Mount Clutter

First let me say that I will refrain from using words like "obtuse," previously used by "Exacto 99" when he either meant to write "obscure" or just plain didn't know what "obtuse" really means - maybe he was trying to sound "smart." However, I will say that Sarah Lindsay's poetry is smart, sharp & witty, fresh and thought-provoking. Although Ms. Lindsay hasn't yet earned a seat among today's elite poets (Who would after only two books?), she's certainly on her way. I believe most pedestrian readers will enjoy this work and find in it a wonderful balance of the intellectual and accessible.

This poetry is amazing. Some poems I had to read a few times before I could move on. The works deal mostly with the loss that progress always brings with it, and the joy of learning. There is sadness, but real wonder as well. What else can I tell you about this book? I can tell you that it was the only one of the poetry books I got this month without a remainder mark. Then my cat (the one who loves books) chewed up a corner of it, so it's no longer perfect-looking. I can tell you that I'm madly in love with it. But poetry is a very personal thing, so the best thing you can do is read some of it and decide for yourself.

The only thing wrong with Sarah Lindsay's poetry is that it is not specially memorable on a word-by-word or line-by-line basis. Even with old hands Richard Howard and Kay Ryan vetting the manuscript, the sparkle of Lindsay's previous book got dropped off along the way, like laundry, and never returned, like luggage lost at an airport. She is however always trying: "Unlike tadpoles, big-eyed and wiggly,/ or bat babies with snub puppy faces/ and skins of kelpless velvet, the island was born/ red-faced and belching, hunchbacked, shifty,/ sharp, and hot all over." These are the opening lines of NEOTENY, and many will enjoy the way Linsday is able to incorporate ideas and tropes from science and use them to give poetry some apparently needed depth, but others will object that this is not incorporation but an increasingly wanton scheme of interior decoration. We enjoyed these debates during the 1930s and 1940s as poets like Day Lewis and Auden attempted to bring the facts of science into the folds of the poem, and here the experiment has reached a sort of terminal absurdity.

I got a copy of "Mount Clutter" on the recommendation of an editor of a science magazine -- he was impressed with the author's effective use of science-oriented language. The book is excellent! Some of the poems incorporate obtuse points that make you stop and think -- they call upon you to explore. Other poems are direct, delightfully focused and take you carefully from "here" to "there", conveyed by excellent imagery. In a recent biology seminar to a group of students, I read "Introduction of the Brown Tree Snake" ("Mount Clutter" pages28-29) after explaining in more technical terms about the ecological damage cause by this snake's introduction to Guam. The poem was very effective -- it helped students understand that there are multiple ways of knowing! Science knowledge and literary skills are blended nicely in "Mount Clutter". This is surely a book worth reading, if you enjoy science, or poetry, or both!