We are thrilled to announce the return of Micro-Review Mondays, with Brian Foley paving the way and bringing us mini-review morsels to start each week of right. Check back each Monday for one or two little delights. Enjoy!
The Obligatory Garnish Argument
by Meg Ronan
Springgun Press
$16.00
A distrust in decoration reaches back as far as Plato, who thought ornamentation a symptom of deceit drawn from what he deemed the poet’s affinity for the “divinity of madness.” In the Obligatory Garnish Argument, one of Meg Ronan’s arguments chimes, “But of course, my aunt told me not long ago/ the crazier I get the more she wants to read!/ So maybe that’s it…you are all just waiting for me to crack.”
The word obligatory drawing attention to the poet’s awareness to the fact that poetical language is itself often persecuted as no more necessary than a parsley sprig on a plate, Meg Ronan’s first collection is a multi-modal display of voice intentionally alternating between confidence and neurotic uncertainty towards the medium she chooses to use.
The self-titled poems interspersed throughout are three-line stanzas of dynamic, microtonal word play, continually in flux, but keeping the argument in refrain. At their best these poems are reminiscent of Stein’s Tender Buttons, a book that might also be considered a garnish argument.
Cut throughout the rest of the book is another meta-voice, pleading at the reader to stop, repeating “why are you still reading this”, “why are you still suffering” in numerous ways. The effect is charming, smart, often funny, as this admission of guilt welcomes the reader in more than it pushes out.
Yet despite the warning shots to back off, it’s an ironic move, as Ronan knows this is a conversation that needs to be had, as shown in the final poem
an argument so efficient as to
unglue all that metaphysic gloom, so
perfumed a premise, yes, the obligatory garnish argument
—Brian Foley