondering about it.
Luke’s subject matter is vast. Some of my favorite hard hitters are “Going with the Garbage,” “Seaside Grace,” “Full Count,” “Death in the Morning,” and “Fortunately, Kites Do Not Listen to Logic,” all of which try to come to terms with life and death, our responsibility for others, and our overall interconnectedness, but not without giving the reader, or this reader, at least, a lot to think about while and after reading them. In many instances, I found myself lingering on a poem, thinking about it, trying to make it fit into what it means to be alive.
Luke’s writing style is just as diverse as his subject matter. Some poems are more like prose or narratives, whereas others almost come across as short stories. What I found particularly interesting is that there seems to be an evolution in his voice and style. I have no idea how Luke arranged these poems, but I have a hunch they are put in the near chronological order in which they were written. Some of his most well written, strongest poems are the ones towards the end.
“Sleep Walking the Caribbean Gap,” which warns Miami-lusting Caribbeans to not forget their “native soil,” and “When the Sunless Sunbeams Raped Me,” which grapples with women’s rights, are equally eloquently written poems that come off with a fresh voice and perspective. Often, poets, I believe, begin by writing about themselves and their own experiences, something to which Luke somewhat admits in the foreword, when he writes that poets “put the most palpable parts of ourselves inside what we write, and we send those verses off to sea in a bottle, hoping that someone will stumble upon it.” Gradually, though, a good poet can evolve from confessional to experimental, writing from the perspective of other people. With iPoems, the reader actually sees this evolution at work. Luke adds in the foreword that when someone stumbles upon these poems, it is his hope someone will say, “I’m with you on that one.”
Overall, this is a great collection of poems. Some come across as full of youthful carefree-ness, others more serious, probing, and aware. Throughout the collection, we can all find something to which we can relate, whether it be drunkenness, politics, laughing, human rights, or death. Yes, even fire ants and dolphins and their connections to past civilizations and cyclical evolution.
Luke, I am with you on that one.
