Description

First Prize for Poetry in the New England Book Festival

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Spuyten Duyvil Publishing (May 6, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 100 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 195955655X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1959556558

Did you ever wish that joy would last for more than a few moments, and that miseries would not drag on for decades? In the new poetry collection by Michael Favala Goldman, What Minimal Joy, the poet scours this equation – elation, its short span, our permeability to our social environment, the overshadowing mundane and afflicted daily life, and strategies for coping.

As Goldman writes in “A Bit of a Scramble,” “The real danger /is in becoming absorbed/ in my own steps, my own body /ambling ahead and losing /you” With understated humor and familiar scenery, these poems remind us of the barriers we create to connection, whether intentional or not. In “What I’m up against,” he writes,  “I could betray/everyone and everything//for a brief mistake/for a brief reward.”

We can be embarrassed about feeling joy in the face of domestic or world events, or hesitant to embrace our emotion as valid. For example in “About 7pm,” after a passionate kiss in the kitchen, “our lips /parted/and with a sigh/each we returned/to cleaning up.” This progression is also evident in the poet’s description of Jomfru Ane Gade in Denmark, a street of bars and nightclubs, the morning after the revelry is over.

Yet as the irrepressible life force of joy reappears again and again, we become its prey. We are, as in “Glowworm,” “Not really wanting /anyone to know, yet unable/to keep it to yourself.”