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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Fri, 10 Nov 2006
Book of the Day: The Prayers of Dallas by Frederick Turner
Frederick Turner is a poet whose influence on my own work--as a reader and writer of poetry--is difficult to overstate. His numerous books of literary criticism have guided me as a poetry reader and editor at a very fundamental level, and his poetry, ranging from lyrics in high classical form to epic narratives, is impressively varied and broad in both its concerns and techniques.
Turner's newest book--and the second one we've had the pleasure to publish--is a narrative sequence, The Prayers of Dallas. The book, written in the voices of 50 different residents of Dallas, narrates the development of a terrorist attack on the city. Turner slips easily into the voices of each character, and the result is a haunting collage of perspectives and emotions:
Father Philip
Kelly
My Lord, it's not that I'm not grateful for
The times, oh beautiful, You showed Yourself
Shining in light that came down from the window
And fell upon the altar during Mass;
The time I walked out there among the people
And that Nigerian girl with plaited hair,
Just five years old, would not let go my hand;
The time I saw my brother at the ranch
Before we knew that he had HIV,
And all the live oaks shone in the red sun
As it went down behind the misty hill;
It's not that I don't see the tips of heaven
That poke through into every shade of life.
It's all those times of dead, unshaped exhaustion,
The loneliness without a wife or child,
The noonday devil, that's acedia,
The moods that unabsorbed sweep over me
And feed themselves upon their former selves;
The long sad waiting for the gates of heaven,
When waiting wasn't what I'm called to do;
It's when I see the blank incomprehension
On Joseph's face when I speak of my faith,
And wonder if I'm caught in a delusion,
And maybe there's no me and there's no You.
The Prayers of Dallas must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated. It is a collection of unusual power and urgency.
Book of the Day: Coppelia, Certain Digressions by Judith Skillman
Judith Skillman is a poet whose work is strongly, even forcefully, lyric; her craft, free verse that tends to regular measure without falling into metronomic ridigity, offers many pleasures for the ear. We've now published three books by her, and each one offers distinctive pleasures for the reader.
The poems of Coppelia, Certain Digressions, are as strong as Skillman's earlier work. Consider how "Beatrice" zeros on its subject with ruthless precision:
Beatrice
If she blazes beside me,
I might turn to see
a face gone blue with light
from the moon.
If she honors the dead
I may wish for their return,
to finish a conversation,
if only with a ghost.
She sticks to me
like unfinished business,
her cloying presence
that of a celestial nun satisfied
with her lost station.
Under the wimple, in age
and desolation, I see her
more clearly, an apparition
shadowing my left shoulder.
If she wants to carry me
as she would a man,
still I am a woman.
And though the seas
of earth and moon
are lifeless, filled with young men
who died in their prime,
she continues forever
her botched attempts to mother.
Beatrice, like Mary,
a mother figure steeped in platitudes.
A Pollyanna full of proverbs.
A dominatrix, this woman—
so full of sensuality
it was easy to outshine
visions of Paradise,
those poor souls
forever cloistered outside
the white-petaled rose of the godhead.
But Beatrice lied.
When she turned her face
she blinded Virgil.
Where can she stand to live,
this whorish heroine
who stacked apartments
until they became tenements
ripe with the scent
of concupiscence drying,
habitats full of young love,
garbage, white noise,
and cigarettes.
Skillman has crafted a strong body of work, and it is a pleasure to add Coppelia, Certain Digressions to her legacy.