Shells

This year’s winner of the 1998 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Craig Arnold’s Shells, which was acclaimed as “a gifted collection of daring writing” by the contest judge, the distinguished poet W. S. Merwin. The book is an intriguing set of variations on the theme of identity. Arnold plays on the idea of the shell as both the dazzling surface of the self and a hard case that protects the self against the assaults of the world. His poems narrate amatory and culinary misadventures. “Friendships based on food,” Arnold writes, “are rarely stable”―this book is full of wildly unstable and bewitching friendships and other significant relations.

As subjects, cast-offs, or figurative devices, Arnold marshals mussels, crabs, scallops, clams and barnacles. In "Little Shrimp" he imitates the involutions of spira mirabilis, and narrates a night in a Spanish "bullfight bar," recycling the words "camar?nes," "pick" and "black eyes" as "Camar?n de la Isla," "Pick-/Me-Up" and "black light." Such moments of facile male desire, in all its guises, drive the book: a "Great dark man" ("his hand around the glass/ is dark with fur") wields a noirish knife; a "Merman" requires "all the covers/ kicked off to accommodate me"; an elegy for Joy Division's Ian Curtis praises "the ardor of a Bonaparte, a F?hrerA." A circumspect but not entirely unapproving examination of fleshy violence and bravado, "The Power Grip" contains directions for cunnilingus; "For a Cook" adds semen to an eggy alfredo sauce, then hair, and blood, and oil from the skin. The "weird housekeeping" of a "Hermit Crab" suggests Arnold's own watchful metric economiesAhis varied stanza forms create a rigid external structure, while the subjects wriggle beneath. But their hard control often yields to blurry, colloquial human voice: "You say You made that up. You say That's sick./ You say The things men think of are so cruel." Readers will find Arnold's pearly conceits hard to resist, but for all their inspired technique, they offer little beyond the masculine clich?s (straight and otherwise) they examine. As W.S. Merwin's first selection for the Yale Younger Poets series, this book is a disappointment.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This extremely accomplished first volume presents difficult poems, both in form and subject matter. They revolve around the hardened, supposedly protective shell; instead of feeling safe, however, the living creature cowers within. "Freud thought/ the brain developed from the skin, not/ to admit sensation but to shut it out." Seamlessly, the focus turns to people. Flavors and recipes remind Arnold of specific friends and lovers. But then, "friendships based on food are rarely stable." "Shore" is a little masterpiece, depicting friends joining friends, hinting at the severity of their lives and friendship but never telling, titillating the reader just enough to think more about his or her own life. Long and rambling, given structure as they are shoved into tight two- or three-line stanzas (reminiscent of a terrified clam or oyster), many poems teeter on the edge of loose rhyme. Shells is not an easy book to read. For those with the time and patience, it is not easily forgotten. Recommended for most poetry collections.ARochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.