Review: Constructive Criticism (A Review Of Jumbo Poetry By Dan Flore III)

By Pete Mladinic

 

 

Constructive Criticism

 

there’s a creative writing class tonight

it’s about

 

sharing your writing

getting constructive criticism

 

I dunno I’d go

 

but hearing a good

“God, that sucks.”

about my poetry

 

is very constructive to me

 

While “constructive criticism” has a practical meaning, the irony in this poem shows the folly in this epithet, its redundancy. Criticism is just that, and whether constructive or destructive depends on how criticism is given and taken. The poem enlightens and entertains. Its author, Dan Flore III, writes because he likes to; he delights in putting thoughts and feelings into poems. One aspect of Flore’s talent is irony, specifically the irony of self-depreciation. His candor about the darkness of life is an affirmation of the light. Flore gets his readers to know and care about him and consequently about themselves through his persona, a man who smokes cigarettes, drinks energy drinks, and displays self-depreciation with humor and irony. Through his persona, Flore implies: Don’t take this seriously, but take this seriously, because it’s a poem. Irony—situational, satirical, and cosmic—is, figuratively speaking, in the air this poet breathes. 

In Flore’s poems of situational irony what is not said is as important as what is said. And what is not shown is as important as what the reader sees. He doesn’t flinch from the darkness, or from the light of being alive. “Suicide” is minimal. What the persona doesn’t say, about suicide, to the unseen listener in the poem, is just as important as what he says to the reader. “I was protecting myself / the opposite of hurting myself.” Speaking a little, he says a lot, and in the middle of his utterance there is “progress.” Yes, this quiet persona is very talkative in “2 Dead Laptops”:

 

remembering now

my poor wife’s pale face 

as she stacked the laptops

on the dining room table

 

pitiful and saying maybe 

we could get something for these?

she was standing there

under desperate light 

but with a little sparkle 

 

of hope

 

and that 

is what

kills me

the most

 

Surprising that in a poem about technology, “Do they boot up at all?” and money, the clincher is that fleeting, ethereal “sparkle of hope.”  

Other poems are a mix of satire and irony. In the minimal “Phone-bituary,” “Sara” spent so much time on “her phone” that she “finally succumbed.” The persona suggests that “in lieu of flowers / please text.” Irony, with satire, is also at work in “Social Media Bloodbath,” about the odd mix of a person figuratively opening “his veins up” and “a / pic of someone’s / taco salad dinner.” Both poems show a sad truth in a humorous light. This next poem’s social commentary might “ruffle a few feathers” and get a few “falling down funny” laughs:

 

I Went on a Christian Dating Site

 

I went on a Christian dating site

it’s cheating on my wife

but it’s ok

because it’s Christian 

 

And in “Make America Bearable Again” he adroitly says, “the bad guys aren’t supposed to be real.” 

Cosmic irony in Flore depicts his persona as an individual apart from but finally with others, past and present. “Me vs. the Post Office” has the persona in a long line, observing people. About to mail a book to one of his readers he concludes, “I fight for poetry.”  In “They Haven’t Got the Nuts to Publish It” he says, “it was hell to live it / hell to write it / and they’re going to say / to hell with this.”  “A Traditional Holiday Meal of Sun Chips” is about a Thanksgiving meal, “with people who love me.” In the end he is alone, and content “with a bag of Sun Chips.” The opposite is true in the poem that precedes it, “My Father’s Sleaze,” the father sits in a car, “and waits for her” while the mother and son are “alone.” The image “streaks of rain / like cracks / in the glass windows / of our home” says a lot about the fissure in this family, a consequence of the father’s infidelity.  Equally poignant is a poem about universal loss, a poem in which a little says a lot:

 

John

 

I saw a man

walking down the street

who looked just like John

 

John is dead

 

I looked at the man

a second time

 

I wanted to see John

again.

 

Flore writes poems because he enjoys the act of writing. As he reveals who he is, his individuality, his readers recognize themselves. This recognition comes about through the poet’s imagery, metaphors, rhythms, nuances of tone, line management and manipulation of irony. Sometimes crude, oftentimes elegant, Flore is at all times original. Reflecting on the poems in his latest collection, Jumbo Poetry, it is fitting to conclude with a paraphrase from Dan Flore’s friend, and fellow poet, John Yamrus: We live in a flawed, beautiful world; shame on you if you don’t love it.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Mladinic's most recent book, The Whitestone Bridge, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.