New Jersey by Betsy Andrews. University of Wisconsin Press (64 pgs.) $14.95

I'm always suspicious of booklength poems -- particularly when they are "prizewinning" booklength poems, so I came to this volume with a healthy dose of skepticism. For one thing, it's difficult for a poet to sustain the same level of language and craft throughout a long poem. For another, booklength poems tend to devolve quickly into either a intellectual discourse or a mind-numbing catalog of images. To be honest, after reading New Jersey, I am of three minds about it and only one of those minds actually liked this book.

As a poet, I did appreciate Ms. Andrews' craft and the fact that she was able to maintain that craft throughout the poem. Certain images, like her descriptions of the garbage littering New Jersey's landscape truly resonate:

"Turnpike immaculate, the salt marsh flanked in
masks, cupids, urns, plumage, syringes, food wrappers, cigarette butts ...."

Or the way she describes the geography of "the gaping streets of retractable housing where the aluminum siding licks its own wounds."

A third of me did enjoy this poem purely as an act of language. And if this poem was intended purely as an act of language without any strings attached or sense of its own importance, I could leave it at that. But, it does aspire to profundity. As an editor, I think this poem is often over-wrought, overly intellectual, peopled not by real flesh and blood New Jerseyans but with props, and written not for people but for certain educated people like the author to impress people of that ilk. A third of me was quite disappointed in this poem.

The final third of me tends to agree with the editor in me. As a native Jersey-dweller I had to snicker a bit at Andrews' characterization of my home state. Like most Jerseyans, I am quick to call the garden state, the "garbage state," but bristle when an outsider does it. Like most New York intellectuals, Ms. Andrews doesn't seem to think that New Jersey extends much further than Hackensack. To be honest, there's not much one can say about the physical landscape of New Jersey that one cannot say about most any other state in the union at this stage in the 21st century. However, New Jersey is more than the sum of its geography -- it is also the sum of its people and their collective voice which the poet seems completely oblivious to. As a native of New Jersey, I felt insulted by this poem. The fact that the poem is half-true makes it just as dishonest as if it were a total fabrication.

For decades, poets have been chasing after those great chroniclers of the American dichotomy -- writers like W.C. Williams and Carl Sandburg, and have done so with limited success. Indeed, while a few have come close to their legacy, most have fallen short. Two-thirds of me believes that New Jersey fails to fulfill its lofty ambition, placing Andrews among those who have fallen short.

-- reviewed by JCE