Orient Point by Julie Sheehan

Orient Point
By Julie Sheehan
2006 W.W. Norton
135 pp

At a point in time when the term ‘contemporary poetry’ has come to mean generally poor attempts at emulating Whitman or passing off journal entries as poetry, there seems little willingness on the part of the contemporary poets to pay homage to the rich heritage of form and structure of the pre Whitman years.
Simply stated poetry is the nobility of the language, all else is prose in cheap disguise. Yet few poets are willing to move out of their ‘safety zones’ to experiment with the language and we are deluged with confessions and laundry lists passed off as poetry.
Then there is Julie Sheehan and her book of poems titled “Orient Point” which is a tremendous piece as a whole as each piece resonates with the reader through her range and strength and reverence for the language.
The first thing that struck me when reading “Orient point” was that Ms. Sheehan isn’t afraid to (Gasp!!!) rhyme. Personally I love it. I tend to think that a poet is more considerate of their choice of words when delving into the world of rhyme and structured meter. It’s too easy to lay out stream of conscious claptrap and pronounce it a poem, let’s face it …even Kerouac falls flat on more than one occasion.
Sheehan goes that extra step. She carefully constructs her thoughts and verse. Take, for instance, “Sonnet: On a Recurring Argument Going Nowhere”:
The red-eyed gas gauge glares: attend! attend!
But you insist we’re nowhere near empty.
We taxi past Texacos, bypass BPs,
Our engine inventing fuel, me at wit’s end,
you fuming at my lack of confidence.
We pause at last, a Shell somewhere in Jersey
Not to fill up, but just to buy some candy.
By now I’ve hit the interstate of silence,
The pissed-off lane, the sullen bend, the unsound
skid and brakes. I ponder where to go
the next chance I can take a sabbatical.
The car konks out. Stillness emphatical.
I’ve never much complained of breaking down
until today. Guess what: I told you so.

Sheehan takes the wonderful Petrarchan form and makes it palatable to the modern reader. Her skillful use of enjambment allows this to read in a conversational vein, but make no mistake, each word is placed within a well crafted structure. Her subject matter – the simple act of running out of gas – looms so much larger as the masterful metaphor of the inability to communicate or even a relationship that has ‘run out of gas’. The humorous tone is hammered home with a rhyme Gilbert and Sullivan would envy; sabbatical/emphatical.
Too, Sheehan offers several free verse poems, mixed in with her sonnets and ghazals and never loses sight of the purpose of poetry, which is to entertain and enlighten.
This book was the winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and deservedly so. A must have for you poetry library.

The Tender Bar

The Tender Bar
A Memoir
J.R. Moehringer
Hyperion $23.95
370 pp
A memoir is a memoir is a memoir. Too often of late memoirs amount to nothing more than tell all books or page upon page of braggadocio involving sexual conquests and illicit drug use. After awhile you stop caring about the protagonist.
Then along comes J.R. Moehringer with his memoir “The Tender Bar”, and let me tell you this… if you’re not inclined toward memoirs, this one will change your mind.
Mr. Moehringer writes with a simple and earthy eloquence and honesty that entices you into the story, almost allowing that you’re there or wishing you were.
“The Tender Bar” is as Long Island as Long Island gets. While many perceive the island as either the weekend getaway for rich New York City dwellers or the Gold Coast of Gatsby the reality is that much of the island is populated by the hard working middle class. This is their story.
Quite simply it’s a love story. Unconditional love…between the hard drinking men that seem to live the “Tender Bar” and the young boy they ‘adopt’ as one of their own; nursing him through the difficult and slowly developing realization that his father has abandoned him, encouraging him in his forays into love, and picking up the pieces when love was elusive.
While each real life character has their own demons to face, collectively they offer each other strength and a hand to guide each other through tough times. There are some who may suggest that these men were merely deluding themselves, blinding themselves to reality through over indulgence in alcohol, or maybe they merely established an alternate reality in the bar. I was reminded of a M*A*S*H episode wherein the surgeons rebel and declare Rosie’s Bar a sovereign nation… a refuge as it were from the horror of the war. OK so growing up and working on Long Island doesn’t equate with war, but the bar as refuge certainly is a truism.
Moehringer’s opening sentence is “We went there for everything we needed.”… It is not a careless statement. For a young man desperate for a lifeline it WAS everything. That he eventually has to face his own alcoholism may seem like an inevitability, but it isn’t presented as a condemnation of the bar, rather it is offered as a part of the continual growth of Mr. Moehringer.
If it’s true that one can’t go home again, then it is also true that home is not necessarily an actual edifice; instead it is a feeling which one carries close to his heart. More than anything Moehringer drives that point home, ultimately returning the love he received by putting in print his memoir.
If you’ve ever spent time in a bar, if you’ve ever leaned on someone for emotional support, and if you’ve ever wondered what a well written memoir should be then “The Tender Bar” is a must read.