Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > The Real Moon of Poetry and Other Poems

I initially thought that the 2nd edition of this (wch I have) has a different cover but the same ISBN. Then I found out that a fake cover was made for its online presence bc\/c when the entry was posted the real cover wasn't available. I've corrected that here.

I feel inundated w/ poetry & poets lately. My girlfriend Amy's a poet (or a poem - as she understandably prefers), some of my oldest friends are poets. I'm working a job where one of my coworkers is a poet so we spend much of the time at work discussing poetry. I feel like poets often have a particular OBSESSION w/ poetry that I don't necessarily share but wch fascinates me nonetheless. It's as if poetry is a thing that poets spend their lives trying to circumscribe - w/o ever actually penning it in at all.

Enter Tina Brown Celona. She's obviously obsessed w/ making the poem, the poem - & she forefronts this process, makes it self-reflexive - & I enjoy this particularly about her work. Take, eg, these excerpts:

from the beginning of Discovery:

"He is writing a magnificent poem about the world. It began being about the world but gradually now it turns into the world. Bees and slugs crawl about in the letters."

& from the beginning of A Poem Without a Camel:

"I thought I could write a poem without a camel so I left mine at home. As I was writing my poem my camel appeared at the window. I took it home and tied it to the fence. As I returned to my poem I felt free of the camel."

& this from the beginning of The Adolescent:

"When I heard that my poem
had been showing off
I took out all its words.

"When I heard that my poem
had been making a scene
I took out all its emotion.

"When my poem was nothing
I heard nothing about it
So I went on vacation."

& then in the 3rd part of It's Good to Get Away Now and Then:

"Let's not use the word "landscape" in a poem.
And especially not the word "poem." Why do we use these
words in a poem?
If I told you I'd have to kill you."

I find this latter particularly entertaining. Celona makes the protagonist of the poem, the poem, inhabits the "landscape" of the poem w/ the poem, gives the poem some friends, finds the poem hiding, ferrets out the poem just to gently tease it, teases its hair, discovers its filigree, grooms its pedigree.. & hones it elegantly, fitting it neatly into a puzzle of sorts:

A song for the Moon

the moon is more beautiful
later
when I have gone to bed
with my poem
about the moon

with my beautiful poem
about the beautiful moon
in my poem

the real moon looks real
too real for my poem

the moon in my poem
is better
for poetry

the real moon of poetry
is better for me