When: Poems

by Baron Wormser, Alice Fulton (Foreword)

Baron Wormser is the author of three previous collections of The White Words (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), Good Trembling (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), and Atoms, Soul Music, and Other Poems (Paris Review Editions, 1989). Born and raised in Baltimore, he earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his M.A. in English from the University of California, and his M.A. in Library Service from the University of Maine. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New Republic , and The Georgia Review . Currently, Wormser lives with his wife in Mercer, Maine, in their house which is powered by a two-panel solar unit and is located on forty-five acres of Maine woods. He is a Buddhist affiliated with the Kwan Um Zen school and works as a librarian for a rural school district. " When is a mix of autobiography and good old storytelling that never forgets a basic writerly locality is the only universality. Whether the subject is Beethoven's maid hearing strange sounds, a deli waiter bemoaning his work or Wormser as a boy walking through Pikesville, Md., and imagining it's Baudelaire's Paris, the action in each poem is unique in its specific details. The insights the characters achieve, however, and the emotions they feel are universal. . . . Graced with humor, lust, and bracing
narrative momentum, Wormser's poetry presents a menagerie of wonderfully familiar strangers."- Publishers Weekly "A steadfast characteristic of Baron Wormser's poetry is his absolute honesty. In When , . . . he puts aside any expectations of poetic prettiness to take a clear, linguistically fresh look at issues such as AIDS, Vietnam, the ethics of fast-food consumption, and the seduction of Vegas. . . . Wormser's love of the world is evident, despite the searing light that he shines upon it."-Small Press Editor's Recommended Book, Amazon.com "The title When derives from Wormser's obsession with history. . . . This historical sense permeates his poems; it is critical to his approach to poetry. He is, in a manner of speaking, a time traveler. . . . Wormser makes references to people, objects, and events that define the

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Shara Azad]

If I had to think up examples of contemporary American poetry for a random stranger I met on a train in some other country, I would probably refer that person to "When." Published in 1996, "When" is different from Wormser's early work in that it seems less clear if the speaker is Wormser in every poem. Instead, the poems are tied together by a sense of "American-ness" or the fact that the setting is seemingly America, but it is America at different times in history and through different eyes, ranging from a college aged-girl riding a bus to an ant to an old man waiting to die in a hospital. Wormser transitions through these various voices with ease, demonstrating his versatility as a poet and also a deep sense of empathy as he effectively touches upon very serious emotive topics that he could not possibly have experienced himself. The narrative quality of this book of poetry (though each piece is a different narrative) perhaps enables Wormser to do this so well.
The narrative form of "When" lends itself to humor, but in a different way from Wormser's previous work. Through character (usually the speaker), he is able to set up humorous situations, and the wry tone comes through then, although the sentences are not as simple as they were in "The White Words." Additionally, due to his attempt to adapt many distinct voices in this book, some of the speakers call for more serious tones just based off the situation Wormser is trying to portray (i.e. a prisoner at a concentration camp). Therefore, I would say that humor is not a unifying theme in this work, which seems less characteristic of Wormser's style, more so than a depiction of the range of the many voices he can undertake. For this reason, some of the pieces feel slightly forced, but then the narrative element pulls through to mask this to some extent.