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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, 05 Aug 2008
Book of the Day: Another Rude Awakening by Dori Appel
Another Rude Awakening by Dori Appel is a book of striking lyrics that, as the book's title suggests, aim to shock the reader into new awareness. The poems do so not through gratuitous imagery or subjects but through subtle or sharp turns of perception.
Consider "Alter Ego":
Alter Ego
She walks where I walk,
this nun with her great
bird headdress,
white wings fluttering,
black robes whispering at my back.
Skimming the wintry pavement,
she plants her tranquil step
where mine has been,
a ghostly echo closing in.
Hurrying, I feel the cold air shift
as her calm contralto stirs it,
her voice the same
as mine if I could sing.
The sense of identification with the ghostly image of the nun is strong here, and the image is evocative, unsettling. It gives the reader much to ponder.
Book of the Day: These Things I Will Take with Me by Carmen Germain
Carmen Germain's These Things I Will Take with Me is a collection of tautly-rendered lyrics. Her careful attention to the nuances of image and sound create a powerful experience for the reader:
Writing a Sympathy Card
to My Cousin's Wife
Deer season and the first snow
of Thanksgiving. My cousin,
handsome and fifteen,
his rifle pointing down the field.
And I am waiting for him to do
something, shoot or lower
the barrel and turn around,
but he stands there
as though he sees
into a mystery I can't know,
girl cousin and young, a pest
who follows the boys on their
hunts, keeping her distance.
He doesn't shoot. He doesn't
turn home either, and I watch
him bound into blue pine shadows,
winter light wavering everywhere.
I know the blood of deer, color
of my father's wool, my brothers',
my uncles'. November sky at dusk.
I wait. Wind cracks the house,
and my mother scours a turkey,
which is desolate, like a naked
baby you wash in the sink.
And all that week a deer cures
in the white pine, tied by rope.
Our leaping dogs nip the delicate
and brittle feet that hang knocking
against the winter bark. I bend
the foot joint, feel motion fleeing.
Dense with sound and rhythm, this poem encapsulates many of Germain's strengths.
Book of the Day: New England Primer by Bruce Guernsey
What I admire most about New England Primer by Bruce Guernsey is the hard, sure sculpture of his lines. Guernsey has a gift for the resonant, finely-rendered scene that enters the reader's memory indelibly, grasping both physical truth and more evanescent themes as well.
Let's look at "Ice Storm":
Ice Storm
To go to bed one April night,
a halo around the moon,
to sleep for hours it seems,
so soundly
you never heard the sleet--
to waken so suddenly old,
all that green gone white,
the orchard creaking,
its branches brittle as ribs--
to squint at the light with milky eyes,
the great-grandchildren gathered near,
all staring, all frightened--
to point towards the window,
someone wetting your lips--
to try to tell them
This poem goes silent when the poet considers his effort "to try to tell them"--it is, of course, impossible, and not even the right thing to try. These poems tell very little, but show and embody a great deal.
Book of the Day: Food for the Journey by Barry Spacks
Barry Spacks' poems in Food for the Journey are calm, humorous and contemplative, offering plenty of spiritual and intellectual sustenance for the reader who accompanies him.
Consider "Fame":
Fame
Wearing my soft black Australian hat
I walk my friends' dog down Panchita Street.
I've been house-sitting, dog-walking, reading all week
Richard Brautigan, who wrote that the beauty
is all in the saying, who would not tie
the bird of lunacy by a short string
to his toe, but rather would let her fly
in long loopy moves like a book's page-turning,
all in the name and the acting-out
of freedom - who shot off his head absolutely,
done in, they say, by the Bitch-Fame-Goddess,
broken on her gerbil treadwheel,
depressed, uncheered, remaining a time
unidentified, so de-headed there
and vodka-drowned and Not, in Bolinas,
California - talk about freedom!
I think he would have liked my hat
and surely my friends' dog Ida, black-and-white
border collie with yearning eyes
who'd herd anything to safety, sheep
or striver, doing her dog-work. "Fame
is the spur," blind Milton wrote, but added
little of use in Bolinas.
This wry, wise poem brings a smile to my face.