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July 3, 2008
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The Poetry Life: Ten Stories, Baron Wormser, (CavanKerry Press, 2008, 190 pages) Baron Wormser’s new book could easily become the stuff of novelty: ten monologues from ten different common folk all in different stations of life, contemplating a particular poet and his or her relevance to their situation. It’s the waitress who uses Sylvia Plath’s stubbornness to get her through her shift. It’s the old man who overcomes the death of his wife by using the precision of William Carlos Williams. There’s the teenager who encounters beauty for the first time through the vision of Elinor Wylie. But the collection mostly works because Wormser is a crackerjack writer. He has a knack for slipping inside the head of his character. There’s never a precious or false step to his character’s internal process, even if the situations seem a little academic. Also, Wormser knows his history. The stories are written in a folksy manner, appropriate for the character, but would work just as well if the characters were telling their stories out loud, in a classroom setting for example. Even the moments when the actual poetry is brought into the story don’t feel particularly forced because Wormser isn’t that concerned with story-thread. It’s the effect a poet has upon the narrator of the story that matters. Here’s what Wormser has managed to pull off: ten short stories that work on their own, each told through the lens of a famous poet, each with something to say about the connection between that poet and everyday life. Now, it’s a collection and not every story is a knockout. The girl-power story about a moribund English professor finding her mojo through the words of Anne Sexton grows tiring. And the down-with-soulless-corporations story that uses William Blake seems off — I’m not so sure Blake would object to capitalism. But still, The Poetry Life: Ten Stories, works far more often than not both as an engrossing collection of stories and as a study in poetic history. B — Dan Szczesny
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