Number 298
Fall 2006

Extravagant Things Said Definitively
PAT NOLAN
Copyright © 2006 Poetry Flash

EROSION’S PULL, poems by Maureen Owen, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2006, 118 pages, $16.00 paper.

The poems in Maureen Owen’s new book from Coffee House Press demand close attention. The first thing to notice about them is the eschewing of the conventional stanza for somethng unusual and perhaps a little disconcerting. Poetry readers used to the left-aligned (carriage return) stanza will have to make some adjustments. Where lines would normally break and drop down, Owen’s continue in their own dream-like fashion across the page! The left right linearity enforced with numerous ‘lines’ streaming by gives the distinct visual sensation of a flow, and transcends the usual stanzaic limitations.

Something else that will be apparent is the peculiarity of the titling of the poems. That a poem can have a title and a variation or two promotes a feeling of choice and pulls away from the absolutism that a title usually demands. Used as Owen does, it serves as a transition, becomes part of the poem, easing the reader into the text.
Owen’s poems are both difficult and accessible. There is placement of words and spaces (silences) for the sake of texture. The geological thrust of this selection’s title can just as well be applied to the structure of the poems. The successive lines construed as strata, the linear arrangement as a mineral vein, interrupted by happenstance or some overarching organization that yields not only a surface meaning but indicates a deep history folded in on itself to create something new, something revelatory, something solid.

The poems of Erosion’s Pull consist of elements of conversation, things partially spoken, remembered or repeated, and observation, real or imagined. The gaps (silences) keep them from being headlong and breathless, though there is always some sense of the latter—the exuberance of language requires it. The lines, akimbo in their unconventional placement, enforce the ragged syntax of simple observations made difficult to draw attention to their simplicity and hence renewal. These are mosaics of interests and concerns, the incomplete phrase becoming the edge over which the reader steps with assumptions for a parachute. Sometimes it opens; sometimes it is a free fall, a free fall into love, for instance.

Looking for love in all the right places, the poet finds that “it was the summer I was pretty much involved with thinking / about being involved with someone who was involved with / someone else…” (page 40), or “…I fell in love with you then / with a word can such a thing be done / because of a word…” (page 12). These expressions of love are not so much those of a sentimentalist but, undoubtedly, of a romantic soul. There is, for instance, the choked implication of “Clouds over Chicago”: “he said / I don’t like to meet people I don’t know // I don’t like to meet people I don’t know / he said” and the sweetly nostalgic shoulda coulda woulda poem, “the Leaving Songor where would we be if we / weren’t where we are”:

Interspersed throughout the selection are Owen’s short disarming lyrics that, for the most part, speak for themelves.

And in direct, aggressive, no-nonsense poems like “They can’t handle the day shift” and “O over every life-sized drought” the poet, in a checkered shirt “…loose but gathered at / strategic moments…,” (page 40) one hand on her hip, the other wagging a rhetorical finger, leaves no question as to where she stands.

Also of note in this thoroughly rock-solid selection of poems is “…certainty of being is concentrated, and we have the impression that…” which turns on the phrase “to want” and its permutations of desire.

And for sheer liveliness, a wonderful spin on William Carlos Williams’ plum poem, variously titled after W.C.W “Or // She comes in after midnight / she eats the last of the pasta / she does the dishes / What a deal! / No leftovers”:

At one point in this terrific and slightly eccentric selection of Zen surreal poems, the poet states, “Most people / are afraid to say extravagant things definitively,” (from “Hotel Ozean…”) In this regard, Maureen Owen is fearless.

Pat Nolan’s reviews have appeared in Poetry Flash, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Exquisite Corpse, and The American Book Review. He’s the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Fly By Night, Selected Poems 1975–1992, now reprinted in a limited editon by Re:issue Press. He resides along the Russian River in the redwood wilds of northern California.