About
Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
Your Host
Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Get a syndicated feed of my weblog.
Archives
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
Categories
Books
Business
Poetry
Publishing
Fri, 28 Oct 2011
THE REFUGEE CAMP by John Drury
The collage of voices in John Drury's The Refugee Camp place the reader in the absurd heart of the Cold War--a German refugee camp in the early 1970's. Drury's fractured narrative creates a surreal, yet terrifying, environment.
While a collection of this sort defies easy characterization, the first two sections of the long title sequence give some example of Drury's approach:
From "The Refugee Camp"
1.
In the ruined city
of toymakers and singing guilds,
they were so fanatical at the war's end
even civilians fought,
shooting from rubble, from cellar windows.
I climb the cobbled streets
to Heathen's Tower
past half-timbered houses and the repaired
wreckage of air strikes, patchworks
of clean and weathered quarrystone.
When I say to a friend, Too bad
we bombed the churches,
he corrects me:
the Nazis used them
to quarter the Gestapo.
And yet-a song remains,
if only a clashing music,
as trams wrench
around tight corners, whining
as power lines spark, in Nuremberg.
2.
Each morning I trudge uphill
to the refugee camp where I work.
Aliens huddle by the vestibule
while officials brush past,
muttering a password
to the guard at a glassed-in booth
who buzzes them-and me-
through the heavy door.
Turned back, the refugees grumble and curse,
kick cinders in the parking lot.
Everyone says they carry knives,
hands jammed in pockets,
their faces half scraped, half stubble,
women left behind
in cramped flats or muddy villages.
They stare at our questionnaires
and leave too many blanks.
I learn Do you know nothing, sir?
and See you later, mister
in languages I will never begin to fathom.
"Languages I will never begin to fathom"--this refers not only to the literal words being spoken, but also to the larger context of these events, placing the speaker and these refugees in such proximity in that place and time. It's a fascinating story, one Drury expertly tells.
THE ARTEMIS SONNETS, ETC. by Anne Harding Woodworth
I love the way Anne Harding Woodworth's The Artemis Sonnets, Etc. enacts the quest of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. The poems explore the tension between love and hate, life and death, in provocative ways.
"Deer and Me" is one good example of Woodworth's skill:
Deer and Me
The caris skid is beginning.
You and I are the only two left on earth
moving toward each other
on the night-time county road,
your hooves on packed snow,
my rubber treads on ice.
I see your brown fur, you see me.
We are staring frozen, locked eye to eye
and Iim going to hit you, youire going to hit me--
I am the deer now, I am the hooves in the road.
You are the car, the tires, the flare of the lights.
Iim going to kill you, youire going to kill me.
Iim killing and braking and sliding and skidding
inside this steamed-up glass and metal,
while Joe Cocker is singing
You are so beautiful to me.
The speaker bears down on the deer, unable to stop, and in that frozen moment becomes one with the deer; amid that impossible intimacy, the radio blares, "You are so beautiful to me..." It's a compelling, unexpected image.
I like the quiet power of the poems in Kathryn Jacobs' In Transit. Jacobs' work is wry and observant, leavening humor with tart conclusions.
Here's one example of her work, "Planet Pre-Owned":
"Planet Pre-Owned"
"This planet's pre-owned." Well, I guess it is:
Strange advertisement, though. Be useful to
an alien, perhaps. "Hey, don't land here:
the whole globe's pre-owned, and we love to fight:
you're better off on Mars." Saves money, too;
A small investment in the Solar Times,
and we can concentrate on conquering
our earthbound friends and neighbors (Don't butt in:
it's just a family matter). So that works.
And really, if they've got their web-cams on,
they hardly need the warning; probably
they read our ads and laugh. I'm prudent though,
and when it comes to inter-species war.
I'd hate to be complacent. They get Mars.
This poem's understated satire of environmentalists, suggesting that "this planet's pre-owned," opens up into a sly meditation on our place in the universe. It's well-done.
Thu, 06 Oct 2011Steve Jobs passed away yesterday at the too-young age of 56. Though I never met the man, I'm taking his death personally. His work has made many things possible for myself and my family that otherwise wouldn't have been.
By now the outlines of Jobs' life are well-known. After founding Apple Computer with his friend Steve Wozniak, essentially creating the personal computer indudstry, and then making the computer a tool for creativity with the Macintosh, he was forced out of the company by the new CEO he helped to recruit. Jobs then wandered in the business wilderness for a decade, founding an innovative-but-unsuccessful computer company (NeXT) and buying an innovative-but-unsuccessful computer animation studio (Pixar).
Then, starting in 1996, he had one of the greatest second acts in American business history. Pixar's animation technology finally matured to the point where it was feasible to make an entire movie using the techology, and the result was the landmark movie Toy Story. Pixar went public, made Jobs a very rich man again, had a long run of hit movies in partnership with Disney, and then was acquired by Disney. And Apple, nearing bankrupty, acquired Jobs' other company, NeXT, to provide the basis of its new operating system--and brought Jobs back to Apple. Apple then began its unprecedented run of hit products, from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone and beyond, which have continued to revolutionize technology, and is now one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Jobs' work made many things possible for me. The technology he helped to create, particularly the Macintosh, allowed me, then a poet, to learn design and typesetting, which enabled me to take the written word (poetry) and render it on the page, and later on the World Wide Web. I learned to appreciate a beautifully designed book and web page. That gave me a passion for the publishing field, which is how I support my family to this day, taking the written word of poets, creating beautiful books out of them, and bringing that poetry to an audience. Later on, Jobs' creations also inspired me to learn computer and software programming, so that I could take the computer I was using and expand its capabilities. Now, software development also helps to support my family.
