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In Our Own Words (I and II)
Edited by Marlow Peerse Weaver
Reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

In Our Own Words (I and II) : Page 1, 2

Some of my favorite poems from these anthologies are political, like this untitled haiku by Khalil Shahyd of New Orleans, LA:

how many worlds must
come in third so that we may
win the race to first?

Others of my favorites are deeply personal, like this untitled poem by Patrik Centerwall of Goteborg, Sweden:

When I read
that you can store sleep
I began to get
as much sleep as possible
to be saved
for one night awake
with you

Or its companion on the page, "Mouthing the word contraception," by Yvone Eve Walus of Auckland, New Zealand:

I see our son
in a queue of unborn
children
I see his eyes
huge hungry hopeful
Then hurt
as you put on a condom
And yet another boy
elbows him all the way
to the back of the line

In order to get to the strong poems, though, one must sift through many which are weak. Like "Autumn of Damnation," by Annepely P. Dakay-Liquigan of Irving, TX.

THE YEAR'S DYING FASTER
THAN IT WAS BORN,
IT'S ZOOMING WILLINGLY
INTO ITS OWN DEMISE, SEEKING
PEACE IN SILENT FINALITY.
AND I FEEL RIVERS EMPTYING
INTO CHURNING, WRITHING OCEANS.

Churning, writhing oceans, eh? This poem is too adolescent for me. Maybe it's because I went through my own black-wearing teenage angst period; now that I'm on the other side, I don't have a lot of tolerance for teenaged angst in others. Especially in poetry.

In her essay entitled "Education of the Poet," poet Louise Glück writes:

The fundamental experience of the writer is helplessness. This does not mean to distinguish writing from being alive: it means to correct the fantasy that creative work is an ongoing record of the triumph of volition, that the writer is someone who has the good luck to be able to do what he or she wishes to do: to confidently and regularly imprint his being on a sheet of paper. But writing is not decanting of personality...

Writing is not decanting of personality - or, at least, writing has the potential to be so much more than the decanting of personality that it drives me nuts to see writing that settles for such an adolescent purpose.

These anthologies are interesting. Some of what's in them is good, and they're physical proof that there are a lot of Gen X-ers writing poetry around the world. There's something to be said for that.

But I can't seem to get beyond my annoyance with their editorial premise behind their selection. I can't help being offended by Weaver's decision to thumb his nose at "poetry purists" - which is to say, people who take poetry seriously - and I can't help rolling my eyes at some of the (perhaps gutsy, but not very interesting) poetry he selected as a result of his non-brain-oriented criteria.

If you're willing to overlook Weaver's introduction and to overlook some of the atrocious poetry chosen to represent the Gen-X generation, there are some gems in these paired anthologies. I'm not sorry I read them; there are some interesting ideas and lines here and there, and once I stopped being peeved I got a good laugh out of Weaver's introduction. I can't imagine I'll pick these up off my bookshelf for a second read anytime soon, though.

Guess I'm a poetry purist afterall.

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Rachel Barenblat is co-founder of Inkberry, a literary organization in the Berkshires. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. A chapbook of her poems, the skies here, was published by Pecan Grove Press (San Antonio) in 1995. Learn more at www.rachelbarenblat.com