Meat Air

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WITHOUT fanfare or advance publicity, R?? Loewinsohn became the first poet in Harvard?? history to truck into Sanders Theatre on a motorcycle. Kevin Starr called the gesture "apocalyptic??? Loewinsohn called it "an objectification of his ???ture" (on Duncan and Ginsberg for Starr's Wester??? Lit. course). Possibly, the motorcycle entry spea??? as well for Loewinsohn's own poetry.

Don't get it wrong. Ron Loewinsohn is no Jame? Dean, no Peter Fonda, no Bob Dylan on the cover of "Highway 61 Revisited." He is soft-spoken, un??? pretentious, and probably doesn't even own ??? leather jacket. He is not looking for kicks ??? the fury of a Hell's Angel. He has worke??? photo-engraver, edited a magazine with ??? Brautigan (lifetime: one issue), studie???, been a teaching fellow at Harvard. His has ??? been the life of a rebel without a cause.

???, there is something about Meat Air, Loewin-??? first major collection of poems, just pub??? last week, that makes his motorcycle ride a ??? fitting symbolic gesture. Maybe it's that ???insohn is the kind of poet who seems to be ??? things in stride. Many of his poems appear ???halant at first, easy-going, like a conversation ???een two people who have met but are going ??? friends. Brautigan, of course, is the master ??? game; Sidney Goldfarb. also a Harvard ???-poet, is another player. (For instance: "On ??? to/ meet the astrologer/ 1 noticed my fly/ ??? down"). Loewinsohn plays it like he rode that ???cycle: real cool. "How can a girl with such a ???lly be so desirable?" he asks in the poem ???, Loewinsohn andc," then dubs the Lady. "Venus ???usseldorf, curvilinear, oviform," For an epi??? to the last group of poems in the book ???ok of Ayres," after Thomas Campion). he ???unces. "I need to take a new tack./ and sit on it." ??? success of this kind of poem depends entirely ??? quality of the surprise. Sometimes the sur??? is a little too coy:

??? we saw a lake

??? was actually a lot. -and I don't know whether ??? was a good thing or not.

???times, as in a poem called "Semicolon;" the ??? is a delight:

??? whole row of them

???;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

??? swimming off to Cata?ina.

??? of the surprises are heavy shockers. The end ???. It Is An Outfielder" comes the closest:

??? girl out in left field

??? standing with her arms folded

???king to a boy while she (nervously)

??? her glasses

??? she turns, unfolds her arms

??? catches a fly ball for the 3rd out.

??? from its obvious shock value, a motor??? in Sanders Theatre, says Loewinsohn, helps ??? down the decorum of the place." In Meat ???corum-breakdown is accomplished by poems ??? pissing. Anal-fixative poetry is of course, as ??? as Chaucer and as current as what you read on ??? bathroom wall this morning. Since the poet ???ardly obsessed with this trick. one example. ??? the appropriately titled "Paean" is adequate:

??? ???lightless space this often happens

???gine they stick their dicks

??? plastic tube to pee, saving

??? of it for later analysis and ??? the rest. . .

??? other pastimes have obvious priority. Take ???, for example. The poet speaks about the ??? of fucking with many voices. in many moods. At times, he confides the carnal thoughts of the tough motorcyclist-poet:

inside the skirts is meat.

calling

to meat-and looking into your eyes I saw

skies of the easiest blue.

At times, the casual tenderness of the poet-lover:

If you saw her face

In the morning you'd never

stop in your tracks, never

change your direction, never

take a day off work. . .

But here, take your clothes off, touch

her fingers, and then

wake up.

PEOPLE HAVE, of course, been writing graffitti ???out pissing and fucking for years without giving ???damn about the use of the objective correlative ??? the integration of form and content. But Loewinsohn's poetry, in spite of its apparent nonchalance. ??? subtly crafted and conceived. In "Meat Air." the title poem of the new collection, he describes what ??? calls the "cohering center" of his work:

. . . the arms and fingers

???ving, on the point of speech, so full

???of its knowledge meat longing to become

??? air as the words yearn for the meat

??? of their completion.

??? best poems are those which satisfy both the ??? "to make the word flesh," as he puts it, and ??? hear the body talking," In their delicate physi???, these poems are also some of the most per??? in the collection. For if Loewinsohn's poetry ??? reads like conversation, these are the poems ???ant to be spoken in whispers:

??? told you last week what I wanted

??? know now will never be

??? a small room with book covered walls

??? deep, soft, green, leather chair

??? a good light behind it.

??? gentle quiet filling the house like

??? glass of water...

???aps the most eloquent poem in the book is the ??? silent:

??? think of you

??? a pain in my throat

??? having spoken.

??? every one of Loewinsohn's poems stops as ??? as a motorcycle on a dime. Some details are ???palpable as chunks of gristly meat: "a high ???ing/ of that attentuated stream of urine/ ???st the porcelain." Other details hang with the ???iness of hot air: "The sink full of dishes. ??? will have to be washed.)."

??? reading Loewinsohn can be every bit as satis??? as eating a roast beef special. Just be careful. Meat Air doesn't always stick to your bones.