ANNOTATION: TIM DLUGOS
I first learned of Tim Dlugos while reading the 2008 Spring Edition of Columbia Poetry Review. David Trinidad, editor of the journal and also of Dlugos’s collected works (A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos), included 20 of Dlugos’s early poems in the issue. I instantly fell for Dlugos’s poetry. Aside from his queer, cultural, and campy content, Dlugos’s poetics captured Frank O’Hara’s conversational tone while masterfully making use of repetition.
Repetition comes in many forms with Dlugos’s work. For example, in the poem “CRAZY” (pg. 67), he repeats the word “crazy” 22 times in 15 lines; or, 23 times if you include the title. The tone of the piece is conversational to begin, “Everybody tells me I’m crazy because I walked around muttering and screwed my courses”. However, the frequency of “crazy” helps to build momentum in the poem and give readers the implication that the speaker might really be a crazy madman; “I’m jobless and crazy, crazy with power, crazy for glamour and rhinestones and stars”. Yet, at the end of the piece, Dlugos disables the word when he reflects on how prospective lovers will tell him, “You’re Crazy when I fall into their eyes”. Indeed, being crazy in love is only sensible, and this poem makes that point clear, aided by Dlugos’s crafty repetition.
Likewise, Dlugos is keenly aware of phonetic figures, as evidenced in his echoing of them (and lack thereof) in his poem “AS ALIVE” (pg. 528). This is a short poem of 12 lines, and he ends the short, first line with “risen”. The “sen” sound is repeated in the second line with “ascend,” and again (but slightly altered) in the third line with “Rican”. Dlugos skips out on the sound for two lines and then brings it back in the 6th line’s “wren.” He then has readers wait for the sound to repeat itself after 5 lines. Withholding the phonetic figure that’s been repeated makes the lines read faster here. But, Dlugos places the phonetic figure (“born”) at the close of the last line, like a bookend. Surely, his repeating and refusing an established phonetic figure keep the tempo of this poem, which compliments the poem’s push and pull with life and death.
Along with concern for repetition, Dlugos does not shy from more constrained forms of poetry, like rhyming quatrains. In “SLEEP LIKE SPOONS,” Dlugos uses tetrameter and rhyming quatrains (with the 2nd and 4th lines rhyming) to deliver an urbane and urban love poem. He heavily enjambs the lines to prevent them from sounding too hokey and keep the sentences somewhat conversational, but he still uses the end-rhyme to retain the complimentary sound it evokes. Sure, some of Dlugos’s rhymes are monosyllabic and usual, like “balm” and “calm” in his first stanza (pg. 529); but, he also tries out unusual rhymes as well, such as “freckled skin” and “Scandinavian” in the second stanza. The timeless form he uses here matches with the undying sentiment of love, and his repetition by means of rhyme resonate with the subject of two spoons fitting together.
Again, Dlugos employs repetition in a variety of ways. He uses it to build momentum in a poem, or he might turn it off to quicken the pace of a section/control the tempo, or he uses it to compliment his subject matter. Whatever the reason, Dlugos frequently writes with repetition and does so successfully; at least, in this reader’s opinion.
