Like fiction writers, poets have traditionally been liars. One might hear an authentic voice speaking through the poems, but the voice could be anyone’s. The reader’s. The poet’s. A fictional character. Whomever. And it wasn’t until the confessional poets of the 1950's popped up when it began to be widely thought that poetry is to contain instances of direct autobiographical moments or emotional positions that reflect the life of the poet. How awful. Maybe a product from the birthing of post World War II consumer culture, where ‘I’ becomes central? All about me and let me tell you about me? No thanks.

Luckily this has changed in the poetry world. When there is a ‘voice’ in modern poetry, it tends to be either the poem itself, only disguised as a speaker, or an ‘I’ that is so fragmented and elliptical, trying to pin down the speaker of the poems only results in frustration. April Bernard chooses the latter and in her 2009 collection, Romanticism, she returns to the mode of the Romantic Era to dwell in lush and boundless (and brave) sentiments, but through employing the modern technique of the decentralized ‘I’, a cool-headed distancing balances the effusive expressions. What results is a collection where each poem presents poignantly contained emotions. As capsules, if you will. For you to do what you would like with-- outside of psychoanalyzing the poet.

The collection is divided up into three sections and in each section there are various characters behind the individual poems. But while the characters vary, commonalities in the content and expressions unify each section. I would even go so far to say that there is a narrative backdrop of a woman that has gone through a divorce. With the first section, a reader finds jaded questioning towards emotions, desire, love, needs, etc. In the second section, a much harder voice emerges. One that tallies up the difficulties found in the emotions, but chooses to press forward in the romantic spirit anyway, with courageous strength to overcome the conflicts that often result when personal subjectivity must face the reality of a situation (where the fun begins). And this section has some of the best lines in the collection, such as the these which, amongst other things, pin down the rebellious spirit of the Romantic Era against the Age of Enlightenment:

enlightenment, clear sight, the civilized pleasures
......for garb and more garb.

Such as they, who inhabit an age of reason,
may do just as well with an automated fuck;

but Oh not I.

Wonderful wit going on there. The final selection then presents poems that are not nearly as voice driven. Instead, they reflect the themes and topics of poetry from the romantic period. The poems are heavily stylized to create both celebratory and ironic intent, this duality as a resolution after the questioning and defiant positions set forth in the previous sections. In this, Bernard has a lot of fun, doing such things as making up operas and fake composers from which the poems are claimed to be taken, or adding a touch of the exotic with German or Italian titles for the poems. Sort of funny in the same way the bombastic pomposity of Frasier Crane is funny. Sounds a bit like Roberto Bolaño as well.

If there is a problem with this collection, it is that the poetry is not the sort that you would want to return to again and again. It does richen nicely on the second and third readings, and there is humor-wizened stance to be garnered from the poems, but its rewards begin to taper out from there.