Mon, 07 Jun 2010

Remembering Rane Arroyo

It's with sadness that I report the passing of WordTech author Rane Arroyo last month.

Rane was the author of The Sky's Weight, which we published in 2009, and several other collections. He was a graceful poet who never shied away from the difficult parts of the world even as he celebrated the world's persisting beauty.

He will be missed.

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BARNEY AND GIENKA by John Surowiecki

I love the the mix of private and public history in John Surowiecki's Barney and Gienka--it's a rich and complex collection.

The blending of the two flavor of history is well-exemplified in "Bolivia Street":

Bolivia Street

 

It's the last of the nation streets. After it
are the tree streets and then the president streets.
When it gets paved, shoes and lungs
get brushed with tar and the low-hanging
leaves of maple and oak get cooked.

Barney says there's nothing there anymore:
no candy store, no theater, no bakery,
no tailor shop displaying a boy's hound's-

tooth jacket with leather shank buttons.
The metal shop is a graveyard of parts.
The war plaque has no room for new names.

And since the bees have disappeared
the azaleas suffer and the thyme is winter-quiet.
Each house wears the face of someone old
and failing and shadows of airplanes dart
from roof to roof like angels of death.

The neighborhood changes, and this also exmplfies the flow of larger historical streams: much is lost. This poems is a deft and powerful evocation of memory and history.

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DREAM BONES by Linda A. Cronin

Linda A. Cronin's Dream Bones is a strong collection that bravely confronts the difficulties of living with pain. These poems do not flinch in the face of difficulty, and they invite the reader on a difficult journey alongside them.

Here's a good example of the book at work, "Diagnosis":

Diagnosis

Waiting in the exam room,
I imagine the x-rays,
clean and stark,
harsh black and white images
edges clearly delineated.
Here -- good. There -- bad.
Negative and positive
outlined purely.
Defined by light. By rays.

So when the doctor hangs
the x-rays before me,
I'm not prepared.
Before me a world of
shadows. Clouds of gray.
Edges smudged.
As if a child's eraser smeared
the images. Sweat blurring
the lines. The doctor explains.
Shows the outline that creeps
beyond the border
until it slips away.
Black and white,
negative and positive,
into uncertainty bleed.

"Into uncertainty bleed": if there is a more precise evocation of the burden of disease, of being subject to the difficulties of the medical system, I have not read it.

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GRIEF SUITE by Bobbi Lurie

The poems in Bobbi Lurie's Grief Suite positively burn with their subject: they burn with a purifying, forging fire, in which grief becomes white-hot and focused. Lurie is a fearless poet, and Grief Suite is her strongest collection yet.

Consider "Traveling North":

Traveling North

Though you are dead now. Though I walk covered in dust through this strip mall in Iowa. I remember the collection of tendencies that led me here. The flat landscape. The blazing heat of cornfields. The landscape and body are one sensation.

Everywhere the books of atmospheric pressure. This book smells like miracles. That you were the chapter. That I was the slaughter. That sheep, my inheritance. That you were the shepherd who lead me here. Your hand reaching out to strike. Your hand reaching up to brush the hair from your brow. I never knew which. I never knew when. Your hand.

The cornfields are memories. You can not remember anything. The road is filled with dust haze. Your life is. Your death. I can not find it in this landscape. This collection of tendencies.

Though you are dead now. Though your hand would reach to strike. Though your hand would reach up to brush. The hair from your brow. Though light penetrates this. It is flat. It is frozen in self-image. I must resist the symbiotic wish. I must void the infantile condition. That region. This region. The atmospheric pressure in the vicinity of living.

Though you seemed invincible when your body moved. Though the way your hand. Would reach to your brow. Even though dead. Even though each wave of light penetrates. Even though only seems to slaughter. Sheep of inheritance.

Wake up at 4 a.m. Walk out naked to the porch. Skin shimmering. The way the word porch clings. The creaky swing. Dark lake of the body. What is always erased. The way your hand would reach to your brow and wipe your hair away. And it was always your hair. Always yours. And your face jutted into the landscape. This nowhere. This clicking sound of insects. Late summer.

I love this poem, recalling through death the "face jutted into the landscape. This nowhere. This clicking sound of insects." Death and memory fuse together to create a haunting new whole.

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SLIPPING OUT OF BLOOM by Julie L. Moore

I admire the incisive poems of Julie L. Moore's new book, Slipping Out of Bloom. Her lyrics are brief, but resonant, in their short, carefully sculpted lines. They evoke far more than their modest surfaces might suggest.

"Becoming" is an excellent example of her strengths:

Becoming

Spring-thick with snowy
blossoms, the ornamental

pear tree slowly slips
out of bloom, sloughing off

petal by skin-soft petal, bleeding
green as leaf after spear-

like leaf thrusts through,
laying down one life

for another. How
willingly it becomes

and becomes.

Line by line, this poem poem enacts the process of becoming, tracing the flow of experience almost syllable-by-syllable. The poem is strongly-crafted.

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