Attributed to the Harrow Painter

Despite exhibiting elements of the new sincerity movement’s blurring of earnestness and irony, this sophomore volume from Twemlow (Palm Trees) slyly and miraculously escapes the looming trap of the movement’s tendency towards triviality. He achieves this by situating a childlike wonder, an awe that borders on parody, within the context of a thought-provoking conversation about the problematic economies in which writing circulates: “I wrote,/ To paraphrase/ Myself, to interpret or/ Delay/ My words, to rework,/ Remix, mash up,/ Redefine, defile,/ Lift, smash, plagiarize,/ Borrow, beg, steal,/ Augment, as homage.” Here Twemlow subtly instructs the reader about how the text was intended to be engaged with: as an ars poetica as well as a deconstruction of Twemlow’s own awestruck meditations on fatherhood. As the collection unfolds, Twemlow nimbly explores the ethical problems of a system in which a deeply personal narrative inevitably becomes a commodity. He elaborates: “The word, I don’t/ Want to repeat it/ Anymore, it has taken on/ Its own blemished lore.” Subtly and provocatively, Twemlow questions the value—practical, aesthetic, humanistic—of the work of art outside of the discourse that prompts it. Filled with poems that reflect on and interrogate the politics of their own making, Twemlow’s collection is a refreshingly self-aware variation on the innovations of contemporary poetry. (Nov.)