Mon, 19 May 2008

Book of the Day: The One Remaining Star by Susanne Dubroff

Susanne Dubroff's poems in The One Remaining Star burn. They are incisive and unsettling. Consider this poem:

County Auction

You would not think
that among all these
rainsoaked to townspeople
and the worn down
possessions, placid, valueless,
wedding pictures would be auctioned off,
bid on for their frames.
But the face of the bespectacled,
Terrified, nineteen twenties bride
might have been the face that foresaw
They would come,
Rainsoaked, and stay all night
'til she was sold.

The tone is sinister, the implications powerful. Dubroff is a compelling poet.

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Book of the Day: John Henry's Partner Speaks by David Salner

John Henry's Partner Speaks by David Salner is a compelling volume. Salner closely examines the experiences of working people, and the result is consistently illuminating.

Consider "The New World," which recalls the life of his immigrant grandmother:

The New World

I have been imagining how my grandmother
would have left Hungary, with only a sweater
to cover her bones, squinting at the sun
in the haze of the ocean, as her new husband
plays something like a guitar, but smaller.

She joins him in a chorus about a horse
who responds to the touch of a Gypsy trainer
but not the whip of the Hungarian master.
These newlyweds left in a hurry, carrying only
the little guitar and the old gray sweater.

The wind whips over the great steel decks
as she tells a joke about the subtle difference
between luck and fortune. They squint at a spot
suspended over the ocean. Even I see it--
that opal haze, brilliant with vagueness.

The "great steel decks," looking out over the empty ocean, are an evocative image of seeking a new life. Salner is quite skilled with these kinds of subtle, resonant images, and they enhance the narrative arc of his short and long poems.

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Book of the Day: Fallout by Frederick Feirstein

It is hard to imagine Frederick Feirstein's poems outside the landscape of New York City, where so many of his lyrics and dramatic monologues are set. His newest book, Fallout, powerfully considers the scarring of that landscape after 9/11.

Here's a poem that exemplifies the strengths of Fallout:

To My Younger Self

The past is like a library after dark
Where we sit on the steps trading stories
With characters we imagined ourselves to be.
Neighbors in clothing from our childhood stroll by,
Unmolested, nodding at us, benevolently.
One with your father's face tips his fedora.
You lower your face in shame. I look back.
Someone is sitting at a long table,
Reading in the moonlight. I must look startled.
He holds a forefinger to his lips,
As if it is a candle for the dead.
You tap me on the shoulder and I turn back.
The street is dangerously empty,
Except for the newsstand lit yellow
Where your mother in a blue nightgown
Showing beneath her coat buys The Times,
A pack of Kools and, eyeing us, lights one.
You race to her, turn a corner. Goodbye.
I'm frightened as if I'm a foreigner
In a city under siege. Yet I know
It is still mid-century. Underground
Are only subways carrying boisterous
Party-goers or somber family men
Working the night shift or harmless bookies
Respectful of the No Smoking signs.
I walk to where the newsstand, shut,
Advertises brand names I'd forgotten.
I shove my hands in my pockets and whistle
A song we danced to when we were young.
I walk on for blocks, until I smell
Smoke from the burning borough of the Bronx.

"A city under siege": this is the feeling that these strong formal and narrative poems capture. The fallout is considerable indeed.

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Book of the Day: Pointing at the Moon by Bill Wunder

Bill Wunder's Pointing at the Moon is a haunting series of narratives and lyrics about the Vietnam War. Wunder has the unusual achievement of finding the larger spiritual import of the scenes that he narrates: as a result, the Vietnam of his poems seems different than other poetic work about that war and landscape.

Here's one example:

Mama-san

Old woman squats at barracks end,
boils cabbage, fish heads and rice,
jabbers over a dented, black steel pot
left behind by the retreating French.

Every day the same smile,
rotted teeth, red from betel-nut.
The same stained black, silk pajamas
and pointy, sun-bleached hat.

She never learns our names. We think
it's the language, but she has seen too many,
knows we will all leave
one way or another.

The figure of Mama-san is one of permanence: the American soldiers are evanescence. Wunder draws this contrast quite effectively, and the result is a powerful poem.

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Book of the Day: A Temple Looming by Lenard D. Moore

Lenard Moore's A Temple Looming is a series of deftly-etched portraits in miniature. Moore, well-known as a haiku poet, writes these free verse lyrics with a light, spare touch, but every detail burns:

The Soldier

The photograph's subject now aged
through time's ripening; decades later
the background gray,
a dream.

Splendid in uniform,
the barrel-straight stare
of his pure black face
shines like a bullet.

Imagine he'd not returned
from the Great War,
leaving a void in his family,
and in this picture.

These poems fill that imaginary void nicely.

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