cover image The Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems

The Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems

Alexander Theroux. Dalkey Archive Press, $10.95 (171pp) ISBN 978-1-56478-006-5

The intellectual tricks novelist Theroux ( An Adultery ) plays in these 129 alphabetically arranged poems are self-indulgent and wearying to the reader. Take the title poem, which begins, ``Matsu, spread out your netsukes . . . '' and ends with reference to Alexander at Tashkurghan. The literary-historical allusions, the intricate patterning of sound, the twisting syntax inadvertently demonstrate one of the speaker's own digressions, the ``need to be / Surely more than what you are.'' For all the showiness, for all the lessons planted in the poems (``The poet is a veteran of the night, / Method the soul of his management, / Drawing lines that you might dream . . . . '') the work finally rings hollow. Subjects range from Wittgenstein to spittoons. Many of the pieces are little (often back-biting) games that have private meaning. Some are misogynistic. Some are vicious: a poem on ``departmental secretaries at Yale'' says, ``Your mouths / Were bigger than your twats and those / Acid green supply cabinets you defended / Like phylacteries from Philistines.'' There is plenty of wordplay here, but ultimately Theroux does not seem to have a feel for the music in the English language. (Aug.)