Jul 13, 2007  |  By: KATHI WOLFE  | COMMENTS     

Life is filled with tragedy and comedy as well as secrets and evasion, yet only an exceptionally skilled poet can blend playfulness with profundity. Hiram Larew, who is gay and lives in Upper Marlboro, Md., is such a poet.  

His second poetry collection, “More Than Anything,” has just been released by Vrzhu Press. At just under 50 pages, this well-designed volume fills a unique niche — between a chapbook and a full-length poetry collection — but don’t be fooled by the volume’s slim size. “More Than Anything” is brimming with word play, intelligence, feeling and (seeming) contradictions.

Reading Larew is like eavesdropping on Emerson having a beer with Frank O’Hara.  Take “The Bridge,” the opening poem.

“Improve me,” begins the first stanza in an Emersonian manner. “Make me into a bird bath/ Splashing like friends do in the morning,” Larew writes, sounding more like O’Hara. “So that I’m ready for most anything,” he adds (concluding the stanza and combining Emerson’s self-reliance with O’Hara’s love of play).

Capturing meaning in Larew’s work, at times, feels like lassoing a moonbeam, and since there’s no need to look for literal or linear logic in poetry, this isn’t a bad thing. Some readers may find Larew’s deliberate evasiveness and love of contraries frustrating, while others will enjoy his quirkiness, tenderness and skillful manner of turning poetic clichés on their heads. 

Depending on which camp you’re in, you’ll either be mystified or intrigued by lines such as these from “If He Never Hears This,”: “Imagine loving someone so much that it feels like/You are unscrewing the lid of a jar/And then going”. 

THERE IS A SELF-CONSCIOUS gnomic quality to Larew’s poetry. Larew, using beautiful, sometimes deceptively simple language, plays with paradox, mystery, clarity and elusiveness. 

“My idea of perfection is confusion/Flies finding a carcass/Lips trying to yell under water/Or gravity crazy mad at its equal/I like messes,” he writes in “Cuff.”  Yet, in the same poem, Larew says, “I have no secrets at all.” 

The poet challenges us to learn, but through the indirectness, the intuitiveness of poetry, rather than the directness of prose.  “Never ask anyone anything directly/Be a swan’s neck/So that you find out everything by guessing,” Larew writes in “If He Never Hears This.”

Some of the most striking and surprising imagery in “More Than Anything” can be found in the collection’s poems that are addressed to lovers or friends.

“And when he smooches ice cubes swirl/Like they’re on another planet,” Larew writes in “Go Rouse James.”  “Aldo” stands out among Larew’s fine love poems because it magnificently inverts romantic tropes. “I love you like hornets/And here’s why–/You’re the skid marks of ancient history/The whoop of every bad morning/…just don’t like what I like/And you’re the worst like of all,” Larew writes.

Occasionally, Larew’s ironic exhortations seem more glib than playful. Take this stanza from “Don’t Tell Anyone”: “We need to learn to haven’t/To pine for never/To unlove love/To Trust the weather”.  While these lines are skillfully written, the emotional tone of this stanza runs through many of the poems in the collection and occasionally becomes tiresome, at times, especially when reading “More Than Anything” straight through.

Poems such as “Well,” prevent “More Than Anything” from becoming a one-note sonata. This poem is a hot, direct rhythmic outpouring of anger. “I’ll give you angry/I’ll get you hair burning/Mice squealing toe broken angry/....I’ll be right here/Looking like a fist/And sweet as bloody nose pie,” Larew writes. 

If you’re engaged by language, humor and feeling, “More Than Anything” is the poetry book you should read this summer. Nominated for a 2006 Pushcart prize, Larew’s poems have received many awards, including the Allen Ginsberg Award. He is co-founder of the Poet Connection, a resource for poets in Prince George’s County Maryland.