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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, 02 Sep 2009
DRIVE BY HEART by Michael Milburn
Michael Milburn's haunting poems in Drive By Heart are powerful in their longing--they really engage the reader's heart. I don't always like to use such language to describe poems, but here it applies: Milburn's work has an emotional wallop.
"Freeze Frame" shows Milburn's strengths:
Freeze Frame
Some comb the past for blame,
forever reviewing the tape
like Monday Night Football
to say, “There, stop it for a second,
the injury occurred there.” Others
know deep down they’ll be hurt,
say so and it happens.
In the kitchen today,
remembering a conversation
from six months ago, I stopped
the tape, but couldn’t tell
from the angle if you were
pushing or I was simply falling
and would have crumpled anyway.
I’d like to have you over to see,
run the tape and you could cue me
to stop it and say what we’re doing,
like football where someone watching
from a distance decides and it’s over.
They just decide and it’s over.
"They just decide and it's over"--would that things were so simple in life. The simultaneous longing and regret in that line is piercing.
NIXON AT THE PIANO by Sid Miller
What I admire most about Nixon at the Piano by Sid Miller is its wit, its sense of irony, and the self-awareness the poems display. Miller is a savvy poet whose control of language is so strong that his poems, aware of the spell they cast, nonetheless grip the reader.
Here's one good example:
Cayenne Pepper and Other Rotting Vegetables
It’s a shame that it all has to end
like this, me in these dirty jeans,
pulling up this garden that has died
of circumstances. This finale is so tired,
such a played out metaphor;
girl leaves boy, boy lies on couch,
vegetables are strangled by rogue
morning glories and begin to parch
in the dry sun of the summer.
Then the boy thinks of leaving too,
boxes up his life, sweeps out the house,
shuts off the power and returns
to the garden that he planted
to show her that he could do more
than just eat words and throw them back up.
And I should have done this first, but everything
got mixed up like everything else and I’m
stuck here without so much as a shovel,
pulling up everything by hand, eating
cherry tomatoes that have somehow
withstood. The zucchini plant has taken over
a corner, so prickly, weighed down
by five pounders that have molded.
The ears of corn have withered on the stalk
and are covered by bugs. The chamomile
which I promised tea from, is dry like hay,
not one flower missing.
The carrots, beans, cucumbers, strawberries,
all ripped up, leaving just the cayenne plant,
the first one in the soil after the thaw.
The peppers have dried and are as dark as blood.
I pick three off and tuck them into
my shirt pocket, to allow
this metaphor to extend even further.
In lesser hands, a line such as "this metaphor to extend even further" could be tired, even hackneyed, but Miller pulls it off. The poem's rueful sense extends to the very end and opens up larger perspectives.
SURRENDER TO LIGHT by Elizabeth Kirschner
I love the intense lyrics of Elizabeth Kirschner's Surrender to Light: they are alive with music. Kirschner has a gorgeous ear that allows her to embody larger truths with preceise images.
Here's a good example of her technique:
A Parallel Universe
--for Dylan
Exists in our antique mirror where there are
somber gray hills and rosy swirls in the valleys.
"Dawn's eyes," says our dreamy child,
to which you sternly—but why?—reply,
"Blood-shine." Our son already knows
about the singing bridges between stars,
the striptease of white roses letting petals
fall like manna upon his tongue: succor,
happiness happens somewhere else. But
where? Between two cusps of facing
crescent moons, a celestial marriage
meant to mirror our marriage here
on earth as we lie in a snowy bed,
our milk-fed child kneeling in between
us, knowing who christens whom upon
this ravaged earth.
"This ravaged earth"--that line is not overdone but instead is the climax of this resonanting poem.
PUBLIC HEARINGS by Richard Hague
Richard Hague's Public Hearings is a striking change from his earlier work. While his fluid poems have often dealt implicitly with historical and social subjects--particularly the environment and working-class life--through lyric and narrative depiction, they have seldom addressed them so directly, even bluntly.
Here's one poem, "The Price":
The Price
You can’t get a thing anymore that don’t cost you outlandish.
--woman overheard on the street, Madisonville
For the morning,
it costs you all night,
bad dreams maybe,
kid crying in his fever,
smash of car wrecks on the street,
gunshots down the block,
reruns on TV,
heartburn like a hot wire in the ribs,
when it used to cost you
nothing but sleep.
For supper,
it costs you a day and overtime,
two quarts of sweat,
madness of parking lots,
crash of cash register,
bitter tin taste of dimes on your hands,
moanings in line,
when it used to cost you
nothing but a garden.
For the place to live,
it costs you thirty years
of interest,
or a month and half’s pay each month,
seven city bureaus,
rats and termites,
landlords with suntans and Jaguars,
leaks in the roof,
sudden waters in the basement,
when it used to cost you
nothing but wood, and nails, and work.
For peace,
it costs you taxes,
calling the cops,
voting for weirdos and crazies,
talking thirteen languages,
reading thirty papers,
maintaining surveillance,
knowing when some sorry bastard lies,
cell phones and stamps for the CIA,
telling the generals No,
when it used to cost you
nothing but getting to know your neighbor.
For happiness,
it costs more than you’ll ever have—
good health continually,
faith, beautiful children,
a government that makes sense,
all your wages,
prayers answered,
enough wood and nails for a house,
enough yard for a garden,
enough sleep at night.
This poem displays Hague's characteristic strengths--depicting a subject with slow, musical precision--but it opens up into larger, troubled questions about our society. Given the temper of our times, such questions need to be asked.