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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 55 > Reviews >Diane Klammer's Shooting the Moon

Shooting the Moon
Diane Klammer
Monkey Puzzle Press
ISBN Number: 978-0-9801650-5-0

Reviewer: Janelle Adsit


          At 181 pages, Shooting the Moon feels to the hand like a retrospective or a “best of” collection. But this is Klammer’s first book (other than her two self-published chapbooks). This fourth release from Monkey Puzzle, an indie trade publisher based out of Klammer’s hometown Boulder, was a risk.

          The author’s note indicates nervousness. Klammer describes her book as a “kind of quasi-fictionalized memoir through poetry” and goes on to state that it’s a collection of contradictions. “The work is dark and serious,” Klammer writes. “It’s also silly and fun.” She states that the book is not cohesive; rather, it is a series of experiments from multiple decades of her life.

          Readers need no introduction to realize immediately that this book is not singular in its focus. Klammer vacillates from blatantly imploring her reader (“become part of the solution/ to make a difference// on this planet/ where we tread”) to irreverently playing ("Never turn your back./ You could lose your underwear/ along with your pet eel." The book’s mood is mercurial, its aptitude shifting. There are moments in the book when Klammer’s technique is sure-footed. In the poem “Solstice Institute,” for instance, she formally and sonically evokes a bloodstream’s churn and its musical counterpoint. The words of the first stanza twirl and turn back on themselves in repetition as they visually sway down the page. Another high point of the book, Klammer’s description of sex in “The First Time” is ambrosial: “Out wet breath/ swallows each other/ into familiar contortions.”

          On welcome and rare occasions, the book refurbishes common understanding. The poem “Avenue Maria,” for instance, is a revision of the iconic mother, which begins boldly:
Hail, do not look for me,
For you aren’t what you seem, Maria.
Undeserving of your name,
Maria, yours does not ring holy.
And continues:
Your rosary became a noose
Scattered on the floor, Maria.
          In sharp contrast to “Avenue Maria,” the poem “The Journey Home” does not rework an element of cultural literacy but rather stays within the confines of an established narrative—namely, The Wizard of Oz.
I am called Scarecrow.
I falter on uncertain footing.
Windblown, alone,
Fragile in unknown journeying
I contemplate,
within my straw-filled memories,
unverifiable explanations.
          “The Journey Home” included, some of Klammer’s poems are stale. “Bluebirds at Walker Ranch” tiredly bemoans, “Why can’t I just let happiness happen?” and notes blandly, “This is tunnel vision.” Here and elsewhere the poet takes phrasing that is easily available. The “fragility of human existence” is mentioned explicitly instead of revealed anew. The reader is explicitly warned to remember to maintain a sense of wonder, but there are a number of poems that do not do much to invoke such an experience. The poem “Water Striders” states that “hearts long for more,” but a feeling of yearning is not successfully stirred in the reader. Rather, sentimentality assails the pages: a warm heart shines its light. A persona poem speaking from the perspective of a Navajo rug ends with the overworked lines: “I am a place of refuge./ I am home.”

          From even a cursory scan of her pages—most of which feature a poem that is centered on the page—Klammer’s work may be immediately off-putting to literary poetry readers, especially those who have studied poetry academically. Klammer violates literary standards.

          But it is reasonable to assume that Klammer has made her moves—all of them—consciously and with appreciation of university-established literary standards. The poem “Poets’ Market” reveals Klammer as a writer who is intimate with the poetry workshop maxims. She simply chooses to disobey them.

          So versed is Klammer in creative writing’s lore, in fact, that she mocks it without having to add much of her own commentary. “Poets’ Market” pulls together what are ostensibly excerpts from writers’ guidelines and book reviews. Statements are juxtaposed skillfully so as to reveal the arbitrariness of established aesthetics. Consider the line: “We want only highest quality work. Does not want inspirational verse,” which is to say that we want poetry that will push human experience to new heights, but we do not want the virtually synonymous—the inspiring. Another line of the poem reads, “Does not want humor, sainted granny inspirational garbage.”—the phrase “granny inspirational garbage” is itself comical, yet humor, apparently and ironically, is not appreciated.

          “Poets’ Market” is prefaced with a Taylor Caldwell epigraph that sheds light on Klammer’s writerly objectives: “The most desperate need of man today…his real need, his most terrible need is for someone to listen to him, not as a ‘patient,’ but as a human soul.” Klammer speaks human-to-human. She is down-to-earth, reaching to explore the tiny petals of Alpine Forget-Me-Nots and stating unabashedly that when it comes to the first time in bed, “There is nothing better/ / than each other/ and cheeseburgers.”

          Repeatedly, Klammer reveals her poetics of quiet rebellion against erudite literary aesthetics. She begins the poem “Love Unreturned” with the statement, “Good poets are prohibited from writing/ about unrequited love: Yuck.” And she proceeds to do what’s prohibited.
I draw blanks,
                                                                 Fling words around
          Like some shovel snow.
          At times I’m inefficient,
                                                 at times absurd.
          Yet I try to answer
          questions completely
                                                 People get a verbal barrage.
          Shooting the Moon is imperfect, baggy, and overbearing. It often pushes beyond the accessible and into the obvious. But it’s also interestingly contrary—cause for questioning a literary community that upholds its aesthetic criteria too assuredly. Ann Cooper, in her introduction to the book, describes Klammer as having a “keen eye for disparate oddity, flaws and counterbalancing beauty.” This is evident in her questioning of contemporary poetry’s most basic assumptions about what makes for good art.

          The collection’s title references the game of Hearts and the question, “What happens when/ Somebody shoots the moon,/ wins by losing?” Perhaps Klammer’s chancy attempt with this work is to do just that—to win over her readers by doing the opposite of what other poets aim to do. Shooting the Moon is an engaging risk.

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