Anthologist, The [Paperback]

Baker conducts a tour of English-language poetry that barely overlapped the one course I took in college, defining terms and citing examples heretofore unfamiliar, but sifted through the persona of his rambling, engaging narrator. In a way I was Baker's ideal reader for this novel.

I'd appreciated his gift for minute, vivid (poetic?) observations ever since "The Mezzanine," but I feel less squeamish about his nerdiness when it's presented to me in the guise of a fictional narrator. We can condescend to Paul Chowder, a self-absorbed, isolated middle-aged poet, while enjoying his opinions on rhyme, his observations of the world around him and finally being moved by the pain of his separation from the woman known only as Roz. So having just finished the last chapter, I'm eager to find out more about poets Louise Bogan, Charles Simic and James Fenton without first needing an antidote to Baker's prissiness.

At the same time I was impressed with the subtle cues Baker provides to reflect his protagonist's hurt at Roz's departure, cues the import of which even Chowder is unaware. The breezy narrator is made to betray his state of mind through small acts and thoughts, making especially poignant what might be a merely routine plot device. Thus the character becomes fully dimensional.

Baker is masterly in intertwining his fictional narrative with observations on poetry that may, or may not, be strictly his. In fact I'm sure they're not 100% his own, and that gives them a freedom to be simplistic or warped or limited in a way that I'm sure Baker wouldn't have wanted to fly under his own name. But his discussion of various poets and their methods doesn't require that we agree, only that we follow his train of thought--and he makes it easy for us to do so--while engaging us with the subject. The novel is, finally, an easy and quick read, much like the short lyric poems that it particularly extols, though, like those poems, it has much more heft than its ease leads us to expect.

Here comes a book for those who exult in word play and delight in the beauty of phrases that trip off the tongue.

Here is a volume that savors and celebrates verse as a many splendored thing. Here is a book that zestfully reminds us of the bond between poetry and music: meter, rhythm, cadence. Here is a book that delves into the fleshy history of poetry, especially the counterbalance between rhyme and free verse.

Here is a novel that bursts with vignettes about Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Mina Loy, Theodore Roethke, Sara Teasdale, Edgar Allen Poe, James Wright, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and so on. In fact, the title character -- the narrator, the protagonist, the anthologist -- is so caught up in poetry and poets that he occasionally indulges in thinking/imagining he's almost rubbed shoulders with one of these deceased greats.

Happily for us who relish full exercise of the creative mind, Nicholson Baker isn't one of those authors who writes the same book again and again. His questing, restless brain treats his readers to a variety of subjects using both fiction and non-fiction. I still have the paperback copy of The Mezzanine I bought years ago, and it is still one of my favorite reads. Now The Anthologist: A Novel, a book I've been eagerly awaiting, has arrived and I'm happy to report it is everything I'd hoped. Baker, the astute observer and prolific sharer of life's minutiae, sets us squarely into the summer of one Paul Chowder, a poet apparently once on the short list for the post of Poet Laureate of the United States. It seems only fitting to introduce Chowder and his predicament with a little original four-beat verse -- said form he proclaims to be "the soul of English poetry":

Paul Chowder suffers writer's block;
He'd rather swat a shuttlecock,
or take a walk, or nail a floor,
or dish some poets' tragic lore
than finish his anthology
and pen more free-verse poetry.

Procrastinating's costing Paul --
Stopping him from scaling his wall;
His pretty lady Roz is gone,
his funds he's almost all withdrawn.

Too aimlessly, or so it seems,
His day he spends on scansion schemes
And dishing Poe, Whitman, Loy, Pound,
Lowell, Bishop, and more renown'd.

What, we ask, will become of Paul?
Like Millay, will he tumble'n fall?
Or will his mundane, cautious life
Do more than cut him with a knife:
Lay fertile ground for fresh verse "plums"?
Dispatch, too, his ling'ring doldrums?

