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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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Fri, 27 Mar 2009
Book of the Day: The Surface of Things by Phebe Davidson
The spare lyrics of Phebe Davidson's The Surface of Things hold up small details to great scrutiny: Davidson's images and lines are clean, precise, and quiet, yet evocative of larger truths. Here's one example, "Aubade":
Aubade
You left the dock early today
the water gray,
light just smearing
the lake, nearly
but not quite here. The kayak, white
and clean, riding
low and graceful.
The long paddle
dipping smoothly. All elegant
gliding movement.
One bright color
your orange vest.
This morning poem, picturing a kayaker gliding on a lake, makes great use of sound and color for its atmospheric setting. Like the kayaker, the poem is all "elegant/gliding movement."
Book of the Day: Ecology II: Throat Song from the Everglades by Anne McCrary Sullivan
Anne Sullivan's Ecology II: Throat Song from the Everglades immerses me as deeply in a specific landscape as any book I have ever read. Sullivan brings a deep, specific knowledge of the Everglades' ecology, and from that rooted position, opens up her subject into rich, resonant detail.
Consider "Anhinga Pairing":
Anhinga Pairing
When the male anhinga's bright blue eye ring comes,
when he displays his fine feathers, raising his tail,
waving the wings, she begins to pay attention.
Then they swoop and glide together
near the nesting area--preen together, lifting
and fluffing feathers, rubbing each other's bills.
But they are not a pair until he finds the perfect
twig, offers it to her and she accepts.
Last year we saw him offer a twig, and she took it.
Even as we were all saying "Ahhh..." she lifted
that stick and hit him in the head with it, flew away.
Acceptance means something. And when she does
accept, they become monogamous in a bond that lasts
several years. What I haven't been able to learn
is how they go about separation. Is it mutual, a sort of inherent
biological timing? Or does one just leave? And for the other,
is there grief?
Sharply observed, the poem brings both insight about the behavior of a native Florida bird, and a larger insight about the nature of love. Nicely done.
Book of the Day: Imagine a Door by Laura Longsong
The narrative vignettes of Appalachian life in Laura Longsong's Imagine a Door are carefully, vividly crafted, giving Longsong's work a real richness and surprise. Reading these poems, I found myself drawn in time after time into Longsong's world.
There's a particuarly stong poem, "West Virginia Catholic Girl":
West Virginia Catholic Girl
Ponderous as the Sunday procession of nuns
the B & O and C & O train cars pass
by my bedroom window night and day
heaped with coal that sweats silver shine
from beneath the same earth where I find
broken arrowheads, dirt-caked blue bottles,
rusted shards of tin lids. I give up these treasures,
childish trinkets, for Joey O’Shannon's wet lips
meeting mine next to the chimney of the house
that burnt down so long ago nobody
remembers. He gives me a ring shaped
like a rose, with a bud of coal in its center. Never
to be diamonds, coal burns steadily, like the fires
of hell where I can expect—at the rate I’m going—
to endure Evermore, at least that’s what the nuns
predict. You will reap what you sow, they promise,
observing my dawdling days, imagining
my baffled nights, and I in turn can easily picture
my soul in hell. Coal flames simmer from one
flat greenish-black horizon to the other, flickering
lavishly upon the tattered cloth of my life. Yes,
Sisters, I knew even then, I will rip what I sew.
The numerous details of Catholic life, set against the backdrop of a coal-mining community in West Virginia, come alive for the reader--and, at the last line, I can't help smiling. Many of Longsong's poems offer similar pleasure.
Book of the Day: Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager
One of the things I admire greatly about Deborah Ager's Midnight Voices is the sonorous, sensuous quality of her lyrics. Ager is a poet who takes great care--and pleasure--in the way sounds collide in her lines, and the result is a poetry of unusually controlled intensity.
Consider "The Problem with Describing Men":
The Problem with Describing Men
If I said lacerated light
In an unusually warm November.
If I said ice-cold palm on my inner thigh
And the way a tree opens its branches
When sun finally heats the garden.
If I said the power of a ‘67 Charger
Mixed with a detective’s mystery.
If I said love, sometimes, yes, love
And jumping-from-a-moving-car anger.
Said the whir of a sander, the scent
Of birch, and tablespoons of sawdust.
What if I said night or a wave
Rocking into shore? If I said their names
One by one to the red sky? Said empty armchair?
Luck, dusky words, fight, torn photo.
What if I said moon? What if I said
White light dividing a lake in two?
"Luck, dusky words, fight, torn photo": this line is delicious to say aloud, and says volumes about the poem's putative subject: describing men.