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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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Tue, 18 Mar 2008
Book of the Day: Smoke and Strong Whiskey by Robin Chapman
The poems in Robin Chapman's Smoke and Strong Whiskey are inward in their focus; whether narrative or lyrics about landscapes, they prompt a meditative attention from the reader.
"Shadows" is characteristic of the interiority of these poems:
Shadows
And who is it, standing
In the shadows, waiting these weeks
To speak to me,
And each time she motioned
I turned away?
For I had sharpened a knife
And cut my heart free
Of the man we loved
Who could not be in our life--
Mumbled into the phone Goodbye
And now I feared
That she stood with a knife
In her own childlike hand
Meant for the wild grief
Closing her throat.
I was afraid
I’d done her an injury
I could not mend--left her alone,
Dying of hunger and need.
Or was that me?
And the woman in the dark,
The one whose anger
Had sharpened the blade?
And there’s more to say than this,
For I dreamed I walked,
A woman grown, down a lonely path
And came upon
Two dark and curly-headed girls--
One sad, one sullen--
And held out to each my arms.
Went on with toddlers
Slung on each hip.
Dark, dreamlike, "Shadows" is haunting in its quiet intensity.
Book of the Day: Pilgrimage to a Gingko Tree by Edward Dougherty
Edward Dougherty's Pilgrimage to a Gingko Tree is a quiet, graceful collection of lyrics and narratives about the author's time in Japan. Reflecting the understated aesthetic so prevalent in Asian poetry, Dougherty's poems are mostly small exursions into revelation.
This poem is characteristic:
Origami
Folded by an old woman, silver bird
what do you know? Your paper feathers
are slippery. You give the light back.
At the flash she dropped like a rag.
A single day, a single bird: the day
that repeats itself with each crease.
The hours stretch out like crows' wings.
Samuel said he wanted to come here
to help people forget the past. My eyes burn
with the day's unrelenting length.
My life is brief and my sight short.
No wonder she keeps turning paper
in her creased but unburned hand.
While each poem might work on a modest scale, cululatively Dougherty's work expands the reader's awareness of human connection, history, and the world.