The Late Parade: Poems

In a style reminiscent of later John Ashbery (Quick Question) Fitzgerald (editor, Maggy) debuts an overstuffed collection, in a vocabulary overwrought with irony and busyness. The resulting poems are airless, written in overambitious language that sounds desperate: "May the starkness of inhuman instruments be yours,/ tempering a passageway through this ordinary/ mountain range where the mountain-door dwells." The problem is that his poems' lines don't naturally depart and return to us in a way that enlightens readers as to their relationship to one another or to their creator. Although Fitzgerald apparently fully senses the purpose of his work, he's buried it, creating quite a challenge to those willing to take him on. While "The Argument" is a catalog poem that works toward a simplicity, its intent is slow to emerge: "The life we didn't live./ The time tepid as bronze./ The stacked air./ The frozen rail./ The dripping of summer in drops."