The Last Time Will Be the First, by Jeff Alessandrelli
There are plenty of books I read that I don't write about. It may be because I don't feel I have much of value to say. I'm shy about them, I guess. Though that's probably a reason to push myself and write more about them, even if it's only a few sentences.
Like Jeff Alessandrelli's The Last Time Will Be the First. I really loved that book but formulating articulate thoughts about it has not been easy. In fact, I would say I failed at that and what I am going with instead is impressions. My bad!
This might be because of its oddness, which is not a bad thing. It does not hone in on one theme or narrative arc. It's a bit loose, a little all over the place. In that respect, it reminds of Bill Knott's work. It's a bit puzzling but puzzling is good. It stays with you. You get to think about it intermittently over time and realize new, exciting things.
Take, for example, the short poem "Understanding Mina Loy (Everything, Everything, Everything)”
I will refrain from discussing
Why refrain from discussing the role of the lover? I don't know. And the second couplet doesn't seem to answer that. But then it kind of does if you take it to mean what happens isn't worth discussing. What matters is that you destroy the evidence.
It's a sentiment that very much echoes the title: The Last Time Will Be the First. Something will happen but it will almost seem that nothing happened, that whatever happened was over before it even began, except that it did begin (and end) so what the fuck are you going to do now?
As I write that I realize (perhaps) that that is why there are so many poems with the word "Understanding" in the title (14 of them, to be precise): if everything is already happening for the last time all there is to do is look back and try to understand what it was that happened. Which you can't. Certainly not completely and given how things change over time, how perceptions shift and memory evolves, probably not at all, not in a lasting, final sense like the way we understand that 2+2=4.
In this sense The Last Time Will Be the First is clearly trying to find different ways to be. Many of the poems feel like they could be one type of poem but are trying to be another, but that other is a bit blurry. In this respect they remind of Graham Foust's work. There's a sort of asymmetry to them. You like them. They are good (whatever that means) but they are not easy (whatever that means) and they perhaps leave you feeling a little more muddled than when you came to them. And that's a good thing. A challenging thing.
