"Those careless cuts throb"--a sharp line that captures the essence of this sharp poem. Hudspeth's brisk linguistic economy belies the depths of insight this poem opens up.

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Book of the Day: God Bless the Magicians by David Higginbotham

David Higginbotham's God Bless the Magicians has an edge to it that is unusual in contemporary poetry. By turns humorous and dark, Higginbotham writes about an unusually wide range of subjects, but his poems always have a sharpness to them that is refreshing.

"The Funeral" shows Higginbotham in an elegiac mode, but with his characteristic toughness:

The Funeral

Taking back roads south, I knew I would be late.
Windows down, had to run the heater
to keep from overheating--
Willie Dixon's "Keep To The Highway"
on a backwoods AM station;
should've been a sign.

I drove out of my way,
stopped in Lumber City for directions.
Bought gas station postcards of cotton pickers,
someone's idea of the perfect Georgia peach.
So when you see them, they're from me.

And it was a wilting afternoon.
August heat drying the tobacco
in the fields, blurring the horizon
into a shimmering eulogy of light.

Was it the postcards? Maybe
my sense of direction. I'll tell you:
I was glad to miss the sermon.
I walked up as they lowered the coffin,
took your mother's arm. Don't think she expected me.
Above the welling silence, her cardboard funeral fan
beat like a crippled angel's wing.

In its fragemented recollection of the details of the funeral day, this poem never lapses into the maudlin, just as his humorous poems resist the easy chuckle in favor of deeper insight. Higginbotham's debut collection is a strong one.

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Book of the Day: Bridge and Tunnel by John Hennessy

John Hennessy's Bridge and Tunnel places me as deeply in a specific place--the urban landscapes of New Jersey--as any book of poetry I have read in recent years. This is not faint praise. Through voice, autobiography, and history, Hennessy brings a multiplicity of perspectives to bear on the world he has chosen as the root of his poetry--or, just as accurately, the land that has chosen him.

Consider "Dog-Star Freddy":

Dog-Star Freddy

He hated anything that flew, he said,
stuffed hooks in chunks of Sunbeam bread and went
pigeon-fishing, hauled scores off leaf-plugged gutters
and out from under eaves on nylon thread,
swung and beat them overhead, the Roman soldier,
new David, bastard of both testaments.

He poisoned sparrows with washroom bleach,
gas in the bird bath, hung them by their feet
from swings at Shotwell Park. Pale little nestlings
hovered like stunned hummingbirds, upside-down.
We stuck to basketball or slammed stickball
off the apartment building wall, crowned the king

of the jungle-gym with stitches, skipped the swings
until he copped a wrist-rocket, cocked at crows.
He plunked them off power-lines and streetlights
with marbles, gravel stolen from building sites,
plucked them before they died, stuck feathers in
his puca-shells, played Vietcong scalps Navajo.

Mid-summer and the whole neighborhood reeked:
sun-burned dumpsters, rat sunk in hallway walls,
drunken vets stumbled singing out of Pete's,
incontinently sprinkled streets,
Merck chemical plant's fuel tank leaked, and all
those rotting birds. Dog-Star inspired, that freak

in stinking feathers took prisoners to his basement
bunker--the smell of lichen, slugs, and newsprint,
and cool, at least. His ambush spread, we all went,
boys, girls, anything with eyes and orifice;
even the youngest made good audience.
Me, I skimmed his porno-stash, watched when asked,

scared, not uninterested, learned words for what
our parents did, studied and waited when he bent
and said, it looks just like a starfish, slot
for human pinball, blazing Aztec sun,
a burning basketball, it's where I vent
the souls of all the birds I catch, it's one

odd nest: sick, yes, but subject to his muse.

Character, scenery, and historical reference: this poem is a microcosm of an entire world. Read in the context of the other poems of the book, it is one more dimension of a world that, even if its boundaries are limited to a specific region, offers nearly infinite complexity and richness. Only the best poets can accomplish this.

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