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Freud in Brooklyn,Used
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From Kirkus Reviews Fuhrman's first collection is an uneven blend of oblique humor and awkward sincerity. The humor comes in the first and third sections of the book, comprised of short and long poems, written in free verse and told in a voice that is at once cerebral and oddly detailed: By the five and dime, us brains hung, / swapping chordates. We were a fine flock indeed / doublejointed in an intellectual sense. This brand of humor is largely formal, wry rather than robust, and occasionally so slanted it may not be there at all. In Wrapped Up and Quiet, the poet is asked by an old lover to go swimming in a suburban lake, a request that provokes a vehement reply: I think / someone must have replaced his brain clock / with a child's pet chicken. What either of these two objects might signify, or what it would mean to replace one with another, is anyone's guess. Of course there are many varieties of nonsense, and lush, pointed nonsense often outweighs mere truth. Fuhrman's nonsense, on the other hand, is frequently of a banal variety, and that is possibly the worst sort. The second section of the book concerns the poet's parents and near relatives. These intimate family portraits are shockingly lucid after the difficult initial poems, but their clarity is undone by an unexpected sentimentality. Above ends with the poet watching a girl on a Ferris wheel, above my mother and me, / both staringas I tug / at my mother's wet grip, / for her to let me go, and ride. Too many of Fuhrman's efforts at sincerity resolve on notes such as this one, whose flatness is as much a disappointment, in its own way, as the earlier, more edgy poems. Copyright 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Product Description Poetry. "The prosy, likeable poems of this debut have the insouciance of comic verse: 'Blue Poem #6' recalls Elaine Equi's sly panache, especially in its Zenish opening line: 'A woman in an "I am here" Tshirt says nothin'; the poem then opens out into terrifically managed serial declaratives. 'Piazza' tries out a pop vernacular torques a la Kleinzahler. Kochlike is Fuhrman's 'A History of Western Art,' where Impressionists go hanggliding and Byzantines play frisbee. The title poem reimagines Freud's very real trip to Coney Island (which he made during his single visit to the U.S. to give the famous Clark Lectures)"Publishers Weekly. Review ..".Entertaining, ironic and, often, quite wise." About the Author Joanna Fuhrman is the author of three previous poetry collections. Her poems have appeared in anthologies published by HarperCollins Publishers, Hanging Loose Press, NYU Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Soft Skull Press. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and in public schools and libraries through Poets House and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the playwright Robert Kerr.
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