The Pleasures Of a Poet’s Prose

According to August Kleinzahler, the act of writing poetry can be compared to “particularly wonderful sex.” Both apparently are exhausting, thrilling, and provide a release. “Prose writers,” says Mr. Kleinzahler, “can only imagine.”As a prose writer, I’ll have to take his word for it. I do hope it’s true, if only because there must be some compensation for poets, whose avocation grows increasingly marginalized with each passing year. Few people even read poetry, aside from other poets; an aspiring artist stands a better chance of making a living as a puppeteer. And if a poet wants to reach a larger audience, sooner or later he’s going to have to turn to prose.Some may think this a shame, but I consider it a blessing. When August Kleinzahler, whose poems I enjoy, comes out with a book of essays, I’m a lot more intrigued than when John Updike publishes his poetry.In “Cutty, One Rock” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 168 pages, $19) Mr. Kleinzahler’s best essays are about his childhood, and “Too Bad About Mrs. Ferri” is best of all. In this witty, diverting, and sharply observed piece, Mr. Kleinzahler explains that he was raised in Fort Lee, N.J., when it was still “a sleepy, leafy enclave overlooking the Upper West Side, a mile or so across the Hudson.” These days its full of Korean families, young professionals, and retirees; in Mr. Kleinzahler’s day, the neighborhood was “98 percent Italian” – Mr. Kleinzahler himself from the remaining 2%: “You might as well have been in Palermo, but the buildings were newer.”Many of these Italians were gangsters. (My apologies, in advance, to the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League.) In the Fort Lee of the late 1950s, your babysitter could be an “affectless gorilla with a shoulder holster,” and if your plumber had “seen something he wasn’t supposed to see,” he could wind up dead.In “The Dog, the Family: a Household Tale,” Mr. Kleinzahler takes a distant-but-amused approach to his parents. His mother “didn’t like children, least of all her own, and me least among them.” His father “had a fascination with what he called ‘antiquities,’ or at least with what they cost.” It’s all very gimlet-eyed and entertaining. But we never find out why his mother didn’t like her children or why his father would occasionally “go berserk” and smash his collection of Buddhist statuary. In fact, whenever Mr. Kleinzahler brings up his parents in “Cutty, One Rock,” he simply describes their failings with a well-turned phrase and moves on to something else.My guess is that Mr. Kleinzahler wants to hint at his childhood misery without wallowing in it. This is better than the usual “poor me” approach to memoir writing, but the result is an uneasy mix of kvetchiness and detachment. It made me doubt the author’s assertions at crucial moments: Are we really supposed to believe that in his parents’ house “there would have been multiple deaths if a pistol had been available?” Or that he “never begrudged” his elder brother’s suicide?But where I was irked, others may be charmed. Likewise, I was captivated by “The Zam Zam Room,” a Joseph Mitchell-esque piece about the best bar – and the best bartender – in San Francisco. The travel essays, however, are another matter.In “The Bus,” Mr. Kleinzahler describes “the exotic experience of riding a municipal bus in a city where 98% of the population would never consider such a method of transportation.” A promising idea, yet Mr. Kleinzahler seems more interested in imparting his own predilections: “I love watching a good-looking youngwoman eat,” he writes. “I consider myself an aficionado of public transit overhead advertising.” When Mr. Kleinzahler does look around, he is, for the most part, dismissive: “ugly” buildings, “crummy-looking” bars. Nor is he particularly interested in his fellow passengers, some of whom are described as “the detritus, the servants, the newly arrived.”Even an incident at a Chinese restaurant, when two young black women complain because Mr. Kleinzahler has received preferential treatment, doesn’t pierce his bubble: “Whoa, Katie bar the door,” he writes. An ugly place should be described as such, and Paul Theroux has made a career out of being cranky and superior. But Mr. Kleinzahler never grasps that this incident (which nearly reduces the manager to tears) could be used to illustrate something deeper -about the city in question, or himself, or anything.A good essay tries to convince the reader of something – it doesn’t matter if it’s the relationship between tradition and the individual talent or why your mother was a nut. Even travel writing needs a point: The reader needs to be convinced that a place, however unattractive, is worthy of his attention. Otherwise, you’re left with “The Bus,” a series of anecdotes and facile opinions.Writing prose may not be as thrilling as composing a poem, but the same rule applies: You can never take your reader’s attention for granted.Mr. Haber last wrote for these pages on Nick Flynn.

The Pleasures Of a Poet’s Prose

The Pleasures Of a Poet’s Prose

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