David Breskin's Fresh Kills

As someone who has been referred to as a “renaissance man” before in print, I read David Breskin's Fresh Kills with interest. Here's someone who, like myself, has a few pokers in the fire, and some of them rather closely parallel my own fire pokers (music producer, journalist). Perhaps this is less unusual nowadays in our 21st century multitasking mode, but most books of poetry I grab off the shelves have biographical notes limited to the realm of literature, and academic credits. Breskin obviously gets around, and I like that right off the bat.

But I'm not as convinced by his poetry once I get into the book. Some of the earlier poems in Fresh Kills have a quasi-hipster, staccato style that feels forced to me:

The maid spanks her lord like clockwork.
Bring me the sweat of Scottie Pippen, bankers
and brokers, meter maids. Analyze skin
for its content of wind. Excuse me, while
I kiss the skull.

That last line is especially painful, being a pun on a lyric from Jimi Hendrix's “Foxy Lady.” I don't like it for what it is, and I don't like it for what it's trying to be.

Of course, my main gripe when reading poetry reviews is that they can excerpt what they want, and use that slice of writing to promote or demote the poet. It's a trick that works both ways. But with Breskin, and most of the poems in part one, I find this tendency of his to be annoying. To his credit, by part two things improve, which tells me (a) he had a definite theme in mind for each part of Fresh Kills, which I can respect even if I feel it fails him at times, and (b) that he is a poet I would like to continue to read. When he turns away from a more fragmented style that appears to address – urban alienation? Upper class complacency? – and toward more direct and emotive poems, I feel him, and I feel for him.