The Ends by Jen Currin - A Reflection

I have to admit, I was really excited to read this chapbook. It has all the things I like about poetry: short, organized, and packaged in a really simple but interesting enclosure. However, once I started reading the poetry, it seemed a little negative. I have nothing against negative poetry, but this poetry bummed me out a little.

In "October in Mirrors Burnt with Fur," the line "afternoon hurts -- I can't stop." really stopped me. Granted, it's the last line of the poem, but the words alone caused me to pause. After reading and re-reading this poem, I'm still trying to find the deeper meaning or the theme within. I love some of the imagery like comparing sorrow to velvet and licking a hallucination, but the poem as a whole entity let me feeling confused. None of the lines seem connected. I've seen this before in the excerpts from My Life by Lyn Hejinian. This type of disconnect really makes the reader work to try and make some sense of the lines.

Another poem that made me sit up and take notice was "The Comparisons." The lines:

"What is the point of writing a memoir

if you have no memory? 

A cat barking

where the east swings

west..."

made me laugh out loud. It might have been the image of a cat barking, but everything seems to contradict, much like a comparison. A lot of times in poetry, I really enjoy comparisons that I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

  

I found this interview with Jen Currin online. After reading poetry by a writer, I like to read interviews to get to know the writer better. Sometimes after reading some responses to questions asked, I can go back to the poetry and understand it a little better.