Issa's Untidy Hut: Louis Jenkins

Friday, February 25, 2011

Louis Jenkins: Before You Know It

Prose poetry is an anomaly to the casual reader. What exactly makes it a poem or, more precisely, what exactly is a prose poem? There are no quick or easy definitions. I think of prose poetry as supercharged language, as hyperkinetic and compressed in both image, idea, and execution.

Then again, that might be the definition of any good poem. In any case, the work of Louis Jenkins meets all the above criteria and more.

My introduction to Jenkins came via a poetry friend and subscriber to Lilliput Review, who queried me one day if I would be interested in reading a volume of prose poems, one of her favorites, entitled Before You Know It: Selected Poems 1970-2005 by the poet Louis Jenkins. She even offered to send me her personalized copy and so I took her up on it.

Louis Jenkins is a marvel of a prose poet, dealing exclusively in that form. He has been featured any number of times on The Writer's Almanac with fine work, including "The Couple" and "The Speaker." The site, Your Daily Poem, has also highlighted his work from Before You Know It, including "Driftwood."

Jenkins is at once imaginative, dark, humorous, and mysterious, as well as being always inventive. On the surface, his style has a linear bent, which masks a cyclical intent. At its very best, his work has a certain uncanny quality, a probing at essence, too often missing in poetry. If there is a prose analog to his work it might be found in the magnificent fiction of Steven Millhauser, one of the few postmodern fiction writers I can get on board with precisely because of an attention to detail and loving description, to say nothing of a pervasive lyrical tone, akin to the poems of Louis Jenkins.

First Snow

By dusk the snow is already partially melted. There
are dark patches where the grass shows through,
like islands in the sea seen from an airplane. Which
one is home? The one I left as a child?   They all
seem the same now. What became of my parents?
What about all those things I started and never
finished?   What were they? As we get older we
become more alone.   The man and his wife share
this gift.   It is their breakfast: coffee and silence,
morning sunlight. They make love or they quarrel.
They move through the day, she on the black
squares, he on the white. At night they sit by fire, he
reading his book, she knitting.   The fire is agitated.
The wind hoots in the chimney like a child blowing
in a bottle, happily.

In A Tavern

"It's no use," he says, "she's left me."   This is after
several drinks. It's as if he had said, "Van Gogh is
my favorite painter. "It's a cheap print he has added
to his collection.    He's been waiting all evening to
show it to me. He doesn't see it. To him it's an
incredible landscape, empty, a desert.   "My life is
empty."   He likes the simplicity. "My life is empty.
She won't come back." It is a landmark,   like the
blue mountains in the distance that never change.
The crust of sand gives way with each step, tiny
lizards skitter out of the way .... Even after walking
all day there is no change in the horizon.    "We're
lost," he says.   "No," I say, "let's go on." He says
"You go on. Take my canteen. You've got a reason
to live." "No," I say, "we're in this together and we'll
both make it out of here."

Louis Jenkins

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This week's selection from the Lilliput Review archive includes two fine poems from #139, October 2004. Enjoy.

in this old photo
see me standing in the shadow
of my father
ash, he casts no shadow now
and I struggle for light