But where there would be ego in the conversational acrobatics of others, Mauch has inserted humility, a thoughtfulness about and for his subjects that doesn’t let up even in poems about, I presume, himself and his experiences. So in a completely different way, he slays me again, with his generosity and big old heart.
His reflections aren’t always cozy. There are funerals, there are “awful years,” there is a keen awareness of mortality. In “From the owner’s manual,” there is fear of becoming “some nobody who believed it when they said / (girls) you were a princess, or that you could grow up // (boys) to be the President of the USA” (p. 43). A poem ending that way can make me so angry with its truth, but then, I flip around and read a title like “Every view is oceanic if you focus on the sky” and think, I can handle that truth from this poet. Mauch is the kind, gracious bearer of bad news who will emotionally clobber you, then take you to a dive bar to fund your co-commiseration.
