A Review of Louis Simpson's There You Are
B. Renner

Louis Simpson has trained his readers to approach a new poetry collection from him with certain expectations--concision, clarity, a sly wit, and a strong sense of occurrences that matter, that mean something, even if they do not constitute a plot in the usual sense. There You Are, Simpson's 10th full-length collection of new poems, does not disappoint those expectations. And if there is a certain familiarity to the reader's experience, it is not unlike the familiarity of hearing a new John Lee Hooker record--the structures and "content" may be similar to what the fan has heard many times before, but they are still fresh and vital because the master, whether poet or guitarist and singer, is a virtuoso. In the opening poem, "To a Russian Poet," for example, Simpson continues his long-standing tirade against the tiny audience for poetry in Western nations. Simpson welcomes his comrade in the art to his new life in a "free" society:

In today's unfettered economy
your poems will have to compete
with the "popular arts," i.e.
reruns of I Love Lucy.
Not much of a public for you.

And in "The Associate," he once again ruminates on his short career in publishing:

I would read until I was sure
then type a report.
When it came back from J.J.
I'd write a letter of rejection.


"Don't go in for criticism,"
he said. "It gets you in trouble.
Use the standard form: We regret
that due to the limitations of our budget
et cetera et cetera."


One day he called me in.
From now on I wasn't just a reader,
I was to be an associate,
working with authors on their books.
The rise in status, unfortunately,
didn't carry a raise in pay,
due to the limitations
of our budget et cetera.

The language, as is typical with Simpson for at least the past 30 years, is prose--but prose so concise and perfectly timed that it rises to the condition of poetry (if I may be permitted the twisted paraphrase), and an amusing, though not light, poetry at that. Nor is Simpson's ability to create a phrase or an image that exactly summarizes and clarifies a situation limited to the present (though that is certainly his normal domain):

Where we live
there are no legends, only gossip.
Yet the great matter of Troy
that ended with a whole town burning
began with an inch of skin
between a woman's skirt and stocking.


("The Cabin")

Here Simpson not only deflates the "grandeur" of the Trojan War, he also deflates Troy itself: not a great city, but just a "whole town." And the broken line at "an inch of skin" perhaps leads the reader to think of Paris's troublesome six inches of skin, which Simpson then "betrays" by completing the sentence with "between a woman's skirt and stocking." The problem was not, in other words, Paris's lusty manhood, but Paris's lusty perception of a woman's skin.
Simpson, whose audience--as far as I can tell--is as small as that he prophesies for his Russian compadre, has written some of the most accessible--and best--poetry of the past several decades. Yet he has bounced from publisher to publisher (only two of his ten "regular" collections have been issued by the same company) and his books are difficult to find in stores. Don't let the difficulty impede you. If you haven't read Simpson, then find There You Are. If you like it, search out the other volumes and READ.

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