The most important way that Jobs has inspired me, however, has little to do with the products he created, but rather his example--and not the example most people cite, of the driven, perfectionist, take-no-prisoners visionary. That example, which has passed into legend and even stereotype, is one of a brilliant but impossibly demanding leader who would alternatively inspire and bully his subordinates into realizing his vision. (One archetypal example is Jobs telling a subordinate: "You've baked a lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.") I'm no genius, and I recognize that often compromise is necessary to get something done.
No, what inspires me about Jobs is more basic--it's his grit, his persistence, his tenacity. When he was banished from Apple in 1985, he was not even 30, wealthy enough to never work again--but he still felt he had something to prove. So he founded a new company, purchased another, and nurtured both companies through a periods of slow or no growth, far outside of the limelight. When one stategy didn't work, he would try another. Eventually he found a mix of approaches that slowly brought the companies to modest profitability, and poised them for their spectacular impact later in the 1990s.
That decade out of the public eye was surely humbling for Jobs. He didn't have to work. He poured tens of millions of dollars into his companies as they lost money, and watched his own net worth drop. But even as that experienced humbled him, it also matured him. And it also nurtured an inner strength and determination: he didn't give up. And the world would benefit from the fruits of those efforts, with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and more.
Jobs' techology and creativity have inspired and enabled much of my work. But as the proprietor of a publishing business (books and software) with my wife, it's Jobs' tenacity that I take the greatest instruction from. It goes without saying that since the U.S. economy's collapse in 2008, running any kind of business has been challenging. The book business is going through tremendous change with the emergence of e-books, the bankruptcy of Borders, and more; the pace of change is breathtaking. The software business has huge opportunity with the resurgence of Apple and the growth of smartphones (driven largely by Apple's iPhone), but it is also extremely competitive and challenging to reach a large customer base.
It takes tenacity and persistence to meet these challenges: changing your approach when the situation demands it, pursuing new opportunities in a way that makes sense, managing costs, and more. Most importantly, it requires not giving up. If you keep persisting, then your chances of surviving and even succeeding are good. My wife and I are still in business amid all the economic turmoil--that's no small accomplishment.
There are other important inspirations in my life. The poet John Haines, with whom I studied, was, like Jobs, a model of uncompromising artistic integrity. His years as a homesteader in the Alaska wilderness also provided an example of the kind of life a poet could live and where poetry could thrive, outside the context of university teaching, where many poets earn their living. Similarly, the poet Dana Gioia, with whom I corresponded, provided a model of how earn one's living. Decades before he became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia worked in corporate life and then as a self-employed writer/editor as he established himself as a poet and critic, writing both books of poetry and criticism that challenged poetry's marginalized place in American culture in the university. As an English Ph.D. seeking employment in a depressed academic job market in the late 1990s, it eventually became necessary for me to find another career path, and the examples of Haines and Gioia were especially helpful for me: my path took me through several years in corporate life before finally leading me to self-employment as a publisher.
Still, today, as a business owner in a terrible economy, I am looking in a different direction for my inspiration: Steve Jobs. During his years in the wilderness, Steve Jobs persisted. And he wound up changing the world. I don't know if I'll change the world, but I'm going to persist regardless. That's how Steve Jobs has changed my world.
Mon, 19 Sep 2011
HITCHCOCK'S COFFIN by Kim Bridgford
The latest of Kim Bridgford's excursions into the sonnet form is Hitchcock's Coffin, a series of witty lyrics about classic films. Bridgford's forte is using the sonnet form's brevity for cleverly constructed observations about culture and human experience.
"Some Like It Hot" is a good example of Bridgford's style:
Some Like It Hot
It's both the ultra feminine and not
Aboard love's train in Wilder's gangster plot.
The sax and sex combine to make us watch,
And all the multiplicities of touch.
The hermeneutic question: Who wants heart,
And who wants money? Sugar knows them both.
Yet mind is swayed by this important truth:
A kiss is practice gathering into art.
The phrase "Nobody's perfect" carries weight,
When there's the moment of the true confession,
For feeling, with the courage of expression,
Wins out. Like Darwin, we find in our fate
The thrill of what is strange and what is true,
The ecstasy of nature making do.
"The ecstasy of nature making do" is a striking thought, love and material comforts entwining in unexpected ways. It's a strong poem in a strong book.
THE MOON FROM EVERY WINDOW by Rob Grifith
Rob Griffith is a skilled poet. The graceful domestic scenes and fluid blank verse of his book The Moon from Every Window probe past their domestic limitations, finding the larger import that lurks in any scene; that's not an easy thing to accomplish.
Here is a good example of Griffith's technique at work:
Each Night
You sit in bed, back bowed like a fishing pole
taut against a heavy catch. The pose
is one I always mistake for sorrow, pain,
or despair. I touch your arm, cool and smooth,
and ask, "What's wrong?" You surface slowly,
shedding the dark water of your prayer
before opening your eyes and smiling archly.
Youid think Iid know by now that every night
you take your small boat out to the deep waters
and cast your line. And all the while, I pace
the shingle, ignoring the lap and click of waves
against the stones, ignoring all that moonlight
trembling on the bay. Instead, I watch
for that black wake that signals your return.
The speaker of this poem describes a quiet, intimate scene: his partner sitting quietly in bed, pensive, seemingly troubled. It then opens up into a larger metaphor, of delving into "the deep water," as the speaker ignores the "moonlight/trembling on the bay." Opening from domesticity to deeper realms, this poem is resonant, and is characteristic of Griffith's fine book.
NECESSITY OF FLIGHT by Jane Alynn
Birds stitch the recurring threads of Jane Alynn's artful Necessity of Flight, ranging across song, flight, a glimpse of divinity, and other topics. Alynn's carefully crafted lyrics are both thoroughly grounded and graceful in their gestures to the spiritual realm.
Here is a good example:
Small Gods
Sitting outdoors at the neighborhood cafe,
pen in hand, I scratch on paper
like a bird in winter, trying
to scrape up something to feed that dire hunger,
the burning emptiness from being
unable to find words for so long now.
