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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
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The Daily Mirror : A Journal in Poetry : Page 1, 2
I love the way the poem's misunderstanding is both funny and tragic. Every time I read this poem, I hear echoes of Sholom Aleichem, Charles Reznikoff, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Woody Allen. Fathers disappointing sons. Sons disappointing fathers. Language and assimilation. There's a novel inside this ten-line poem. Maybe an entire library.
I like these poems for their romance. An unnamed beloved (or series of beloveds) recurs delightfully. "I am going to commit your scent to memory/ and when you aren't here you'll still be here/ and the person kissing you will be me," Lehman writes in "January 26." "And now it's time for the man/ to turn to the woman and tell her/ that she's the olive in his martini," closes "December 1."
I like these poems for their immediacy. Each poem is a single sentence. In fact, the entire book is a single sentence; the poems begin and end in media res. The book feels unmediated, as if by reading these poems one were really getting slices of Lehman's life.
If these poems really are Lehman's life, it's a life accompanied by jazz, blessed with romance, lived peripatetic around New York and Paris and a dozen other places besides. These things are among the book's self-proclaimed themes: the others include "the twentieth century, poetry, movies, books, memory, friends and friendship, the weather, fathers and sons, and the city of New York." They're not new themes, but they're themes worth returning to.
The poetry I love best takes ordinary experience and elevates it. At its best moments, which are many, that's what The Daily Mirror does. The book is greater than the sum of its parts. Each poem captures a moment, an afternoon, a snatch of conversation or song or dream; the book is a solution in which these captured moments float, and each poem gains new context from the poems alongside it.
It is written of the Torah, "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it." I won't make the same claim for The Daily Mirror. But the things that are in it reward turning and returning; each time I read it I see more inside it. Seems like a good way to feel about a mirror – especially one composed of words.
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Rachel Barenblat is editor of The Women's Times, a pair of monthly newspapers in Western Massachusetts. She has a poetic license, in the form of an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and she isn't afraid to use it. When not writing, she sings alto, bakes a lot of bread, and plays with her cat.
More info on Rachel can be found at http://www.rachelbarenblat.com.