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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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Wed, 10 Sep 2008
Book of the Day: Wrong by Laurie Blauner
There is so much right in Laurie Blauner's Wrong. Blauner is an exceptionally sure-footed poet; her lines move deftly from image to image, perception to perception, with brio. Consider this poem:
The Sudden Appearance of Blue
The house is too late. Everything that's worth
saying has already been said. Bye to white
and green and yellow. I'm sure of the evenings,
staining my exhausted wine blue, my limbs scatter,
tossing haphazardly, birds perpetually looking
for springtime. It's under there, somewhere. Follow
the sex. Sometimes there's someone else.
It's exciting but a dead end. And that's the point:
the rooms don't know what to do. Turning
themselves inside out like empty sleeves
doesn't help. There's the lamp that can't wait
forever, a desk that knows that none of it
matters. My mirror betrays the dumb animal
faces. What can I do? Watch the paint
peel? Darkness shapes what's missing.
I'm alone everywhere. Doors open to
the smell of fields whose life has been cut
short, the forgotten trees. My steely kitchen.
I miss touch the most, my velvet living room.
Floors hum with life, with a light that can't
stay still. Take it back I want to say. It's
not enough that the walls consider their options
or windows ponder the fate of the afternoon.
The house grows bald and blue, turning
another cheek. It's too little, too late.
Furniture waits, staring at me. The writing
on the wall doesn't mean anything. If only
corners could last forever or my lawn
could speak to birds. I'll go
wherever I'll be taken in.
Well done.
Book of the Day: Counting Thunder by Robert Bernard Hass
Robert Bernard Hass' Counting Thunder is an energizing book: the world comes to live in unusually vivid terms. Hass pays careful attention to rhythm and the organization of his narratives, and the result vigorously depicts the natural world, embodying its physicality in strong, rhythmic lines.
Consider "Barn":Barn
I followed my breath each dawn to work the barn
My father's father built with his bare hands
And local oak he prayed would never burn.
Daily its rafters creaked beneath the sun;
Two narrow shafts of chaff dust left me blind
To follow my breath around and work the barn.
Inside the stench fermented: mildewed corn,
Old burlap sacks, caked lime, and dung would blend
To sting my nose with an ammonia burn.
The bull in heat, I'd hide behind combines,
Taller than dinosaurs, and hear the sounds
Of slapping flanks and cud breath in the barn.
And when the great rats scuttled in the grain,
I'd sight their eyes in crosshairs, shoot them down,
And toss them on the compost heap to burn.
They smoldered there until their bodies turned
And sweetened up our fallow, runted land.
I followed my breath each dawn to work the barn
And prayed each night the old oak would not burn.
Like the barn itself, this poem gives the sense of being built with bare hands, the lines carefully crafted and organized.
Book of the Day: Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps by Gary J. Whitehead
Gary Whitehead's poems in Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps are calm and fluid, moving surely through a lyric scene or narrative to a powerful resolution.
Consider "A Cold House":
A Cold House
I wake now to a house as cold
as your side of our double bed.
Across the threshold, in the dark
hall, the thermostat sparks
a blue star, and downstairs
the boiler thumps like a heart
revived. Hot water shrieks
through pipes till registers tick
like clocks toward a time bearable
and close. I dress in wool
and fleece, keep hands in pockets.
On the couch, our dog looks out
the bay window, his breath
on the glass making a bouquet,
gray flowers which bloom and fade.
Moving through the scene of loss--the empty house--the poem ends with the iconic image of "gray flowers which bloom and fade," just as the love in the house did. Understated, yet powerful.