<div class="line">I can’t make love to you</div>
<div class="line">the way you want me to</div>
<div class="line">I can’t be George Clooney</div>
<div class="line">or Bradley Cooper</div>
<div class="line">that would be impossible</div>
<div class="line">and not because I can’t do</div>
<div class="line">what they might do</div>
<div class="line"></div>
<div class="line">it would be impossible because</div>
<div class="line">I can’t look like them</div>
<div class="line">I can’t drop the lights</div>
<div class="line">stand thirty feet tall before</div>
<div class="line">a rapt audience and say</div>
<div class="line">I know why you love me</div>
<div class="line">and it’s me</div>


The Crossing

Whatever It Is, It Comes in Waves

The Movies

<div class="line">our life should be magic</div>
<div class="line">we should live in a new and ever-</div>
<div class="line">changing world there should</div>
<div class="line">be wonders</div>
<div class="line">mountains</div>
<div class="line">unexplored villages</div>
<div class="line">with small golden people</div>
<div class="line">our clothing simple</div>
<div class="line">a foreign language</div>
<div class="line">which we speak</div>
<div class="line">and just understand</div>


Oatmeal

Compassion for the Minotaur

New Country

<p><em>Review by Michael Meyerhofer</em><img decoding="async" src="https://admin.rattle.com/ereviews/images/donnellymba.jpg" alt="The Melancholy MBA" align="right" /></p>
<p><small>Brick Road Poetry Press<br />
P. O. Box 751<br />
Columbus, GA 31902-0751<br />
ISBN 978-0984100569<br />
2011, 116 pp., $16.00<br />
<a href="http://www.brickroadpoetrypress.com/aboutmba.html">http://www.brickroadpoetrypress.com/</a></small></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>The Melancholy MBA </em>is the debut collection of Richard Donnelly, and in addition to being timely, it’s also pretty damn impressive. Donnelly’s style is unique in that he manages to break new ground (especially in how his frequent use of caesura forces the reader to take his/her time, really digest the language of these poems) while deftly sidestepping the pretension and unfriendliness all too often found in “experimental” poetry. Put another way, these poems are wonderfully fresh and original yet distinctly human in their accessibility.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The “quiet desperation” famously mentioned by Thoreau is everywhere in these poems, made palatable by wry wit blended with the seething frustration and guilt of Middle Management, America. In “Office Window,” the narrator remarks how he’s just been given “a new office with a window” and, nearing middle age, is finally able to see “Minneapolis sunshine.” One could point out the irony of this, suggesting he could just go outside if he wanted to see the sun, but then you have to wonder how visible the sun would be in the city—not to mention the American ridiculousness of having to choose between a paycheck and sunlight.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another example is “Jelly Beans,” an early poem in which an unnamed character seems unfazed by the near loss of a “three hundred thousand dollar” account, but sternly questions whether the narrator is the one who has been stealing jelly beans from the jar on his desk. On first read, it’s a funny poem combining the frustration of trying to deal with an incompetent who cares more about safeguarding his sweets than keeping his job. On second glance, though, there’s something sad and familiar about that situation, a bit of human frailty staining the machinery gears. We see this again in “She Tricked,” where we read how an unattractive woman famous for tricking “a man into getting her pregnant” flirts with the narrator, who “[doesn’t] blame her,” perhaps because he recognizes something of his own loneliness and desperation in her actions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Fans of films like <em>Office Space</em> or even the much darker <em>He Was a Quiet Man</em> will find much that is familiar here, to say nothing of those who themselves have actually worked in factories or offices and experienced firsthand the struggle to maintain individuality in a setting that, perhaps by necessity, wears down the creativity and complexity of the human experience in favor of mechanical productivity. For instance, in “Cabo,” the narrator overhears a group of salespeople being berated like disappointing children, warned that they may lose their “spiffs” if they don’t meet their quota. You can almost see the salespeople hanging their heads, shifting nervously, even though we (like the narrator) have no idea what a “spiff” means in this context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Those themes continue in “Your Life,” which contains perhaps the book’s most striking scene. There, an obviously dissatisfied narrator contemplates an affair with a woman who claims his life is “so perfect,” but instead of taking decisive action one way or another, he hangs up, clears his schedule, then simply spends “half an hour… staring at the wall.” The poet need provide no further details for the reader to imagine the indecision, excitement, and self-loathing that may be going through the narrator’s mind, all being clear illustrations of the very mortality the narrator both fears and seeks to embrace on the deepest level possible.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, these poems are not merely concerned with dissecting futility, posing the question of what constitutes a physical or a moral life worth living. Nor is <em>The Melancholy MBA</em> a two dimensional view into the mind of a modern businessman (stereotypically as foreign to most poets as, well, poetry to Wall Street). One of this book’s strengths is its unassuming ambition, plus its ability to maintain verisimilitude while illustrating the paranoia, classism and/or racism interwoven in the business community. “Poor People” is an excellent example (reposted here in its entirety):</p>
<blockquote><p>there are some poor people<br />
in the world<br />
I see them at the Northland Park<br />
Community Center or<br />
Dell Foods in<br />
Avery<br />
they wear dirty sweatshirts<br />
stained sweat pants old<br />
broken tennis shoes<br />
their hair hangs<br />
around their faces<br />
their oily hair<br />
it’s almost like being crazy<br />
is what it looks like to<br />
me until one of their kids<br />
kicks in your<br />
door at two a.m. and says<br />
crazy<br />
I’ll show you crazy</p></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some of Donnelly’s best uses of tongue-in-cheek humor occur in poems about the opposite sex, many of which also have some underlying feminist commentary or critique of the human condition. For instance, the sectioned poem “Six Short Poems about Love” begins with a vignette about a woman who refuses to bring the narrator coffee, saying she’ll only do that for her husband, but in fact, “not even for / him.” The rebuke seems playful, though, whereas in “The Good Manager,” a frustrated narrator tries to distance himself from a female employee who seems to be asking for leniency, a raise, and a personal shoulder to cry on, though he finishes by telling her to “button / up the top / of that blouse.” While that poem could be read as a lighthearted critique of an inappropriate worker, an alternate view would be to read the poem’s title satirically, so that the rebuke is how the narrator feels he <em>should</em> respond, for whatever reason, but doesn’t. Perhaps my favorite example, though, not to mention my favorite line from the book, is the beginning of “Sex Poem,” which artfully blends eroticism with measured self-deprecation:</p>
<blockquote><p>A woman’s body<br />
is a foreign country<br />
and you are not a native<br />
you are a man with a stamped<br />
passport.</p></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Underneath these small, often funny tales of lust, ambition, and petty betrayals, the real strength of these poems is their obsession with mortality, coupled with the absurdity of our daily situation. Somehow, though, Donnelly manages to illustrate all this with the timing, charisma, and lyrical acrobatics of a stand-up comic. The end result is that we not only agree with him, nodding and sometimes laughing as we turn the page, but we feel better (and stronger) for it.</p>