The mind a mere immensity of nothing.
And breath shallow as the dying.
Then from the gutter a sparrow
drops to my feet, puffed up, beak going
cheep cheep, cheeping loudly for crumbs,
a small fit welled up from emptiness.
Something settles with this divine, adaptive song.
And for a little while, at least, she renews my faith
in a life of radiant poverty.
"A life of radiant poverty"--I love that image. This poem, despite its brevity, opens up a provocative realm of insight.
The intermeshing between public and private history is the focus of Zara Raab's Swimming the Eel, a well-crafted collection that grounds a narrative of the Western migration in the tactile details of place and the remembered experience of family.
"Pine Trees" gives some flavor of the book:
Pine Trees
The pines grow bored with mountains,
wind whistling in the quarry,
making rute of needles.
Yet they are loyal, steadfast,
indifferent to vainglory:
They let wind tease and wheedle.
When I see their simple grace,
can I mind my sad story?
Spring comes, and pineis there, bustling.
Do they yearn for the seaside?
They seem to rise against wind,
but wind blows through them, rustling.
It moans Who are you? to them.
Still they stand like bowling pins,
lined on the crests of valleys.
Though once legion in this place,
a handful still bowl and spin
their cones along the gullies.
"When I see their simple grace/can I mind their sad story?" That's the poignant question this poem asks, symbolizing the tension between the internal and external, the private and public, that Raab explores.
Thu, 04 Aug 2011
QUESTIONS FOR THE SPHINX by Stuart Bartow
Stuart Bartow's Questions for the Sphinx delves deeply into questions of knowledge and insight (emobdied in the remote image of the sphinx), and the book's search is ultimately tenative--seeking knowledge that can only be glimpsed.
"Ars Poetica" is one fine example of the book's thematic focus:
Ars Poetica
One night you're out walking
in the village where you have lived for years
and stray down a street
you never noticed before.
You pass several houses,
force yourself to ignore the one
whose tenants are under the spell
of a television's blue haze,
pass the one where a naked body
drifts behind a curtain's veil,
and step briskly through the strains
of Hank Williams, another
with Mozart's violins.
In one house there are birds,
Finches perhaps, chaotic and lovely,
in a clandestine aviary.
A voice seems ready to break through a window,
to fly from the house
crying something shrill, insistent,
human enough to make you realize
there is a language all beings speak,
but in unfamiliar words.
Back home you attempt to translate
the dialect you heard
but lose it just like any other memory
you told yourself you would keep forever.
You vow to return to the street,
the house, the living book
that each bird makes.
Things get in the way, so weeks,
or years pass before you're back,
only to find the house abandoned,
windows broken.
So you go home with nothing
and write a poem about an empty house
where the silence inside is massive
as a forest at midnight.
"Back home you attempt to translate/ the dialect you heard/ but lose it just like any other memory/ you told yourself you would keep forever." The knowledge in memory is fleeting, grasped only briefly, before it before it escapes our clutches. It's a sobering thought, of how little we truly know.
WHAT FOCUS IS by Matthew Spireng
The lyrics of Matthew Spireng's What Focus Is have a lovely grace to them, in the way they balance an expansive view with a precise attention to detail. This combination is especially hard to pull off, and Spireng does this effectively.
The books's title poem is an appropriate example:
What Focus Is
... as beauty
makes background of all around it.
- Les Murray,
"The Emerald Dove"
This a bald eagle, the first seen
so all else-the smooth curve
of the road ahead, the distant view across
fields and hedgerows into a green valley-
is lost, guessed at now, though the eagle close
and magnificent flying up from the shoulder
only yards from the car is as clear in memory
as if a photo had been snapped that instant,
even the eyes, head turned toward the car, sharp.
Only the bird, and background, beauty and background,
as the bird soaring might find beauty itself: one hare
seen first from afar, then, as if tethered together,
the magnificent bird swoops down out of the background,
focused only on the beauty it sees-the hare in a field
filled with clover it does not see-to pluck it up from the ground.
The bird may only see a certain type of beauty, but the reader takes it all in, and is the richer for it.
MANIA KLEPTO: THE BOOK OF EULENE by Carolyne Wright
I'm in love with Eulene, the unforgettable protagonist of Carolyne Wright's Mania Klepto. She takes us on an energetic romp through her vision. These brisk poems are never dull, often funny, and always illuminating.
While the poems of Mania Klepto are varied in their length and techniques, they all share a strong, propulsive energy through their scenes. Here is one example:
Eulene's a nun now,
kneeling in her college room.
No vows yet, and no vestments,
she dares to call the winter sun
down on her house. Let it sear away
the hashish smells, dog stains
in the hallway. That bummer,
memory, building its nests in the drawers.
Let it burn into the beer-bleared eyes
averted when Eulene walks in.
Fears that roll the sleeping bags tighter
behind Venetian blinds. Bullies
who look for victims in the mirrors.
Eulene packs her only change
of clothes, peels the labels
from her judgment jars,
the fist in her rib cage
clenching and unclenching.
She's signed her soul up
for a job, reassigned all wakeful
questionings, quick-change artists
moving in next door. She holds
her bones to their own promises,
escape routes into the country
cordonned off.
The protagonist, Eulene, cannot leave the path she is on, "escape routes into the country/cordonned off." Propelled along, she has "signed her soul up/for a job," and she awaits her fate, "the fist in her rib cage/clenching and unclenching." This poem, like the rest of the book, grabs your attention and never lets up.
W.E. Butts' poems in Radio Time are steeped in memory, yet nostalgia never gives way to sentimentality. I admire their affectionate yet clear-eyed view of the world as it once was.
"The Lake" is a nice embodiment of Butts at work:
The Lake
I don't know how Father managed
that summer I was five,
on his factory pay,
to bring us to the glistening lake
and white clapboard cottage
for a week, its small rooms
filled with early July light,
and what seemed to me a thousand birds
singing through the open windows,
past the waving flowered curtains.
