I’ve struggled sorely over how to lead off my assessment of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit all day. I don’t think I can recall ever having read any collection of poetry this inconsistent in quality. To demonstrate what careful attention I gave this mangled little volume, please see Exhibit A (there will be no Exhibit B, so don’t get your hopes up).
Exhibit A: Page marker signets keep me disciplined.
I would never want anyone to have the impression that I just shoot my mouth off about things a priori, without due diligence, without carefully organizing my judgment and empirically coming to careful conclusions courtesy of the 3M Corporation’s many useful devices.
I almost put the book away hoping never to see it again after I read the second poem. The first one, the eponymous piece, was somewhat nice, had a sort of gusto in it, and I thought good, this is a poet-wizard who will authoritatively storm around the pages, wreathing them in trickery. The idea of it lies in staging a play in description of a life. But in the second poem, “An Inflorescence,” Donnelly starts driving home the prolix, numbered ballads full of birds. What birds? Oh, where do I begin – there are eggs, ostriches, phoenixes, grackles, starlings – birds are the backbone of this monster. And fine, I like birds as much as the next guy, but seriously, it’s nothing but beaks and adjectives all the way down for the rest of Part One. There’s the first of several unendurable prose poems in which Donnelly assumes the confidential, disgusted, condescending manner of one speaking about things, middling things, things about which no one else cares to hear, with the voices in his head. And there’s the sophomoric “Der Nachtschwärmer,” in which every stanza begins with “I know a shape…” and several end with “But night is a quite a different game, now, isn’t it?” (13). I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be afraid or insulted at the insolent tone. Ploughing ahead, “Marblehead” and “Fanny Fowler’s Poetry And Dioramas Workshop” are so obscure and self-righteous with their knowing monologues taken up accusatorily against someone to whom we are not exactly made privy. Obscurity has its rightful place, but only with the tie-in to the universal, and this has none of that, and it only narrowly avoids straying drunkenly into pretentious territory. We cannot expect to enjoy what is essentially an inside joke shared with another man’s demons.
Fortunately, since I was again on the verge of putting the book away at this point, he leads off Part Two with “Scarecrow in Magnolia,” which is mild, unassuming, clear, and altogether excellent. But once again – more wordiness comes piling up directly after it in the next two poems. The second of those, “Three Panels Depending On The Heart,” tries at something lovely and meaningful, falls short.
On one of the poems, “Reading of Medieval Life, I Wonder who I Am,” I simply wrote “TERRIBLE.” There are a few more like this sprinkled through, poems that are obvious failures, and I wonder at why he chose to include them at all, wonder at their baffling lack of lyricism and elegance.
“Pansies Under Monkshood: A Folly” somewhat redeems these. It has moments of truly enticing lucidity in its study of loneliness, nature, chill, in the stagnation of the eclectic subject at whom it hints, but as much as it toys with speaking greatly, it extends beyond itself, too long, and limps to its finish totally overwrought. There’s a nice poem following it called “Bangor,” and after that comes what according to The Internet is the finest poem in the lot, “The Spleen’s Own Music.” It’s another shortfall. One of its sections, “5. Dark Night On The Inside Of A Rock,” is what I kept waiting for throughout the whole book, something to veritably grab my interest and make me want to figure it out, and I did read that one several times with deep enjoyment. You can guess, though, what I’m about to say, by now – he follows it up with two such utterly boring, prosaic pieces riddled with strange, brassy descriptions that said absolutely nothing to me, then ends the second part clumsily and abruptly.
In “The Driver Of The Car Is Unconscious,” I began to worry for Timothy Donnelly. He seems to be prone to having very unpleasant finger-pointing spats with his inner asylum full of hecklers, the ones towards whom he feels such spite. Back in “Accidental Species” at the open of Part Two, he said to one of them, “… call a doctor. / There is disease about the mouth. It is ashamed of itself. / It makes noises that don’t ever belong.” (39), which assures me that he knows full well the character and quality of this dialogue and exactly what kind of effects it would have on his readers, but he exalts it and stuffs it with pomp anyway.
Probably my least favorite poem in the whole work is “Anything To Fill In The Long Silences.” I have to confess that by the end of its grueling procession I began skimming stanzas – it was so long in the tooth and dubious as to be uninteresting and dull, despite the often pleasing, careful and original observations and insights that punctuate it. I started to resent and almost abhor the conversational tone taken with the addressee of some of this work.
And then, “From A Further Meaning Faded.” This is one of the best poems I’ve read in year, and that’s not just because the subject of the poem is named Christine. It spoke to me so fully, so entirely, made me feel so utterly self-conscious and downright appalled at what I saw of myself on the page, that I slunk downstairs at 12:30 in the morning and squinted myopically in the glow of the screen in the dark, looking for pictures of Timothy Donnelly on the internet to make sure I had never met this person; I haven’t.
There were three or four more pieces, but frankly, they were not very good. On one of them, I noted “What is this supposed to be?” As far as I was concerned, the end had already come.
Would I recommend this? No. It is not a well-arranged collection. I wonder if it would have read better organized and edited by someone else, ordered differently? It’s obvious that every one of the poems, even the ones I felt were so poor, were warmly- and tenderly-shaped over long labors of time. And the handful that were good were poignant enough to affect me and give me pause.
So, I recommend the poet, not the book. He is skilled and adept at times and hints at much better than this. I understand that he has another volume forthcoming, which I will most likely purchase in search of more gems in the rough.
Donnelly, Timothy. Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit. New York: Grove Press, 2003. Print.
Thanks for such a great post and the review, I am entirely impressed!