Module 6 Poetry Review: Paul B. Janeczko

Module 6 Poetry Review: Paul B. Janeczko
Poetry 5663
Diana Stephens
Wherever Home Begins: 100 Contemporary Poems

Wherever Home Begins is remarkable, first of all, in the arrangement of the poems collected by Paul B. Janeczko. Emphasizing the theme of place and its importance to us, this editor finely tunes our attention by grouping the poems into clusters, such as garage poems, mining poems, Texas poems, mountain poems, farming poems, street poems, etc., making the reader feel as though she is reading a travelogue, but never boring, always finding a nugget of emotion, or a slip of surprise at each description.
It was interesting that while there is an unsentimental feeling in exploring all these places, emotions still received treatment while relating to a place. Some of the places were happy memories, such as “Dragging Broadway” and “Montauk and the World Revealed Through the Magic of New Orleans, while many others were sad or strongly emotional, as in “In the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit” or “Moving” which ends plaintively (while offering the thoughtful title), “Now, wheels, roll us home, /wherever home begins. Give us /a good journey /and a safe forgetting.”
There was humor as well, appropriately interspersed to offer a light touch. I loved “In the Amish Bakery” with this image: “that goddamned trampoline” where “the whole blessed family /in their black topcoats and frocks, /their severe hair and beards, . . . so much flour dust and leaven- /leaping all together on their /stiff sweet legs toward heaven.” The nice rhyme and alliteration complete its humorous tone.
“Small Farms Disappearing in Tennessee” by Jim Wayne Miller was laugh-out-loud funny. At first, the reader thinks it will be a heart breaking story about “a whole farm family comes awake . . ./to find their farm’s been rolled up like a rug /with them inside it,” only to find out it’s actually tongue-in-cheek, “One missing farm was found intact at the head of a falling creek /in a recently published short story.”
The poetry is mostly unrhymed free verse, with strong imagery, figurative language, and alliteration. A good example of strong imagery is “Spirits” by Charles Harper Webb, evoking a nostalgic mood from the viewpoint of an Indian chief. The area now known as L.A. is negatively described, “They [spirits] slide through alleys where pale boys /with hair in warrior crests fight /for needles to jab in their skinny arms,” in order to establish a contrast with the past, “Where are the owls, they want to know- /the red-tailed hawks that soared over /their hunts, the tortoises, bobcats, /jackrabbits, skunks who gave them power, /were their kin in a boundless world /where everywhere was home.” The mood and images create powerful backward look at a place, tying onto the book’s theme so nicely.
My favorite poet is the still the one with the best, most original and creative uses of figurative language. “Spruce Street, Berkeley,” by Naomi Shihab Nye, ponders what is place is like when a street is named for a tree. There, “it is right that flower /bloom purple and feel like cats, /that people are leaves drifting /downhill in morning fog.” (She cleverly places cats and fog in the same verse. I love how she plays with it.) “Everyone came outside to see /the moon setting like a perfect /orange mouth tipped up to heaven.”
An excellent extended metaphor, though dark, is Donald Justice’s six verse “Bus Stop,”: “Lights are burning /In quiet rooms /Where lives go on /Resembling ours.”
When I found I found the theme of light in six or eight poems stretched over fifteen pages, I exclaimed, again, at the how impeccably placed the poems are. Each one is such a gem, so carefully crafted, and then placed exactly where it can be amplified or echoed by the others. I did not realize how much skill is involved in arranging the poetry. I discovered, once again, that a collection, unremarkable in title, cover, and theme/content, can be a cache of delightful musings. He is much more masterful than I realized, this Janeczko!

Janeczko, Paul B. 1995. Wherever Home Begins: 100 Contemporary Poems. New York: Orchard Books.