Poetry Both Common and Proper

Neon Memes • "Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat," Robert Frost once reportedly observed. Hyperbole? Probably. Still, to counter the ravages of these prosaic times, I regularly try to refresh my mind (whatever that is) and soul (ditto) with verse, and by and large, that involves reading Poetry, the archetypal "little magazine" founded by Harriet Monroe almost a century ago. The U.S.P.S. delivered my subscription copy of the November issue two Saturdays past, and over the weekend, I finished it. Predictably, I neither understood nor enjoyed all that I read; happily enough, though, I've never embraced the text-as-pablum mind-set so prevalent on the Net. In that respect, the November Poetry rewards reading, with an intriguing selection of visual poetry ("concrete poetry" when I was a high schooler), a substantial and thus atavistic review section and gems like Mary Szybist's strange, elegiac "On Wanting to Tell [ ] About a Girl Eating Fish Eyes." Incidentally, those tempted to dismiss both the publication and its domain as marginal should think again: "Poetry," states the magazine's website, "now receives over ninety thousand submissions a year." ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor