The New York Postcard Sonnets by Philip Dacey
(Rain Mountain Press, New York, NY, 2007)
The subtitle is, “A Midwesterner Moves to Manhattan”, and accomplishes the note missing from these poems printed individually here and there, Southern Poetry Review for example, where Juilliard was viewed a little more incisively. The impression there was of a tourist, now he is at home and less concerned with making any impression whatsoever, he’s in it for the long haul, New York is full of impressions.
Dunn & Kooser think Dacey’s superficial and great, New York satirizes itself in these verses, but not so’s you’d notice except over fifty-five sonnets.
This is how 11 in SPR becomes 6 in The New York Postcard Sonnets, by mollifying the neighbors not too obsequiously, the last four lines are changed to:
One singer to another: “Our best friends are vowels.”
Performing’s so physical; the musician as athlete.
And no student’s here because of Daddy’s dough.
You can’t buy Beethoven; hours of practice show.
*****
Christopher Mulrooney has written criticism in Small Press Review, Elimae, The Film Journal, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, and Parameter, poems and translations in The Northridge Review, Guernica, Vanitas, New Translations, and Rune.
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