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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Fri, 12 May 2006
Book of the Day: Corset by Shannon Borg
Shannon Borg is a poet who writes almost obsessively about human relations: relations between lovers, between friends, between family members, between the living and the dead. The multi-layered poems in her new collection,Corset, are demanding on me as a reader: after navigating the complex surface of the descriptions and narratives that these poems depict, I still have to ponder their depths--which are considerable.
Consider "If Memory Serves":
If Memory Serves
As if regret were in it, and were sacred.
—Robert Frost
And in it, too, was the grubby knot
of your presence. And in it were two blue
tunnels of your eyes. And in it rope and what rope
can do, and a shovel, chuck, chuck, chucking
into the next dark hour. And therefore in it
was Grimsby and a dance with a stranger
when my eyes went out, and then too in it
were the seals on Cleethorpes Beach where my mother
kept coming out of the water, the seals my mother
kept emerging as, and in it were whelk and red clay,
and the red hill in Utah my father clambered as a boy
and the mica he gathered for its glitter
and in it fear of his big horse, his giant horse
Skyhook clopping streamside when red mud flowed
down into it and through until Houston glittered
for me, where my car was a swamp. And in it
the jaws of August’s worst afternoon, the house
and the damp bed on which you and I made love and forgot
over and over as the porch swing swung and creaked
and in it the Swedish pancakes my father made
while I swang, rolled with sweet strawberry, which
is like love is, love, that is, like sweet strawberry,
that song you sang as we cleared
the furniture out and all swang barefoot, drunk,
dressed to kill, and all at once, at that moment,
remembered how all our individual parents died.
And in it, the tick tick tick of summer passing away.
Sensuality, fond memories, regret, and somber intimations of mortality all commingle in this poem: it is an unusally rich intertwining of emotions, gorgeously rendered in rhythmic couplets. Corset is a book that demands--and rewards--multiple readings.
Book of the Day: Weeknights at the Cathedral by Marjorie Maddox
Majorie Maddox's Weeknights at the Cathedral playfully alludes to T.S. Eliot's verse drama Murder in the Cathedral--and Maddox's work is as playful as Eliot's is somber. Weeknights at the Cathedral is a refreshingly wry exploration of a faith journey, and renders its subjects in a distinctive light. How many poets would choose to imagine God walking on a tightrope, as this poem does?
God on a TightropeOne pierced foot before the other,
you step from your ivory platform,
curl your toes about the taut wire
as if walking on water.
You balance the air on your arms,
tent shadows on your shoulders.
Spotlights circle your brow like a crown.
In your star-spangled loincloth,
you hover over the multitude,
make the sign of the cross,
take a deep bow,
then dive toward our gaping mouths.
The images of God border on the absurd, but this is a poem of wonder, not satire. The idea of God walking on a tightrope and diving toward the crowd is no less awe-inspiring than any of the miracles portrayed in the Bible--and, given its modern context, prompts us to look at its subject with fresh eyes. Weeknights at the Cathedral is filled with strong poems that provoke us in this pleasant way.