Plasticville

Vivid and protean, David Trinidad's poems delve deep into the surfaces of things. At first, a reader might think this is a book about collecting dolls and rock song titles, with a sonnet completely composed of monster's names, capped by Greta Garbo arranging trolls under her couch. But it is a book [...]
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Vivid and protean, David Trinidad's poems delve deep into the surfaces of things. At first, a reader might think this is a book about collecting dolls and rock song titles, with a sonnet completely composed of monster's names, capped by Greta Garbo arranging trolls under her couch. But it is a book about domestic life, a book about how to live, a book about a special kind of bliss, the bliss of invention, and collecting, and above all valuing the bits and pieces of popular detritus, whether that be Nick at Night, songs from 60s girl groups, or Barbie's pocketbook, that constitute our lives. Plasticville is about a special kind of solace: counting up what you have. Trinidad's pastiche of simple, declarative sentences masks a delicately calibrated formal poetic construct. His ultra subtle terza rima, his blended rhymes, and his surefooted diction guarantee that the poems never miss a beat. Trinidad's warm intelligence makes poetry that is deft but true, dazzling but vulnerable, and plastic but classic. "The poems in Plasticville bring to mind the assemblages of Joseph Cornell, the collages of Kurt Schwitters. This is a poet who is able to imbue the commonplace with meaning and feeling while never compromising the integrity of his 'found' material. A fascinating and singular book." Bernard Cooper "Reading Plasticville is intensely pleasurable, it appeals to one's ever-present childhood, though it mysterious emotional content is not just childlike and not just happy. And there is an unwavering light in all of Trinidad's work that turns individual words into objects, new facts." Alice Notley