Perhaps he borrowed the money
from my uncle, who would
be dead a few years later,
at fifty-four, the only time
I ever saw my father weep.
But we were happy those days,
my parents and I,
by that lake called "Silver,"
and in its bright water
that returned us,
redeemed and shivering,
back to our currency of air.
Each afternoon, I walked
along the shoreline,
gathering shells and stones
from where the wet sand
touched a mysterious silence
that somehow
echoed through me,
even on that final morning
of clouds and rain,
when we left for home.
This poem, recalling a pleasant brief respite from economic and other difficulties, sees both the harshness of the world and the beautiful refuges from it. That tension creates a compelling poem.
CAMERA STELLATA by Dana Curtis
Camera Stellata by Dana Curtis is a intriguing book, freely blending elements of the bizarre and the beautiful into hard-to-forget scenes.
Salamander
She invents the musician at the crossroads,
wrapped in grey silk and a scorched repertoire:
she said her death lobbied to be gruesome,
maggots preferable to fact, her limit
stared volcanic in broken bones-she won't
live anywhere she can imagine, won't
intuit a key, a window, a shred
of cloth caught on thorns. Be no more, in a
cough behind her hand; there will be legless
women on that shore, and their boats
a secret method, music uninvented,
etched in skin. She takes me to the center
of lava rains to stare the headlights black
at the X completing the open door.
The legless woman, the shredded cloth, the thorns, lava rains: this is a provactive conjunction of images, following the logic of a dream, that immerses the reader in a striking landscape. I don't pretend to follow all of it literally, but I'm taken in.
TWO GHOST POEMS by Frederick Turner
I am a longtime admirer of Frederick Turner's work, for its breadth of formal and intellectual range, and the way it achieves this breadth without neglecting the emotional aspects of experience. Turner's latest book, Two Ghost Poems, is no disappointment.
The book is a sequence of two long poetic sequences, exploring themes of the journey, of aging, and of memory. "Terminus" is an example of the book's technique:
Terminus
Behind the corner, over that far hill
Where the last train pulls into the last station
And steam expires into the gold dusk chill-
That's Peace Of Mind, the final destination.
And somewhere up ahead, the traveler,
Who now must haul his bag up on his shoulder,
Knows there's a place nearby where old friends are,
Friends who are never getting any older:
Some kind of cottage with a southwest view,
A kitchen-garden, as the mail insisted,
Grape-arbor, and an outdoor barbecue.
Who might have thought that such a place existed?
Halfway he stops and looks back with a sigh.
A plume of smoke still towers in the sky.
The "final destination," evoked from a suburban landscape, becomes something darker, even eternal.
IMPROBABLE MUSIC by Sandra Kohler
I admire the way the poems of Improbable Music quietly depict scenes from the everyday, while opening those small scenes up into larger perspectives. The poems are welcoming and inviting, on both small and large scales.
"Notes" is one example:
Notes
The sky is an empty bowl, the light
something I turn away from. My son
is in Boston this morning. I don't know
if he's as happy in love as he was. Does he?
In a dream just before the alarm wakes me,
a man emptying a dishwasher puts pieces
of paper away with the dishes, notes
about who each piece of silver or glass
or china reminds him of. My life is like
the glasses this man is putting away, fragile
yet clear container of past and present, full
of signs of the people in it. Everywhere
shafts of language open into our lives.
A friend tells me how strange her husband
seems with his father; another, that his son's
therapist said the child has the self-esteem
of an ant. Separating, parents find they have
divorced their children, not their shared past.
I cannot give up the trappings of motherhood,
my husband those of fatherhood. Love and
alienation are names defining the possible,
a world of interiors, artificial as all our homes.
No one moves freely in their gardens, rooms,
corridors, the spaces of art and order we've
created. We enter them trailing remnants
of bondage, old woes, the stories
and children of suffering.
It's difficult to imagine a more everyday title than "Notes," but from the notes and images invoked in the poem, we move to "old woes,/the stories/and children of suffering." Nothing, not even everyday life, is easy, nor can we escape the press of suffering, and this poem memorably reminds us of these facts.
Tue, 10 May 2011
THE BOOK OF SARAH: POEMS ON THE LIFE OF SARAH MOORE GRIMKE by Amy Benson Brown
I admire the ambition, research, and poetic skill that has gone into The Book of Sarah: Poems on the Life of Sarah Moore Grimke by Amy Benson Brown. It's not easy to poetically render a complex historical subject, dense with information and political tension, yet Benson has done so here .
Consider this poem:
Boarding
The soft sea
cannot cradle
me. This boat
cannot rock
me, fatherless,
home.
I buried him in sand
and dragged my sodden
limbs aboard this ship
laden with strangers.
The day is fine
bright and cool
as I watch our wake
plough the bruised sea.
The Atlantic tosses slick
frothy clouds out
of herself and drinks
them again so quick,
I almost miss
the song that mingles
with the waves'
pitch and hiss. Love--
it chants--is longer
and strong as
our little deaths.
Evoking the journey across the Atlantic, this poem is a work of real skill, and I am both educated and enlightened--both historically and in my present perspective--by reading it.
TINTED DISTANCES by Edward Byrne
Edward Byrne's poems are fascinating for the way they meditate on art and the way that the artist's engagement wtih the world finds its way into that art. In Tinted Distances, the poems, both narrative and lyric, engage this subject in a thoughtful way.
Consider this poem:
At the Artist's Studio, 1894
From his tiny studio beside the sea, again
he paints the approach of an ocean storm.
