Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker
By David Mikics
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 238 pp., $26)
Author: John Wall Barger
John Wall Barger is the author of four books of poetry, including The Mean Game (Palimpsest Press, 2019). His poems and critical writing have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review (online), The Hopkins Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. His poem, “Smog Mother,” was co-winner of The Malahat Review’s 2017 Long Poem Prize. He lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches Creative Writing at The University of the Arts. johnwallbarger.com
In the Cold Theatre of the Poem
This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.
— Louise Glück
Part I.
The Sublime Cacophony of Ernest Hilbert
Last One Out
By Ernest Hilbert
(Measure Press, 2019. $25)
Ernest Hilbert has an enviable ability to speak about contemporary America as if his words were washed in the blood of Achaean soldiers. Hilbert, speaking to the violence underlying human nature, sees war everywhere. Watching the Super Bowl in his calm living room, the football players—“Towering champions, created to win, // Will strut to their positions and pose, / Burnished, armored in emblems” (80-81)—become iron age warriors. Outside his house, birds swerve “in squadrons” (69). “The border of the republic,” says the speaker of “Mars Ultor,” “Is breached without notice: / More tug of war / Than elegant chess” (45). This refers to Romans preparing for battle—but also to Donald Trump. In fact, “Mars Ultor” was read aloud at the Trump Tower by (highly literate) protestors.