The Poetry Lesson by Andrei Codrescu

The Poetry Lesson
By Andrei Codrescu
Princeton University Press

Andrei Codrescu’s The Poetry Lesson is an ambiguously fictional work in which the subject of death looms over discussions of literature and current events in a poetry class. The professor morbidly references the Virginia Tech shooting and assigns epitaphs as class readings: “An epitaph a day is like an apple a day, but the opposite, actually, because an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but an epitaph is ready if you happen to die that day. The apple part is rhymed poetry, the dying part is blank verse."

Though slightly rushed at times, the prose remains fluid and humorous. The professor charms both his students and his readers with stories of poets ranging from Blake to Burroughs. He offers his students the PG version of poet gossip, then inwardly directs the more tantalizing secrets to the reader, who is privy to both the lecture and its footnotes.

Each student is paired by the professor with a poet mentor, called a Ghost Companion, who acts as a kind of conduit from classroom lecture to private anecdote. The professor wryly conjectures on the authenticity of Allen Ginsberg’s homosexuality, the mortality rate of poets on drugs, and a decommissioned nuclear silo that may be the family cemetery for one of his students, the heir to a milk fortune.

The story as a whole teeters between fiction and nonfiction, as many of the professor’s thoughts read like lines from a memoir. Eventually Codrescu addresses the issue in writing: “No, this story is not a novel or poetry, and it’s no essay or memoir either, though it mimics aspects of both.” In a narrative balancing act, Codrescu has presented a piece that simultaneously mocks, criticizes, and commemorates the literary world while inviting all its genres to play a part.