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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, 15 Feb 2008
Book of the Day: Ancestral Radio by Edward Haworth Hoeppner
Edward Haworth Hoeppner's Ancestral Radio traces unusual connections between experience and our perception of that experience. Hoeppner covers a wide range of subjects, usually in an ambling free-verse line that takes its time to ponder, to meditate.
Here's one good example:
Poem without Hands
The idealist's question would be
something like: What right have I not
to doubt the existence of my hands?
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
It would like stepping onto glass, unbroken sheets
to oval per instruction as a pony takes shape
in matchbook covers that would teach you how to draw.
But the mazed, concentric hoops of blunt desire
you've penciled, like so much bangle on your wrists,
resist the sudden transformation: no living animals
move from off these lines, their poor mathematics.
Without touch, far better the ivory slippers you have found
sleepwalking on water, slipping out beneath your robe
until you've reached the stairs and wake. A ship
inside a bottle, you stretch your arms against the walls
going down into the dark. You know the paintings hung
on the landing you can't see, but none of them are yours.
And what you must not do: reach out as you step down,
brush along the wooden frames and close your eyes,
stop here, put your too smooth fingers to your lips.
A poem without hands, a world without touch--an impoverished world, indeed. Hoeppner explores these ironies with wit and compassion.