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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Eye Dialect
The current Eye Dialect (No. 2) contains what are surely some of the oddest poems ever to grace a lit 'zine: Mary Ladd's "Martian" poems, which feature the adventures (if that's the right word) of astronaut/colonist Helga on a future, inhabited Mars. While this description will no doubt elicit more than a few raised eyebrows and knowing groans, Ladd, believe it or not, isn't quite so easily dismissed. While her poems do contain some regrettable passages, they also have their moments; for example, the following lines from "Helga in the Park":
In his introduction to the current issue, Editor R.J. McCaffery suggests – correctly – that Ladd is "the only contemporary poet who has consistently developed her poems in this vein." But why Ladd has chosen this particular subject matter is anyone's guess. One might argue, I suppose, that writing poems about Mars is potentially more interesting than, say, devoting one's poetic output to one's grandmother. But writing "serious" poetry about such a subject (and this seems to be McCaffery's take on Ladd's project) is really quite another matter. To do so, one must have some larger goal in mind – perhaps to comment, at a safe remove, on some decidedly earthbound issue(s). If this is Ladd's intention, however, it isn't revealed in her poems. To begin with, we never come to understand her vision of the future (or at least of Mars), or, indeed, if she has one at all. Conversely, we read Ladd's work feeling very much that she has adopted Mars as the background for her poems simply to be novel. Moreover, while they're not laughable, Ladd's poems only rarely delight: given the otherworldly setting, there are simply far too few arresting or unexpected images, little that makes us feel at all transported. Ultimately, these poems are interesting only because they are such curios. Not surprisingly, nothing in the rest of Eye Dialect's poetry is nearly so idiosyncratic as Ladd's work; nor is there anything particularly worth seeking out – which is not to suggest that the poems here are uniformly tedious or hackneyed. Rather, the bulk of McCaffery's selections – maddeningly – come up just short: far too often do we feel that we are reading a poem that is a revision or two away from hitting its mark, as in Andrew Fenwick's "Ambushed by Ghosts with Machetes" or Linda Sue Park's overstated "Colors":
Unfortunately, Poems like Park's – poems that begin with an interesting premise or image but which fail under the weight of one or more significant flaws – are the rule rather than the exception here. This makes reading Eye Dialect, at least for now, a frustrating experience. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your zine? Tom Hartman has been a regular contributor to Pif since 1999. He lives in Philadelphia. |
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