Part of the Bargain by Scott Hightower
Brokeback Poetry?
Yes, Scott Hightower was born and raised in rural Texas. Yes, he's gay. The gorgeous, seductive photograph selected for the cover of his latest book is of a mauve-shirted cowboy pulling the saddle from a horse. That, however, is where the gay cowboy stereotype ends.
Hightower is a world-traveler, a poet, a teacher of creative writing at NYU, and contributing editor to both The Journal and Barrow Street. His poetry throughout Part of the Bargain -- winner of the Hayden Carruth Award at Copper Canyon -- reflects a broad view of the world, a wide experience, and refuses to be categorized by any easy labels we might put on it.
Lately the poetry market, if we can call it that, has favored collections grouped tightly around a central theme. Hightower, however, seems to have little interest in being so confined. A quick scan of his titles will tell you that this is a smorgasbord: "After Polio" "Aida" "Virgil and Caesar" "Dildo Lob" "The Autobiography of Ethel Waters," "Tavern on the Green" " The Field of Agincourt on the Day of Crispin Crispianus" "Dinner at Barocco" "American Nights: In Merida, The Yucatan" "Charles Laughton"....
There seems no good place to stop this list of titles, because every poem in the collection is strong and unique. One will rise loftily to fine art, music, or history, while the next evesdrops on a conversation over beer and nachos at a roadhouse.
The book is anchored by a small set of poems based in Hightower's childhood Texas. In these he discusses the generations-deep community of family members and friends. Here, in a few lines from "Envy-in-Law," Hightower's speaker observes his mother in a fit of pique:
This is where I learned there can
be harshness without malice.
My mother, down on her knees,
is containing her hands in the beds,
a seething queen raking through ruined
finery. She paws at a weed.
"We'll not have any
in this family. That's not
now you kids were raised!" (1)
Though he doesn't dwell on it, the way Hightower was raised forms the hidden structure of this book. By introducing us to where he comes from, Hightower enables us to know who he is. In this way, when he takes on the broader themes, we know his voice; we know through whose eyes we are seeing the world.
- Hightower, Scott. Part of the Bargain. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon. 2004.
For another home-town based poet, please check out Red Beans and Ricely Yours and its author, Mona Lisa Saloy. Like Hightower, Saloy is a poet whose family-of-origin is the foundation underlying her work.
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