Cheap Talk

On the Anniversary of Her First Marriage

THE MELANCHOLY MBA

<div class="line">it would take a long time for me to love</div>
<div class="line">you</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I would see you thrown from that office and then</div>
<div class="line">you would have to get a job a real</div>
<div class="line">job a low job</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">something physical</div>
<div class="line">something that broke your nails if not</div>
<div class="line">your will</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">no more coffee from the company china your</div>
<div class="line">famous red lipstick</div>
<div class="line">on your famous white cup</div>
<div class="line">I’d see you drink from styrofoam</div>
<div class="line">like the rest of us</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I’d strip you of your friends</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">you can stay in a cheap apartment for once</div>
<div class="line">throw away your high heels no</div>
<div class="line">keep those</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and when you call me I can be very cruel I won’t</div>
<div class="line">make promises</div>
<div class="line">I’ll think about it</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">because it’s going to take time</div>
<div class="line">you’re going to have to stop shaving your body</div>
<div class="line">wash with plain soap</div>
<div class="line">give up on the salon and the streaks</div>
<div class="line">and blond highlights</div>
<div class="line">and if there’s grey good</div>
<div class="line">good</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">because I want you to suffer no that’s not</div>
<div class="line">it</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I want the opposite I want you to finally become</div>
<div class="line">yourself you said you want to</div>
<div class="line">feel I’ll show you how to feel</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">but first meet me halfway</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">meet me at the Powderhorn Park Library in South</div>
<div class="line">Minneapolis and keep</div>
<div class="line">your voice down</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">there are real people here</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">wear a scarf an old coat and come over here</div>
<div class="line">between the shelves</div>
<div class="line">where we can see the street</div>
<div class="line">at night and the snow just begun to fall</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">put your arms around me</div>
<div class="line">I’ll show you how to feel but first you must feel</div>
<div class="line">yourself</div>
<div class="line">first yourself and then me</div>


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January 18, 2016The MoviesRichard Donnelly

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