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California
Simultaneously sad and funny, Jennifer Denrow's California, explores the obsessive nature of humanity while calling into question how we create our own realities. Using image repetition as a tool to emphasize obsessions, Denrow's narrators range from a woman fixated on California to a ventriloquist and his dummy that instructs "You're allowed to move your lips. / I will teach you to become human..." These are poems occupied with imagination, and how we use our imagination to navigate our worlds.
- GenresPoetry
84 pages, Paperback
First published March 8, 2011
About the author
Jennifer Denrow
4 books2 followersJennifer Denrow's book, California, will be out next year from Four Way Books. She is the author of two chapbooks, A Knee for a Life & From California, On.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 5, 2011
Denrow’s California is an immediately engaging collection of poems that mixes a deftly personal voice with an almost detached sense of tragedy. While some poems yearn for a mythical California state of mind, others explore a power struggle between a ventriloquist and his dummy as they write letters back and forth. While there are a lot of great lines throughout, I get the feeling that Denrow's future is even brighter. I'll be excited to see.
September 19, 2018
This book is not the kind of poetry I tend to read, less lyrical, image heavy, more conversational and figurative, but I found myself enthralled, turning page after page. All human beings are unreliable narrators composing stories about how life will/would be better when/if. It is a sad and funny look at this universal human tendency. I enjoyed reading it and it was thought-provoking and funny. I love the pleasure of exploring unfamiliar texts and styles. This was full of surprise for me.
August 12, 2019
Act 1 had the poem “California”, which was unique. Act 2 included poems that weren’t very related to each other, but I liked a few, like “Memorization” and “Your Character”. Act 3 included one poem, and that poem included letters from 2 characters. I didn’t see those poems as part of this entire collection, and it seemed a bit awkward because of a change in tone and format.
November 23, 2014
My girlfriend has never been to California.
We lie awake at night, snow falling softly outside the window of our ski-town cabin. Cozy under the blankets, we stare at the flakes obscuring the bright mountain stars, and wonder about someplace else.
“California is the sort of place where it seems like anything can happen,” I tell her. “We’ll go there, someday.”
This is the sort of exchange which underlies Jennifer Denrow’s audacious book of poetry, “California.” Denrow is a young American poet from my home state of Colorado. As with all modern poetry, her work is obscure except in certain circles. I’m doing my little bit to change that.
The title poem, “California” is my favorite piece of poetry.
“California” is broken up into three sections. The first is a long poem titled “California.” This is the gem of the book. The second section consists of more traditional, shorter verses. This section, like many poetry collections, is rather hit-or-miss. The third section consists of a back-and-forth dialogue between ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie. This section struck me as too avant-garde. Perhaps I lacked the proper context to understand the subtext of this section, but it never clicked for me. It doesn’t matter though.
Section 1, the “California” poem, is worth the price of admission alone.
“California” is a poem about escapism and the lingering dissatisfaction of modern life. The opening lines of the poem state this mission well enough:
“Forget Your life
Okay, I have
Lay down something that is unlike it
Sold boat, Italian song”
The poem goes on for 19 pages, and it continues to expand beautifully and elliptically on the abstract idea of California as a stand-in for satisfaction, exotica, and adventure in our everyday lives, which find themselves dulling more and more as computer slowly remove the very essence of living from many situations.
Review continues at: http://thisisyouth.org/2014/11/23/jen...
We lie awake at night, snow falling softly outside the window of our ski-town cabin. Cozy under the blankets, we stare at the flakes obscuring the bright mountain stars, and wonder about someplace else.
“California is the sort of place where it seems like anything can happen,” I tell her. “We’ll go there, someday.”
This is the sort of exchange which underlies Jennifer Denrow’s audacious book of poetry, “California.” Denrow is a young American poet from my home state of Colorado. As with all modern poetry, her work is obscure except in certain circles. I’m doing my little bit to change that.
The title poem, “California” is my favorite piece of poetry.
“California” is broken up into three sections. The first is a long poem titled “California.” This is the gem of the book. The second section consists of more traditional, shorter verses. This section, like many poetry collections, is rather hit-or-miss. The third section consists of a back-and-forth dialogue between ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie. This section struck me as too avant-garde. Perhaps I lacked the proper context to understand the subtext of this section, but it never clicked for me. It doesn’t matter though.
Section 1, the “California” poem, is worth the price of admission alone.
“California” is a poem about escapism and the lingering dissatisfaction of modern life. The opening lines of the poem state this mission well enough:
“Forget Your life
Okay, I have
Lay down something that is unlike it
Sold boat, Italian song”
The poem goes on for 19 pages, and it continues to expand beautifully and elliptically on the abstract idea of California as a stand-in for satisfaction, exotica, and adventure in our everyday lives, which find themselves dulling more and more as computer slowly remove the very essence of living from many situations.
Review continues at: http://thisisyouth.org/2014/11/23/jen...
February 16, 2012
My favorite poem is the long title one, in which the word "California" gets so incantatory, and not in a Joni Mitchell way.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews