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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Fri, 17 Aug 2007
Book of the Day: Fathom by Philip Brady
Philip Brady is a highly skilled craftsman; his poems sculpt experience into brisk, elegant lines. His topics are varied, but collectively the poems in Fathom offer an invigorating read.
"Rhyme" is a good example of Brady's technique:
Rhyme
Unseeable, unsayable, being dead.
But shadow-blooming iris, lip blooded--
I see and say. A child, I hummed
and rocked and hummed to dilate time.
Unplumbed, my tongue; but palpable
the pulse of subterranean ventricles
from Queens to Tokyo--turnstiles
ticking by the billions as deep as
Cocytus, where all suns clot.
What's mute, can names dilate?
The salt unseeable, where does it steep?
A key twitches my shadow, trickles blood.
An iris suddenly clots, the blooded word.
Unsayable, all future days unseeable
as unbloomed suns, even tomorrow blind.
My bones steep. Will we wake in time?
Does fear of not returning shadow rhyme?
Unseeable, seeable, rain unsalting seas,
and steeping in my saline blood a key
to Queens or Cocytus. Sayable,
mute death, the day all ventricles
dilate in time. A child, I could pretend
I saw echoes. Time and darkness bend.
"As a child, I could pretend/I saw echoes Time and darkness bend." This couplet, crisp and quick, crystallizes perception in an original and memorable way--like all good music does.