Hank

After reading only a page of Hank, I remembered the “point” of poetry. Or art in general, really. To make the experiencer experience feelings. That's it. Isn't it? Hank is good at that.

After reading only a page of Hank, I remembered the “point” of poetry. Or art in general, really. To make the experiencer experience feelings. That's it. Isn't it? Hank is good at that.

The book of poems contains no formal punctuation or stanzas. Each poem is a big run-on sentence, choc full (almost overwhelmingly so) of beautiful, memorable lines. Here is a snippet of a poem titled “@()#&#”:

and robert johnson's
lithe tangle wood soul
wood tree genuine wood
tree with fresh fish lines

And yes, each poem has a similar title of seemingly random symbols and marks. It seems the punctuation dried up and migrated to the titles. The poems flow seamlessly, somehow, from topic to topic, idea to idea, image to image. Each poem is like an unlikely chain of warm lines, softened by cooler ones, resulting in a pleasant average temperature, say 65 degrees.

The lines even become musical and repetitive at times, as in “!+#*”:

some sumo angel
did his thing in river flood sand
and then there was below
a devil in a french hat
smoke smoke smoke
and you never knew when
they would twist and you couldn't
trust them to switch out
the raveling rope and you wouldn't
want to referee the thing

The speaker's voice remains conversational and real-sounding throughout the book, not hesitating to throw in “shits” and “aints” and, once in a while, even a “cuz.” It looks, as a final glance, like the chronic ramblings of some poetic maniac. But really, it feels smooth to read it.