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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Thu, 26 Feb 2009
Book of the Day: Six Stops South by Steven Schroeder
The calm, contemplative poems of Steven Shroeder's Six Stops South are very impressive. They do not shy away from an engagement with the physical world. Instead, they reach through that physicality into a deeper sense of spiritual significance.
Here's one example:
Gravity
They'll try to tell you gravity
keeps your feet on the ground,
but it's the weight of mountains
clasping you to earth,
transposed here into air
so heavy it reminds you
that you lift the world
with every step.
I love the idea of the weight of mountains keeping us down. This idea emphasizes our connectedness to the world in a visceral way. It's compact and powerfully expressed.
Book of the Day: The Dynamite Maker's Mistress by Nola Garrett
The Dynamite Maker's Mistress by Nola Garrett is a fearless joy ride through the loops, turns, and twists of the sestina, one of the most demanding of poetic forms. Garrett's poems are not only varied in their subjects, they are a nearly endless series of formal experiments with the sestina itself. The book is a bravura performace by Garrett.
Here's a sample poem:
Landscape with Six Plastic Flamingos
Like childbirth, this crisis is of my own choosing
made one passionate Saturday morning six
days and nine months ago when words
alone were useless. My searching for
relief from the self's dictionary with another
has come to this nexus-a pink sestina--
though mid-labor it seems the sestina
like a pick-up football team has done the choosing.
Will they throw me the ball? Am I just another
skinny, neighbor kid chosen because six
against seven are not enough for
a game? My team calls me Snake Lips, words
that hurt because they're true. My words
slither around in the dream that is sestina,
a kind of pink story I make for
the man who landscapes with plastic flamingos, choosing
not art, he says, but what he likes. Six
constitutes a flamingo quorum--another
small scantling for maintaining another
sort of peace. His flamingos and my words
could be anywhere, curving out in six
directions, void and cold--the mind's sestina
a chaos. It's the glory of choosing, choosing
anything, that frees and shapes us for
our lorn, featherless flight. I look for
words. They're sea shells--here's one, here's another--
fix, coral, rampion, charismatic, tame, wing--choosing
some for shape, some for sound. These words
toss, jostle, ping, loop, unravel until sestina
pinks them. They're integrated, six
flamingos browsing, no longer at sixes
and sevens, knees bent the wrong way for
humans, though just right for a sestina
about the mind's plastic shore: another
landscape of blood, salt and words
that fancies pink, artificial birds choosing
flight--another sestina for six words' choosing.
For anyone who thinks traditional form is boring--let alone an entire book written in a single form--I commend Garrett's work to your attention, and enjoyment.
Book of the Day: Reasons to Hate the Sky by Stuart Bartow
Hate and love are entwined, as Stuart Bartow's Reasons to Hate the Sky demonstrates. The gruff tone of much of this book cannot hide the underlying affection with which that Bartow views his subjects.
Consider this poem:
Reasons To Hate Birds
I hate birds because
robins in the morning
are so joyful
their lilt makes me homesick
when I'm home.
When a flock of sparrows
spins like a whirlwind
my body vanishes
into their body. I hate
mockingbirds because they mimic
my dead cat's plaint.
Who are the worst escapees from hell,
grackles or starlings?
I hate birds because they
can't think. I hate
their yawning young,
their slurping worms.
I hate chickadees
for their horniness,
their twilight serenades,
and because they are absolutely
innocent in their meanness.
Is there really hate here? If you think there is, you aren't reading closely enough.
Book of the Day: Speak Mouth to Mouth by Stuart Friebert
Stuart Friebert writes a vigorous line: whether humorous, affectionate, or somber, his poems propel forward at a rapid pace, demanding that the reader keep up. Thus his new book, Speak Mouth to Mouth, is aptly titled. Here's a good example of Friebert's technique:
Larynx
Voice box, in front of the windpipe,
just below the hyoid bone, connected
to the pharynx above, the pipe below,
through which every breath of air you
take must pass, but the most exciting
part's the thyroid cartilage, two plates
shaped like sturdy wings which meet
in front to be the Adam's Apple. Now
imagine getting cancer right there...
Better to wake smothered one morning
than to bear testimony to the nasty fight
I've got going with my own cells, mother
said, whose last words were, I'd not mind
so much if it were only called Eve's Apple.
Why would damn Adam get all the words?
Not only does this poem illustrate Friebert's style, but in its examination of voice and how one speaks, it elegantly encapsulates many of the book's concerns. Nicely done.
Book of the Day: The Home Atlas by David Feela
David Feela's poems in The Home Atlas often display a droll sense of humor, but their wry perspective is always in the service of a deeper vision.
Consider this poem:
A Marriage Therapist Discusses Adam & Eve
Her initial complaint
was based on a lack of choice,
a resentment she harbored
until the day she died.
Adam, after all, was
the only available man.
She took him for better
but felt she got all the worse.
He didn't share her grievance.
In fact, he couldn't believe his luck.
He awoke from a nap
to find his first woman
naked and toting lunch.
Naturally, Adam wasn't perfect
but he went on and on
about the snake,
as if Eve was the cold-blooded one.
And truth be told,
Eve liked the snake,
maybe even better than Adam.
Thought it at least understood
how to have a conversation.
In the end, of course, it was
a beginning.
The two reconciled, had kids,
went into business together:
Paradise Tours.
All their customers wanted to buy
a few acres and build
but in Eden the covenants were explicit:
no people.
I find this poem's gentle irony enriching. The wry ending: "no people"--is a humorous, but sharp, reminder of our ultimate exile from paradise.