November 20, 2006

Michael Cross (ed), Involuntary Vision (Avenue B, 2003).

Even though I went to school with most everyone in this slim anthology (was Geoffrey Dyer [his book reviewed here] at West Coast Girls' College when I was?), I was luckily in China during the brunt of the New Brutalism hoopla and folks had also luckily moved on to bigger (better?) fights by the time I returned.

But I keep returning to Ryan Bartlett's poems. I am re-surprised by his work with each subsequent encounter:

One day,
I would walk in a room
And see a marker and a man.
The same thing essentially
Makes them sigh.
I would walk in the morning to
The middle of their shoot and
Ask a question I already knew I knew.
I would walk in and watch the marker eat
My cupcakes.

Walking in is a matter of habit (13).