Paul Chowder is a bit of a shlub, by his own account. Actually, he comes across as a rather loveable, lumpy, middle-aged guy who's at loose ends. He putters, often displays a short attention span, gabs and gossips (at least to us, on paper) and can get a little bawdy. Since Roz, his long-time live-in girlfriend left, he's slept with his books. Professionally, he just cannot apply himself to churning out the forty-page introduction to his anthology, ONLY RHYME. And, in fact, he, sensitive soul he often is, is conflicted about who, for space reasons, he had to leave out of his anthology. He wonders whether this reluctance to exclude some deserving poets is fueling his writer's block.

If it were not for Paul's slump, he wouldn't be addressing us. He would be diligently adding page after page to his formal introduction, or he would be writing his "plums." (Paul calls non-rhyming verse "plums" and he explains more about that in his ponderings.) Instead, as Paul himself states in the opening paragraph, "...I'm going to try to tell you everything I know. Well, not everything I know, because a lot of what I know, you know. But everything I know about poetry. All my tips and tricks and woes and worries are going to come tumbling out before you."

One can imagine that Paul Chowder is a considerable part of Baker who may not write the same book again and again, but whose desire to investigate and discuss a myriad of topics often leads him to write works with a loose major theme and plenty of elbow room for "digressions." THE ANTHOLOGIST is perfect for unleashing that propensity. It is a wise, funny, somewhat unorthodox primer for poets and would-be-poets that arguably teaches as much or more than starchy textbooks.

This goes on my Top Books of 2009 list. I hope you'll find it as delightful as I have. Oh, and maybe write a few "plums" or rhymes of your own while you are spending time with Paul Chowder....

(4.5 stars) The sly humor of the cover, with its luscious plum, sets the tone for this rich, iconoclastic novel about poetry and the writing life. Paul Chowder, the speaker, has achieved modest success by writing "plums...That's what I call a poem that doesn't rhyme." He has just compiled an anthology of poetry, though choosing the poems for the anthology was, for him, "like [being] that blond bitch-goddess on Project Runway," and he must now write the forty-page introduction. His publisher is desperate for it, and Chowder has writer's block.

Regarding himself as "study in failure," Chowder contemplates his life. Roz, his love for the past eight years, has finally had enough of his dithering and has left him; he is in debt; his house needs repairs; and he cannot focus on anything long enough to act. As he thinks about his unwritten introduction, he skitters from perceptive comments about poetry and the creative life to mundane annoyances, juxtaposing unlikely subjects which keep the reader surprised and entertained. In two successive sentences, for example, he remarks that "You have to suffer to be a human being who can help people understand suffering. I have a mouse in my kitchen."

In a voice so "human" he sounds like an alterego for author Nicholson Baker, Chowder demystifies poetry--and plums--making often hilarious comments about the structure of language, the history of poetry, the lives of famous poets, and his own struggles. His free-flowing, not-quite-stream-of-consciousness style allows him to connect contemporary culture (and the reader) with the most serious academic subjects: "Friends," he thinks is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published."

Not satiric and not anti-academic, so much as "anti-ponderous" and "anti-pompous," Chowder is a true believer in the importance of good poetry and its ability to connect directly with our essential human nature, conveying unique visions of the world in a unique "music." His emphasis on rhyme is ironic, however, since he, himself, has had more success with free verse. He sees the rhythm of poetry as "a strolling rhythm. Or a dancing rhythm. A gavotte, a minuet, even a waltz," with inner quadruplets, the four-beat line being "the soul of English poetry." He illustrates the various meters, and he sets some poems to music, providing the musical notation. Poetry, in essence, is something that must be felt and heard as music, and the reader must join in its song if it is to be effective.

Chock full of "a-ha" moments, the novel is a treasure trove of information and observation about poetry and poets, told with robust humor and an awareness that, for many readers of this book, dead poets may be more interesting for their lives than for their writing. The novel entertains on every page, and the author is constantly aware that his audience is not a college classroom. As Paul Chowder (through Nicholson Baker) emphasizes the sounds of poetry and their parallels in music, dance, and even baby-talk, he provides an accessible "hook" for readers who may not have read poetry recently, and by demystifying it, he encourages contemporary readers to discover or rediscover its joys. n Mary Whipple

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