Winter 2004
Arguing With the Troubadour
kris t kahn
iUniverse, Inc.
Lincoln, NE
70 pp. $10.95 U.S.
An unattributed back-cover
description of this poetry collections reads: arguing with the troubadour,
kris t kahn's first full-length poetry collection, is absolutely vital to
contemporary American poetry ... exhibits mastery over craft, paying homage to
literary predecessors while insisting on a new mode of poetics that more fully
depicts the travails of modernity and the need for a new postmodern gay
poetics."
Okay, if this is a
blurb from Seamus Heaney, you have my attention. But since this is more than
likely written by the poet himself (given its iUniverse origins) or at best some
sycophantic hanger-on, it comes off as the worst kind of egotistical posturing
or ass-kissing—neither being particularly effective in the realm of selling
the material. With this kind of unattributed hyperbole, the poet sets himself
such a high bar that nothing but A Season in Hell or a Howl would
satisfy the reader. And kahn has a ways to go before reaching Rimbaud or
Ginsberg territory.
This is not to say
that the collection lacks value or that kahn lacks talent. Both are evident,
though not with enough consistency and shine to validate the phrase
"mastery over craft." There are some extremely strong individual works
(ALR has even published some of kahn's work in the past), but many in this
collection betray an occasional rough edge or stumbling point. Nothing fatal,
just the kind of flaw one wouldn't expect from a master—even one engaged in
the difficult task of "seamlessly fusing and confusing elements of the
classical and the hypermodern.” (Again, unattributed.) The best thing that can
happen to this reasonably-talented young poet of high potential is for him to
realize that he has barely ventured out of apprenticeship and into the
journeyperson phase.
Though kahn has no
doubt heard it from us, we'll repeat this piece of advice for other young poets
working in lowercase style: Apart from the fact that its cliché, ineffective,
and downright silly, apart from the fact that it's the most common style for
high school poets (hardly a benchmark for a potential master), apart from the
fact that most decent poets went through their lowercase style in their early
teens (I believe I was twelve), apart from the fact that it brands you as lazy;
apart from the fact that it hinders communication and will generally speaking
drive off 60-70% of your readers right off the bat ... apart from all this, why
would you want to do something so utterly done? It only shows you to be a
poet desperate for a device, a poet frightened or incapable of using language
itself in an interesting and muscular manner. It is not in any way
groundbreaking. kahn devotes an entire poem to this penchant for the lower case,
but it failed to convince. There is enough quality in this collection to merit a
low generic recommendation (the strong poems, especially the ones that delve
into gay relationships and attitudes, are very good), but quite frankly we're
afraid to put our stamp of approval on something with such a ridiculous claim on
its cover.
