• Revealing Catastrophes
• Marc Jampole (bio)

There is something provocative or interesting about most of the poems in the first section of Gregory Crosby's Walking Away from Explosions in Slow Motion. The poems sparkle with clever images that jolt the reader into taking a new look at both the quotidian and the eternal. There are gems throughout the book, but the further into the eighty-eight poems one reads, the fewer of them have the edginess or verve that characterize the thirty odd poems of the first section.

In an interview with Crosby printed at the end of the volume we learn that the poet wrote all the poems in Walking Away in the year leading up to the presidential election of 2016 and the months afterwards as part of group project that Crosby describes as a contemporary form of coterie writing, which begs a question. Are the poems presented in the order in which they were written, as part of a rules-based post-modern project? Documenting how an educated and free mind reacts in real time to the growing horror of Trumpism certainly makes for an interesting way to structure a book. In the case of Walking Away, though, it would suggest that Crosby's creative powers flagged in the face of the reality of the Trump candidacy and election by the Electoral College. The book becomes a witness to walking away from an explosion of the body politic that happened in slow motion.

The other possibility is that, like many poets, Crosby decided to put his stronger work first. The central and really only weakness in the book is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the order of the poems into three sections or within the three sections and thus no reason for the weaker material. But Crosby remains coy about the structure of the book in the interview, as he does about many things, such as the role of poetry and the poet in contemporary society.

There are few overt references to politics in the poems, but many nods to pop culture and literature. In fact, without the interview at the back, most readers would not even perceive the connections to the election, only to the malaise of the current zeitgeist.

Crosby's best poems favor conceits, which are extended metaphors that dominate or shape the flow of a poem. For example, in "Lonely Starbuck Lovers," Crosby creates an extended metaphor for the confusion of reality and illusion based on a popular social media misquote of a Taylor Swift song. The conceit in "Mid-Life" imagines a new translation of Dante's Inferno as a metaphor for middle age, which the poet underscores by using the first line of Dante's original Italian, "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…" ("In the middle of the road of our life…") as the epigraph. In "Netflix and Chill," Crosby compares the end of a Netflix series to the seasons of the year. The course of a human life becomes an airplane in flight in "Wing, Prayer."

Another notable feature of Crosby's poetics is the clever rendering of idiomatic expressions and homilies which jolt the reader into taking another, closer look at what the phrase means in the context of the poem. He breathes new life into old expressions in a number of ways. "Better get out of sundown before town" reverses two words. "You say that love is a battlefield and have the choreography to prove it" and "I kept it together by falling apart" twist the original metaphor into a new direction. "We aren't all in the same boat…" negates a common phrase of politicians and humanitarians. "The wagons are circling the drain" combines two idiomatic expressions. "There's a sucker worn every minute" is a straight pun. "The heart attacks what the heart hearts" adds a surrealistic element by equating desire with aggression.

In his best work, Crosby holds together his extended metaphors and clever subversions of idiomatic language with a conversational...

• 揭示灾难
• 马克·贾姆波勒（生物）

格里高利·克罗斯比（Gregory Crosby）的《远离爆炸爆炸》的第一部分中的大多数诗歌都带有煽动性或趣味性。这首诗充满了巧妙的意象，使读者对quotidian和永恒的事物有了新的认识。整本书中都有宝石，但是随着人们对88首诗的阅读越深入，代表第一节的30首奇特诗的前卫或神韵就越少。

在本书末尾对克罗斯比的采访中，我们了解到，这位诗人写了《走远路》中的所有诗歌，直到2016年总统大选，以及随后几个月，作为克罗斯比形容为当代艺术的集体项目的一部分小写形式，这就引出了一个问题。作为基于规则的后现代项目的一部分，这些诗歌是否按照它们的书写顺序呈现？记录受过教育的自由思想如何对不断增长的特朗普主义恐怖行为做出实时反应，无疑为构建一本书提供了一种有趣的方式。在走开的情况下不过，这表明克罗斯比的创造力在面对特朗普竞选人和选举学院选举的现实时受到了影响。这本书成为见证人们摆脱慢动作引发的身体政治爆炸的见证。

另一个可能性是，与许多诗人一样，克罗斯比决定将自己更强的作品放在首位。这本书最主要的弱点是似乎没有押韵或没有理由将诗歌分为三部分或三部分以内，因此没有理由使诗歌的内容更弱。但是克罗斯比在接受采访时仍然对这本书的结构不屑一顾，因为他在许多方面都做过，例如诗歌和诗人在当代社会中的作用。

诗歌中很少公开提及政治，但对流行文化和文学却有很多点头。实际上，如果没有后面的采访，大多数读者甚至不会意识到与选举的关系，而只会感觉到当前时代精神的萎靡不振。

克罗斯比最好的诗歌偏向于自负，自负是占主导地位或影响诗流的延伸隐喻。例如，在《孤独的星巴克恋人》中，克罗斯比根据泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）歌曲中流行的社交媒体错误引用，为现实和幻想的混淆创造了一个扩展的隐喻。在“中年”的自负想象但丁的新的翻译地狱作为中年的隐喻，这是诗人下划线使用的第一线但丁的意大利原装，“内尔女中音德尔cammin迪诺斯特拉VITA ......”（“在在我们人生道路的中间……”）在《 Netflix and Chill》中，克罗斯比将Netflix系列的结尾与一年中的季节进行了比较。人类的生命历程变成了飞行中的“翼，祈祷”中的飞机。

克罗斯比诗学的另一个显着特征是对惯用语表达和谐音的巧妙渲染，这使读者不得不重新审视该词在诗歌中的含义。他通过多种方式将新的生活带入旧的表情中。“最好在城镇落日前离开”反驳了两个词。“你说爱是一个战场，并有编舞来证明它”和“我通过分崩离析而保持在一起”将原始的隐喻转向了一个新的方向。“我们不在同一条船上……”否定了政客和人道主义者的惯用语。“货车绕着排水沟盘旋”结合了两种惯用语。“每分钟都有一个抽油烟机”是一个直截了当的双关语。“心脏攻击心脏的内心”

在他的最佳作品中，Crosby通过对话将他惯用语言的扩展隐喻和巧妙颠覆结合在一起。