Lee & Mayer

I've been reading two new books of poems, Pyx by Corinne Lee and Scarlet Tanager by Bernadette Mayer. I was very curious to see Pyx, as the Poets & Writers "18 Debut Poets" feature mentions that Lee wrote the book in three weeks(!), submitted it to four competitions, and was a finalist at Tupelo, before being chosen for the National Poetry Series. The language in Pyx is marvelous and musical, and the vocabulary is rich and varied. The poems start out fresh and fun to read, but in the end I find them fairly incomprehensible. I just don't understand them, or have to work very hard at understanding them just a little bit. Here's a typical poem:


Lysistrata Motley

Even the quitch loves, sashaying
belly-blade to blade-belly

when wind is low. Most days,
we fail to notice
that elusive, Rastafarian

canoodle. The poems
therefore darting away, sunken,
through the halls.

Our words becoming escapes,
not spoor. Why can't
our selves intersect
with the exterior?

Because something is sclerotic,
strung high
in the Burundi
Salvador trees. Where dewdrops

are slaver. Listen up:
The Egyptians jettisoned

a mummy's cerebrum, knowing
the heart should do
all thinking.


I get the last four lines. They make the poem work for me. But everything before it? Can somebody explain it to me?

*

Bernadette Mayer's Scarlet Tanager, published by New Directions, is a little more straightforward. With blurbs from Jackson Mac Low (who must have channeled it) and Michael Palmer, and a cover of image of a red bird atop a CT scan of Mayer's head, you know going in to expect "experimental poetry." She does translations of her own poems into French, and then transliterates (or mis-translates) them back into English, with comic effect. She does a form of N + 7 with the instructions for how to use a condom (very funny), she has a list poem of all the "appellations" for penis, and a scrabble poem made from all the words used in one game. There are collaborations with artists and political rants against George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. There is even a paradelle (didn't she get the memo that this form was a hoax? ~grin~). True, none of this is particularly edgy or "new" in the least. But I like the voice in these poems. And I think I understand them, for the most part. Here's an example:


After Sextet

Pull out slowly right after youth
come, while pen name is still hard
Hold conductor in placket on pen name
to avoid spilling semi-final
Turn and move completely away
before you let go of conductor
Dispose of used conductor
properly, not in the token
And no more sextet without a new conductor
If conductor breaks and semi-final spills or leaks don't panic
But quickly wash semi-final away with sobriety and water-color

(with Philip Good)