Already late summer in Maine, he sees
those older trees wilting along an inlet shore,
their thin limbs lifting a bit in this swift
and sudden current of wind. The small boats
in the bay below are rising and rolling
with every swell, each mast moving back
and forth with a steady rhythm, swaying
like a metronome needle, and against a gray
geometry of clouds, a stem of lightning
zigzags beyond this staggered slope of coast,
where Winslow Homer watches once more
as one wave after another breaks on the dark
rocks, blossoms into that flat scattering
of white spray now flowering on his canvas.
Recollecting both a scene and its inspiration, these vigorous couplets offer an immersion in the process of perceiving and shaping those perceptions.
THREE HOURS TO BURN A BODY: POEMS ON TRAVEL by Suzanne Roberts
Suzanne Roberts' Three Hours to Burn a Body is a powerful collection of lyrics that explores physical and emotional journeys. Roberts is an especially strong observer of delicate emotional nuances, and places those scenes against the backdrop of travels through foreign countries.
"Away" is a good example of her technique:
Away
Leon, Nicaragua
A wooden cross hangs on the yellow wall.
Cockroaches scurry under the bed, along
the red tile floor. The ceiling fan squeaks,
the fountain outside, a mosaic of water, of night.
Window shades, broken, clatter. Palms rustle.
The television picks up an American station.
Spanish subtitles scroll along the screen.
A plane circles Boston, the landing gear stuck.
They will run out their fuel, control a crash landing.
I reach for the remote, turn it off. As you enter me,
you tell me, I am yours-it's your lie. Mine
is to pretend I'm here, rather than thinking
about how someone will be making love when I die.
The scene of the darkened room in a foreign country provides a backdrop for the poet's questions about presence: how she seems present in the moment with her lover, and he with her, when in fact she is pondering questions of life and death and distance. The contrast provides this poem's emotional strength.
SAINT SINATRA by Angela O'Donnell
Angela O'Donnell's Saint Sinatra is a collection with great passion--passion for music, for spirit, their various yearnings. O'Donnell's work sings with a palpable physicality.
The title poem, "Saint Sinatra," is a good example of her style:
Saint Sinatra
"Saints are the most excellent of voices,
the most brilliant of stars." Cardinal Avery Dulles
Croon to me, Baby,
blue-eyes smiling,
So Easy to Love
Night and Day,
skinny legs draped
in gabardine as you sway
sweet and easy, singing.
The mike your attribute,
lucky close to those lips,
In other words, baby, kiss me.
I've Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie,
You, Sicilian Saint of Song,
the one girls pray to when we lie
awake, pictures of boys in our heads,
each of them holy-card pretty as you
only In the Blue of Evening.
You and the Night and the Music
much more than we can stand,
we fall to our knobby knees,
genuflect to your smooth
slide down the scale of desire,
a true tune we know and can't carry.
O Hoboken Hero of Eros,
Star-eyed Stranger in the Night,
Pray for us, Sinner. Sing us alive.
Take these Valentine hearts from our hands.
In this poem, the differences between saints and sinners dissolve in the glory of song. Well done.
Mon, 04 Apr 2011
I find the pithy poems of Erin Murphy's Word Problems delightful; they are high-energy romps that sear with their insight.
I especially like "This Just In":
This Just In
The breaking news…
is there’s no breaking news.
No one died. There were no fires
or bribes or lies. No buildings
exploded or imploded. No one
voted. Nothing happened today.
It’s a disaster. Let us pray.
What I admire about this poem is its sharp turn into irony, from the almost palpable sense of relief from a day without drama to the realization that such a day represents, in a day, pure nothingness: "Let us pray." And it does this in just seven lines. It takes a lot of work to make something seem this effortless.
NIGHT'S BODY by George Keithley
George Keithley's calm, deliberate lines show the mark of a true craftsman, while his carefully evoked scenes and stories show evidence of a wide-ranging and adventurous mind. These two sources, in Night's Body, create a poetry of unusual richness and durability.
Here's an excellent example of Keithley's technique at work:
Living Again
Then he remembered the blue house where they'd lived.
Her hair nesting on her shoulder as in this photo.
The firm weight of her breast. His hand opened.
The frame struck the floor; glass shattered--
He tore his shirt to reach the pain. Now
he choked on the silence in the cabin.
No breath. The door banged open. He stumbled
through the pines. Into the meadow. Pools of snow-
melt among the budding thistles, lupine.
Still he did not cry out. His mouth a mute O.
Above the silver river he saw a hawk flicker.
His chest on fire, he forgot his right hand
full of excuses. Fell among mule-ear. Grass
growing dim. Waking, on his hands and knees,
he noticed the pain that gripped his heart
had eased into his shoulders. Deep
in his belly his breath welled up. Again
the hawk flashed its blood-red tail
in the wind. He rose, slowly. Saw tawny
cattails nodding. Poppies. The first purple
thistles. He listened. For what? When
he was about to die he'd remembered the dark
rain in her voice. Spring rain falling all night
in the Sierra, lifting the river above its bank,
drenching the green meadow, waking sun-gold blossoms.
Then did his heart recover its rhythm, his mind
its balance? He took two steps. Heard water churn;
slosh sedge grass, slap rocks. A chill light
rushed downstream. When he saw it shiver past
the black mudbank already he'd begun to choose
this life in which our words follow one another
to the end: snowmelt, granite, hawk, poppies, river.
I find this poem rewarding on the first reading, and more deeply engaging on a subsequent reading.
I admire the way Shelby Allen's poems evoke a sense of longing and desire, to embrace the world as fully as a wide embrace will allow. In Crack Willow, the image of open branches in these poems' trees is compelling.
Consider this poem:
Any Tree Will Listen
If
you can’t speak
of it,
stand in the embrace of a Norway spruce,
branching to the ground.
All of Norway will shelter you
in a cloak of boughs filled with fjords of light./p>
The church of the trees has a place
for what you are carrying.
The brambled chaos of a forest
growing and dying can guide you:
an old beech stump
is becoming a new kingdom
for ferns and voles.
