Poetry of Despair

 Poetry of Despair

Have you come across the poetry of Natalie Shapero?

I am a newcomer. I quote from a review by Stephanie Burt in the London Review of Books (8th Sept., 2022) of Natalie Shapero's 3rd volume titled "Popular Longing" (ISBN 13:978 1 5565 95 882)

I am not an habitual poetry reader, and am unfamiliar with this vein of brilliant cynicism and witty despair. I am tempted to show it to my friends, but wonder if it is safe. Is it perhaps infectious, or poisonous? 

The river is heavy with phosphorous and

scum.

It causes liver damage if ingested.

I don't know exactly whose runoff it is, but

so long

as they 're taking press photos with 

prizewinning 

children and donating sizeable

sums to the ballet, I take no issue. River 's

yours.

(The line breaks are integral to the poems.)

Maybe those who live outside the united states of America can shrug off some of the clinging bleakness.

Wars are like children –

you create one, offer scant

effort, then call it botched as the years

accrue, go off and make

a new one with somebody else.

A chance to finally get it right.

This, and the following, seem to me to be suicidal stuff. 

........Or the man who drew his

gun

and shot up a wall of old masters and then

himself. 

Natalie (or Staphanie) asks "If life is just cashing in tokens for other kinds of token – why bother?" Why indeed! 

I do not live there. I do not meet those people, think those thoughts. I treck to the hills where I can find heather and bilberry, where I can walk to exhaustion; then rest; lie on my back and look at the sky. Then, everything I see is pure delight. I can echo JS Mill in commending Wordsworth, poet of nature, as a cure for depression. 

When I get back to my village, the pub is full of builders and plumbers, happily chatting about their bikes, or teasing the barmaids. Most of the people I meet are moving gently towards their goals; or think they are.  

It is not so bad. And, at the end of the day, a warm bath and my duvet.