Jillian Weise, _The Book of Goodbyes_

THE JAMES LAUGHLIN winner of 2013. Not exactly light-hearted--a good many of the poems are about being in a love triangle with a man referred to as "Big Logos" and B.L.'s other girlfriend, and quite a few are about living with a disability--but even though the situations depicted are painful, a vein of comedy keeps rising to the surface. A dark comedy, certainly:

         The thing about him is

he keeps being the thing. You could never 
count on him. I did. 

That's from the first poem, "Up Late and Likewise," and to me that "I did" almost sounded like a stand-up punchline, to be accompanied with a flourish on a floor tom. Same with "Poem for His Girl," which apparently addresses the speaker's rival for the affections of Big Logos:

I'll tell you which panties
look good on you

psychedelic plaid
with ruffles on the waist

patriotic polka dot

This has a certain stand-up quality too, if we imagine a set up like, "wouldn't it be amazing if you got to give the other woman in your triangle advice about her underwear? You know what I would tell her?" (I'm guessing the advice here is a form of sabotage.)

The darkly-funniest poem, I think, is "Café Loop," in which two writers are having lunch and gossiping about a third writer who may well be Jillian Weise.

Oh, she's had it easy all right.
She should come out and state

the disability. She actually is very
dishonest. I met her once at AWP.

Tiny thing. Limps a little. I mean not
really noticeable. What will you have?

This poem rings all the more true in that anyone willing to crack wise about the things Weise cracks wise about is going to get gossiped about. Even the very affecting final poem, "Elegy for Zahra Baker," the book's longest, which an endnote explains "engages with the case of Zahra Baker whose remains were found scattered across Caldwell County, North Carolina, in 2010," veers into black humor: "Zahra Baker is still missing. I better write some more notes to her before she's dead."

And then, while the poems that one expects to be anguished are often tartly funny, three narrative poems about finches, which at least initially seem to be aiming at a whimsical, La Fontaine animal-fable vein, turn out to be anguished: "I've gone / over the branches and can't find you."

I found myself wondering whether the Josh Bell to whom the book is dedicated is (a) the famous violinist or (b) Big Logos or (c) both. I think he may well be Big Logos, at least, since the dedication is followed by the phrase "immanentizing the eschaton," Eric Voegelin's curt dismissal of any and all utopian projects, and a great nickname for anyone into Eric Voegelin would be "Big Logos."