Full-throated magnolias
open for arias in spring,
but
in winter, trees show you
their
true shape. You
belong to something
magnificent
beginning in darkness
below
the ground. It
branches out
while
keeping the center aligned,
stands
through the seasons and trusts
small
seeds to the wind.
If
you can’t
find a tree
when
you need one, all you need
is
one green shoot making its way
through
a crack in concrete.
Hardness
doesn’t
have to win,
you
too can rise.
"You too can rise": that is the hard-won message of this fine poem.
ALL SEEDS & BLUES by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
The poems of all seeds & blues by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu are charged with color and light; the best word I can use to describe their experimental shapes is spritely.
"Spring Fugue" is a nice example of this poet's technique at work:
Spring Fugue
Spring came and
storming
the eye the hour
the magnolia
the sun
expandable
beauty
up to my tongue
the goldfinch
the snake
rise
to understanding
hushed
the voice of the past
The poem darts between specificity--"the magnolia/the sun"--and abstraction--"expandable/beauty"--and does so with a deceptive ease. This prompts my admiration, because the larger abstractions seem are rooted in the physical and grow organically out of them.
Thu, 24 Feb 2011
PALACES OF THE NIGHT by Gerry Grubbs
The poems of Gerry Grubbs' Palaces of the Night have a haunting, ethereal quality about them that is reminiscent of W.S. Merwin. Grubbs' brief lines move deliberately down the page, slowing and drawing out the reader's attention.
"Keep Looking" is a characteristic example:
Keep Looking
Down by the shore
A man wanders as if looking
Among the waters debris
For what he has lost
It may be near sundown
The last lingering light
Lying on the broad water
As if it were leaving
On the night train
For the front lines
And may not return
And the man knows
He will keep looking
Until he finds her
The image of the searching man, looking near the water for a missing love, in the near darkness, is striking. The final, resolute triplet is a light in the dimness.
SMALL CATHEDRALS by Naton Leslie
There's a quiet power in Naton Leslie's poems in Small Cathedrals. These poems, which comprise multiple variations of the sonnet tradition, engage their subjects with rich and precise lyricism.
I am especially fond of "Not a Definition":
Not a Definition
The new baby slumbers in her wide lap,
mouth slipped from the proffered breast. The mother
has pulled her blouse down like a closing blind.
The baby wakes and looks pained, so she lifts
her blouse and the mother and child sit, sleep
and feed for hours, the woman still nursing
as she talks with her friend. Mothers never
own the words which describe them. She might nurse
though not tend the ill, raise but not till land,
bear child when she ceases to carry it.
She can only be certain that mother
as verb will draw praise and condemnation.
She can only be certain of hunger,
silent mouths pulling her in need, want, need.
This poem opens up from an intimate scene--the nursing mother--into larger vistas of "need, want, need." In doing so, it evokes, at least to my mind, the scope of a cathedral, which soars into greater vistas within its space. Leslie's book is aptly titled, and borne up by the poems.
IMAGINING THE SELF by Laverne Frith
The poems of Imagining the Self by Laverne Frith are quiet and understated. Yet their fluid lines move strongly into perception that enlarges the reader's awareness.
Consider "Winter's Lock":
Winter’s Lock
It is like that at this time of the year,
the sub-zero temperatures locking the wheels
of motion, freezing the inhabitants into
a winter’s consciousness. Outside, a coastal
scene is laid out in outline form, from
the snow-capped distant hills against a
light blue sky, spreading to a rough
shore, then to the manor overlooking it
all, everything caught in the pack of
hardened snow. So much now is given to
acts of waiting, to attending to the
barest of essentials—clearing the paths,
securing the boats, making ready for
the impending thaw and the inevitable
return to the sea when once again
you will sum the years, the joys and
the disappointments; you will somehow
strike a balance.
The rhythms of this poem, back and forth, carry the reader between extremes, "the joys and/ the disappointments," and, by the closing couplet, the poem has indeed managed "to strike a balance."
THE UNCERTAINTY OF MAPS by Nina Corwin
There's a lovely wit in Nina Corwin's The Uncertainty of Maps that belies the book's unsettling concern, a confrontation with the abyss, with nothingness, with a remote and inscrutable universe. I admire that wit, which gives warmth to what might otherwise be a chilly reading experience.
"But Silently" is an example of Corwin at work:
But Silently
"Is this what you mean us to think, does this
explain the silence of the morning...?”
- Louise Gluck
The ocean waves won’t tell.
Likewise, the trees don’t speak our language.
They just rustle softly in the night.
And so we turn to you,
Oh, Great Celestial Psychoanalyst
hoping you’ll put it all together:
A plus B equals C, something more conclusive
than “I think, therefore I am.”
But silently, just out of view,
from behind the fainting couch
peeking out of bushes, allegedly
from deserts or mountaintops
too craggy to access
your occasional grunts and inscrutable nods
are infinitely open to interpretation.
Looking skyward we lie, couch-bound,
and wait for answers.
Absent that, we project our own:
You are the scowling father, punishing
father, the loving father we never had.
So we spill out our fears and transferential
longings, our most
precious resentments, serve up our sins
in a great buffet of contrition
waiting for your pronouncement.
For you to say
something – anything. To make sense
of this earthly mess.
Set against the silence of the whispering trees, of rolling ocean waves, the silence of the Great Celestial Psychoanalyst is deeper, more terrifying. Yet the image of the psychoanalyst, in its absurdity, is comforting as well.
Tue, 18 Jan 2011
ORIGINAL HUMAN by Deborah DeNicola
The poems of Deborah DeNicola's Original Human are unabashedly spiritual in their orientation, and graceful in their formal construction. The music of these poems is eloquent.
"Ascension Thursday" is an especially good example of DeNicola at work:
Ascension Thursday
Out the plane's porthole at thirty-thousand feet,
ascension looks almost do-able.
