New Depths of Deadpan
ISBN13: 978-1-886224-96-4
Poetry, 72 pp., offset, smyth-sewn pbk.
Burning Deck, 2009
Reviewed by Patrick Dunagan
Michael Gizzi’s poems play it deadpan exceptionally well. Cast throughout the poems as though each page were a stage, words are his characters, shrugging off assumptions casually laid upon them and bubbling with an ever present humor that at times may be just slightly muffled.
Gizzi takes Leibniz’s monad viewing room out for a stroll and runs with it. “Witness the window grappling with the body.” (NIGHT-BLOOMING GRAMOPHONE) New intentions get written out via substitutions of the unfamiliar alongside the familiar, “Aliens write in puns we know are curly fries. Drive-up windows make this clear.” (THE DEEP) Every day reality gets a re-set as common experiences get blown to alternate extremes entertaining with surprising delight that refreshes without taxing one’s patience.
CLOISTERED IN AN OYSTER
Another sleepless night with the top down.
He has a headache that could write its own biography. How long
can one inhabit a dumb-waiter? His mother Pearl plumps his
pillow.
Eyes lie through their teeth. Is it important to be unfortunate?
Is shucks not enough? Perhaps he could import a diver to yank
him out of bed?
Another clammy night.
