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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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Mon, 07 Jul 2008
Book of the Day: To Curve by Michael Daley
What I like best about the poems in To Curve by Michael Daley is the dreamy, yet precise, quality of their narrative: Daley is striving not for flat realism but the kind of heightened realism that constitutes memory. The scenes shimmer, with full awareness of their import.
This poem is a good example:
My Sister Is A Flight Of Birds
I'm standing on ice, a flight of geese
fleeing the moon, skimming the roof,
dampens the air. Seven quiet birds.
I have been saying their names so long
and now I can't remember
what their sudden rising means.
They call on the chill air
and let me be. When I slept, I hoped
never to wake and write these poems.
I'm not the man for this.
I wanted fire whispering over pages,
glowing in cloud. Instead,
I have spent my life as a man ice-fishing.
My line jigs down a hole
and sometimes in winter dawn
I draw up one freezing fish, and I'm surprised
holding it out, my glasses fogged like Dad's
under the small brim of his hat
on mornings he tightened our skates.
Can you remember anything from childhood?
I only know how ordinary we were,
sliding on the snow.
All night I kept these words beside my head,
white faces of skaters, a few haunted birds.
The image of "white faces of skaters, a few haunted birds"--that haunts the reader as well.
Book of the Day: Threat of Pleasure by Philip Memmer
Philip Memmer's poems are a form of thin ice: they seem safe to tread, but before too long the unwary reader will plunge through to the cold and darkness below, which in the case of Memmer is an enlarged awareness of the darker, hidden meanings of experience. Threat of Pleasure is both an elegant exploration of common life and the dangers that lurk beneath.
This poem is characteristic of Memmer's technique:
Parking Lot
Beneath the lights,
paramedics
tatter a sheet
of unmarked snow--
the shape in slush
the body leaves
tells how long help
took to arrive.
Already now
it fills with snow,
fading to gray,
then even white.
Even at night
the white hurts eyes
beneath the lights
of strip mall lots,
and nights are long--
the kids have hours
to find this snow,
unmarked, lit-up,
and waiting, still,
to be re-scarred
by sports cars named
for birds of prey.
Memmer's work is striking and unsettling.
Book of the Day: Liquid Like This by Leslie Anne Mcilroy
Leslie Anne Mcilroy's poems are always intense, and not easy to read. I don't know of a poet as skilled at distilling fine music from the raw emotions of love, loss, and pain. Liquid Like This is a relentless, breathtaking collection.
Consider this poem:
Again
To start with the smack of your hand
would be foolish. The start is in the preparation,
the sleek micro-fiber skirt over tight skin,
the thin-stretch blouse that scrapes the nipples,
hair up, neck long inside the collar of leather
and chrome you tell me to wear to dinner,
where I sit panty-less on a cool black chair
anticipating the next penetration
through an opening of your choice.
You tell me when to smoke
and light my cigarette, feeding me
one bite at a time--each smaller
than the last--richer. You tell me
to sit still and spread my legs, moist
and open, making room for your fingers
beneath the table. You say you will
whip me tonight and I am eager
for the burn, the bending over, exposed,
your mark on my body. Each touch--
lick and lash--fueling this graceless
need for surrender, the giving up
like a dark, hot storm when all the lights
are out and anything can happen.
All I can say is, wow.
Book of the Day: Glass Garden by Ken Pobo
I consider it high praise to call Ken Pobo's poems well-crafted. In Glass Garden, Pobo pays careful attention to the construction of his poems, and the result is work of crisp rhythm and sharp images: analogous to the glass sculpture that he often writes about.
Let's take a look at one of Pobo's stronger poems:
Cobalt Blue Vase
As I peruse creased copies
of Life, a cobalt blue vase grows
hands, taps me. I take him
off a shelf he gladly leaves--
no more waiting
behind inferior glass tumblers,
awful melmac cups. Home at last,
I carry him across the threshold,
dash out into the garden,
pick two Blue Girl roses,
six Pouffe bellflowers, and
an uppity penstamon, pour water,
stick in stems. How handsome
he looks in the sun. That was
eight years ago, and now
we're the neighborhood's
happiest couple--my glass vase
shines as I do when I hear
his blue heart beat,
see his open blue mouth.
These lines are as smooth and polished as the vase they depict.