A royally cubited arc falls
like a stairwell from clouds,
and I could puncture the plugged muffle
of voices across the aisle, ululate
a Hildegarde revival
if I cared to. Otherwise,
with my hundred eighty-seven
milliliters of wine, I'm going to
give off a cabernet glow
from pineal gland to root sensor
where blossoms of subtler bodies rise--
After the little while,
when they'd see me no longer,
I too would come back for my friends,
unveil the roads to the kingdoms
within them, ripening even the worst
of the people we know. In a room
of ecru linen, I'd let loose a few
beneficent doves just as the sun spangled
our pearled terra firma, just as
it swiveled the fuse of our circle low,
just grazing our hair--
while we'd watch one another dissolve
into the godspell to which we'd been
called, bewildered, but gifted--surely
delivered, surely converting
to light.
The literal scene of flight evokes a sense of spiritual flight as well, a profound yearning for spiritual connection. This gorgeous poem definitely ascends.
CORMORANT BEYOND THE COMPOST by Elisavietta Ritchie
Elisavietta Ritchie's poetic interests are wide and deep. The poems of Cormorant Beyond the Compost explore a cornucopia of subjects with grace and wit.
"Tradecraft in Iambic Pentameters" is one example of Ritchie at work in this large collection:
Tradecraft in Iambic Pentameters
For a child who doubts I can keep secrets
So many secrets you will never know
long hidden in my lines on face and page.
Although my random chatter seems to flow
true tales remain confined within the cage
of my long skull, while most of those who shared
their riddles and their lovewith me have died.
I too have lived adventures, and much dared.
Who’d guess? I do know better than confide.
Whispers though the skin are safe— no need
for megaphones. What if the listener spoke?
I may broadcast my sacks of words and seed:
the small birds twitter, large ones peck and croak.
For I’m the owl, who flies on unheard wings,
foretells when others die, but never sings.
I love this poem because, apart from its wit and sharp imagery, it stands as a sort of ars poetica for Ritchie's work: "I'm the owl, who flies on unheard wings,/foretells when others die, but never sings." She's a sharp observer, finding unusual perspectives, and bringing a quiet music to bear on the objects of her attention. Terrific.
THE RIVER IS A REASON by Meredith Davies Hadaway
Time and water do not cease flowing; this is one of the central themes of Meredith Davies Hadaway's powerful The River Is a Reason. These poems touch on themes that are enduring--one might even say eternal.
I think "Sacred Spaces" is an excellent example of Davies' technique at work:
Sacred Spaces
This chair that curves its arms around me.
The cover of a paperback that yawns above its opening page.
The furnace rumbles on.
Between the cat and the window, a stretch of carpet that
muffles jungle heart.
Between you and me, the din of wondering.
The days that close the gap.
Let nothing--let all this--come
between us.
This poem, while minimalist in its expression, opens up into an expansive range that I find irresistable. "Let nothing--let all this--come/between us." Love is nothing, and everything.
KEEPING THEM ALIVE by Christine Stewart-Nunez
The themes of birth and death in Christine Stewart-Nunez's Keeping Them Alive are compelling. These poems recall childhood, look ahead to new birth, and make strong claims on family and memory.
I think "What She'd Say" is a fine example of the book's themes:
What She’d Say
Little sister, you think too much, nose in books, finger
pushing up glasses. You analyze the impact
buying cotton made in India has on the war
in Iraq. Remember spaghetti fights, our schnauzer’s
birthday cake baked in a plastic play oven,
hollering at boys in Camaros? I’m proud
of your degrees, but I like you best when
you’ve just finished making love, when you fall
out of your chair laughing, when you sip
Ketel One on the rocks with four limes
between stints on the dance floor. I applauded
when you yelled at the jackass who didn’t allow
his preschooler to pee before ordering at Wendy’s.
Even when alive, I worried where thoughts
would take you. I watch when you pace, cry
yourself to sleep. When nightmares move across
your body, I put silence in your open mouth.
The intimate tone gives this poem a warmth and grace that are powerful to read.
FORMS AND HOLLOWS by Heather Dubrow
I admire both the consistency and range of Heather Dubrow's Forms and Hollows. Dubrow writes with a quiet, intimate sensibility that hits similar notes whether she is writing a dramatic monologue or a personal lyric.
"Waking Hours" is a good example of her style:
Waking Hours
Last night I dreamed the undertakers had left you,
smaller and perfectly preserved,
wrapped and rolled in a closet
among the furled umbrellas
and the Elektrikbroom Wonder
you’d planned to repair
before that first operation on the inoperable.
You were as light to lift as hope,
and I laid you on the bed,
making sure your tiny head was safely on
the pillow you plumped each morning
as you grew thinner.
Let me care for you again.
Unfurl your smile again, Mother,
and protect my head
from the cloudbursts of flashback.
Then let me bury you again.
This lyric is powerful, evoking the memory of the speaker's mother in a fluid, understated manner. Moving from memory to yearning, the poem engages the reader.
Thu, 06 Jan 2011
THE WHOLE SHEBANG by Suzanne Rhodenbaugh
Suzanne Rhodenbaugh's The Whole Shebang is a strong collection of narrative and lyric poems that recall family and social history in a striking way. Rhodenbaugh writes in a clear, unbtrusive style that lets her subjects speak for themselves.
One of my favorite poems in the book is "Keeping the Faith":
Keeping the Faith
This mustard seed
preserved in a clear glass ball
hanging on a greening chain --
it makes a necklace, a necklace
worn by a hazel-eyed child
who keeps her own counsel.
She looks through a chain link fence
at folks who belong where they are
and don't even know it,
but are made so
only by that child.
They will have a picnic
or go for a ride on Sunday.
They will fight over who rides
shotgun, and the white meat.
They will go, and they will come back.
The grown women will all
wear full-length slips.
They will all have histories,
from the youngest to the eldest,
some of them still forming
in the clouds coming out of the north.
