book review

The Complete Book of Kong by William Trowbridge
(Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003)
Paperback, $14

What would King Kong do after reaching superstardom? Would he get an agent? Go out for pro sports? Meet the Pope? More importantly, would he ever get over Fay Wray, the screaming gal who captured his giant simian heart.

                        Last night
            I dreamed of someone lovelier: swept in
            from the sea, golden-tufted like a bird of paradise,
            who needed rescuing from pterodactyls
            and teeny-weeny white men, and sang to Kong
            in a voice so high it broke his heart.

The life and fate of the Eighth Wonder of the World is the playful and poignant subject of William Trowbridge's latest collection of poetry, The Complete Book of Kong. Each of the poems is written from the point of view of Kong (the gritty 1933 version, not the fluffy, disco Kong of 1976). Kong takes mambo lessons, tries video dating, meets Godzilla in the commisary (''I felt this could be/ a big step for me, though at first/ he just sat there drumming his talons,/ nursing a vat of Courvoisier''), all attempts to get his life in order after Fay. (Sadly, no mention is made of MechaniKong.) The jokes are there (many riffing on Kong's size and strength), but Trowbridge takes the conceit to surprisingly serious and sad places. When Kong competes on Let's Makes a Deal, Trowbridge writes, ''the great door opened/ to reveal a big TV with a La-Z-Boy recliner/ and a woman dressed, I think, for mating./ Cheers swarmed like biplanes. 'Am I human now?'/ I asked, feeling bare, and somewhat smaller.'' Altogether, Trowbridge puts the big oaf of an ape in perspective and paints a picture of a melancholy titan just as vulnerable as the rest of us.

Trowbridge, Distinguished University Professor at Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Missouri, book-ends the poems with prose arguments for putting the humor back in poetry, which he finds ''dismayingly humorless.'' He notes, ''Certainly contemporary poetry hasn't shied away from the language and rhythms of prose, nor even from a kind of colloquial wit; but it has, by and large, kept well clear of the pratfall and the belly laugh, which are among our most potent defenses against the insanity and brutality of contemporary life.'' Here here. Hey, you know what would be a great idea? A Web site filled with humorous poetry. Somebody should do that.—Richie Narvaez