John Godfrey: Midnight on Your Left

Midnight on Your Left, John Godfrey (The Figures, 1988)

[8/100]

Zap! Pow! Biff! I need an occasional shaking, like this volume of John Godfrey's, to remind me that poetry isn't all the serious exploration of historical antinomian impulse, of subterranean currents of occluded counter-speech, of the ever-deferred wanderings of nomadic cultural impulse. Sometimes it's sloppy (but precise), urbane (and oh so urban, even gritty), super-sexy, funny, & just plain fun. Godfrey's got a great ear, evident especially in his short-lined lyrics, & he's got a keen (if sometimes scopophilic) eye & analytic mind. So who's to gainsay him if the poems of Midnight on Your Left spend more time in the region of the crotch than the rafters of philosophical analysis? At any rate, I'm chalking this one down for possible inclusion in the "postmodern eroticism" project that I might get around to one of these years. The flâneur as cruiser: the poetry of (carnal) knowledge.
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