Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera
Oh, it’s fun at first, just the thing for a gay poet. “Eyes glued to bare / chest, bulge in towel.” “Great playground shot: / his ass in white pants.” There’s plenty of gawkable detail, too: the leading lady’s “tidal wave” of hair, the overlooked Grant Wood at the hospital, the perdurable owl lamp. But the fact that each of these 516 haiku responds to an episode of a TV soap opera (for cry’n’ out loud! which the poet damn near does, right on the page), soon compels Trinidad to realize the enormity of the task he’s set himself, and the bitching begins. Fortunately Trinidad, who James Schuyler said could “turn the paste jewels of pop art into the real thing” (though jewels or art?), does some of the best bitching this side of Dorothy Parker. Without ever getting too vulgar (hard to do, considering the inspiration), he’s astonishingly hilarious throughout, especially for poetry lovers when he paraphrases signature lines of T. S. Eliot, W. C. Williams, Yeats, Marianne Moore, and “poor Keats.” --Ray Olson