There is a thread to knowing something. A thread connecting whatever you know to what you just said you know. The customary term for this kind of writing often involves the term “stream of consciousness,” and I mention that here only to give an estimation for what’s happening in Molly Ledbetter’s poems. “Stream of consciousness” covers lots of poetic moves. Which is assuredly the direction Air Ball takes. I like thinking of Ledbetter as the person who writes with the spirit of freeing their mind (like in the spirit of that En Vogue song) like it was a performance. Like when I learned Bernadette Mayer practiced longer and longer writing sessions so she’d be ready to write, Midwinter Day, I felt something inside me freed. “Stream of consciousness” is a term that feels like an insect trapped in amber. It’s so 20th Century. It implies viscous fluidity and language and authentic points of view. These three qualities are in abundance in Molly Ledbetter’s Air Ball.
In fact, the subtext to Ledbetter’s poems is “I’m not really a poet.” Which is, of course, one of those poetic gestures indulging the 21st Century confessional mode. “This is just what I have to say.” Goes the writing. Like when Frank O’Hara wrote “Personism” as a way to say all of his poems were barely poems compared to the poetic feeling he got calling someone to let them know what his day was like. The truest poem is the one spoken to you through a landline telephone. And maybe the implied statement is all Frank O’Hara’s poems explain how he would only “really be a poet” if he were talking to you on the phone. Reading Air Ball, I keep wanting to call Ledbetter, to see if she felt more poetic talking to me on the phone. Hello, Molly Ledbetter. It’s me. Hello, Molly Ledbetter. It’s me. Reading Ledbetter’s poems, you will also feel the impulse to just skip the page and put your phone to your ear. Sure this metaphor is getting a little performative, but it’s what it’s like to be reading the book!
Like reading Chelsey Minnis’s Poemland. Or reading Ariana Reines’s Coeur de Lion. Both books and their poets deserve an award crafted just to award the poetics of so much information. The Academy of American Poets could call the award, “Day at the Beach.” They’re for poems that definitely happened on this one day, and the poem is just talking like that’s how you were feelings that day. While you’re reading those books, you’ll probably realize you know the poet very well now. BUT YOU DON’T! Last year I learned “Chelsey Minnis” is only a pen name. She doesn’t even exist!!!
I’m glad that Molly Ledbetter exists. I’m glad that she definitely has things she likes and doesn’t like, and she thinks about it carefully. And I’m glad she writes in this style that gets in my head like it does. It’s so satisfying. Though I found out yesterday on Instagram that she’s married. And I had to refrain from sending her a gift card to Applebee’s, where she and her spouse could enjoy some Baby Back Ribs. ON ME!
I’m spiraling. I’m genuflecting. Reading Air Ball makes me absolutely delusional. I was reading Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation recently. The book has this creature that organically generates a continuous line of text with no punctuation, because it’s a in this continuously extending literary device for “saying something” without letting the saying quit. I like reading it as a commentary on God, and whatever God had channeled into King David, so he could write the Psalms. In this scenario God gave David the language, and David added the punctuation. Molly Ledbetter’s Air Ball feels like a continuous line of text, or it could be restructured to look like that. Because it feels like whatever she’s thinking is exactly what was relevant to the present moment when she was writing, and when the language guided her away from that moment, Ledbetter was so at ease with the language, she just followed along. That’s the poetic temporality that “stream of consciousness” is giving voice to: a condition of continually shifting relevances and circumstances. Then Ledbetter lets that spirit settle into individual sentences. That’s the Molly Ledbetter who will be receiving the “Day at the Beach” award from Academy of American Poets. Cited for temporality and spirit of living and poetic jouissance in its must joy-ified version.
The following tags are a purely subjective approach I’ve used for reading this book. Tagging, for me, acknowledges that slotting a book into hard categories or “schools” can be elusive when it comes to 21st Century poetry. In response, I’ve developed tags whose lenses operate from subject matter, identity poetics, and stylistics.