The rain will come down
hard on that child
barefoot by the fence,
whose life is not whole or right,
but who will finger that clear globe
holding what is small and Bible-true,
and live to tell it.
Contrasting a child's faith with the more troubled faith of an adult, this poem comes to the memorable image of "what is small and Bible-true." Would that all faith were so assured.
THE HUMMINGBIRD HOUR by Eric Rawson
Eric Rawson's poems in The Hummingbird Hours make suburbia into a surreal landscape, asking us to look at familiar scenes--yards, cul-de-sacs--as fractured and reassembled. The syntax of his poems enact this new vision of the familiar.
One brief example of his technique is "Prisoners Training Dogs for the Blind":
Prisoners Training Dogs for the Blind
Sometimes something comes into you
A new hurt a new desire like
The winter vanishing like an
Aspirin tablet in a glass
Joy is its own moment--at nine
O'clock there is a joy that no
One knows except the one who knows
It--it sparkles in the bones and
When you look at the taco stand
Or the sycamores by the road
When you smell the creosote in
The drying air it comes whether
Or not--I mean after all the
Guesswork what a cymbal-crashing
Relief to toss hats in the air
Amid the sycamores by the road and the taco stand, "there is a joy that no/one knows except the one who knows//it"--private and peculiar, except that the poem invites the reader to share in the joy.
ANATOMY OF A SHAPE-SHIFTER by Stacia Fleegal
Stacia Fleegal's poems in Anatomy of a Shape-Shifter have a rich sensuality about them, a physicality that also gestures toward the spiritual. It's a provactive combination.
Consider "Anatomy of a Kiss":
Anatomy of a Kiss
The way a foot plants itself on the bed
for leverage to slide closer, or the elbow
which bears the brunt so the back can arch
how it wants to—the anatomy of
a kiss is more than mouths, more than cashmere
wrapped around what wants to be unwrapped,
even more than a satin tongue tracing
the bite about to be taken because
the neck’s what swivels it into place, makes it all
possible, is the starting point of
the body-wide undulation desire pulls
from hot breath, stretching it into a long sigh.
This poem moves from a hot breath to a long sigh, a palpable exhalation, immersed in the physical and coming up into release. Well done.
THE HAND THAT ROUNDED PETER'S DOME by George Drew
George Drew's The Hand that Rounded Peter's Dome is a fascinating narrative of the life of Michelangelo from multiple perspectives. Drew is especially good at evoking a broad range of voices and views in his work, as the suave voice of "Condivi" indicates:
p>Condivi
I spent last night with Michelangelo,
mostly in his shop with blocks
of marble at our feet, some works
by others interspersed among cartoons,
and boards with drawings of heroic scope
propped up in every available space.
We talked, or rather he talked,
into the early morning hours
about the finer points of the Sistine
even His Holiness had missed
in his nocturnal perambulations
on the scaffolding to check the work
of this Florentine he'd made to do
God's work as God (and Julius) wished.
He elaborated with a small boy's glee
the common sources of the enterprise
so cunningly concealed by epic sweep:
God's reaching out of nothing, nothing
more than a remake of cloud formations
seen while working the Carrara pits;
the dark creating light conceived of
as fish funneling through high waves;
the graduated size of figures as
the eye rewarded its discovered skill,
its strength, its Sistine-sized acuity.
Only once did we venture out of doors
to take the air like bantam Samson's
among the corridors of stone
that flanked the road on either side,
and witness on the river's calm
the milking of the yellow moon
hanging like Delilah's nipple just
above the red bucket of Samson's mouth.
And only once did he stop talking,
as we stood before a bush burning
in the luminescence of moonlight
like the tablature of what he said
he'd dreamed: his marble-plated birth,
God's chest heaving him out of itself
as lonely as the hangman that
the first outcasts encountered
on the strength of one wrong whim.
And then, as we stood in the road,
this Daniel of the architects of beauty,
saying stone ought not to come
between two such as we,
pulled me close and touched my eyes.
With that it was a soft goodnight,
and off I went--me, Condivi--
to turn staffs into serpents as dazzling
as the statues glowing in moonlight,
ready and willing, pray God, to really
puncture stone for the first time,
to unlock the image from within.
The narrator of this poem describes a conversation with the artist, describing the sources of his artistic vision: "God's reaching out of nothing, nothing." I cannot imagine a better evocation of the sweep of Michelangelo's work.
WORDS FACING EAST by Kimberly L. Becker
Kimberly Becker's book Words Facing Eastis a fine collection that melds personal and collective history in a deep way. Becker, who is of Native American descent, finds unexpected connections between daily experience and her Cherokee heritage.
Consider "The Cherokee in Me":
The Cherokee in Me
Cleaning up the mess
you left last night:
the shot glass sticky with reproach,
assorted plates and pots.
They scrub clean.
Not so the words
I can't expunge
with sponge.
I put the things
I can to right.
Wipe down counters,
table, stove,
all the while remembering I'd read
that a Cherokee woman
could set her man's belongings outside
if she wanted him to leave.
I keep this up my sleeve.
Moving with deft concision, this poem opens up larger insight from its exploration of the daily economy of relationship. It's nicely done.
The poems of Joseph Wood's I & We have a hardness about them, a restrained savagery, that strains against the limits of Wood's smooth lines, and which is at times redeemed by an unexpected tenderness. The tension between these two emotional poles is strong, and gives this book its energy.
Here's a strong example of the book at work, "Below the Saw Blade":
Below the Saw Blade
Buried in Tuesday’s New York Times: a man,
drunk & bumbling, & the saw blade doing
what a saw blade should be doing: adios
rock climbing, saxaphoning, & walking
five dogs at once—even the docile ones
need restraining, such as it was yesterday
at a Bay Area dog park, where a corpse,
beheaded & pregnant, lay on the shoreline,
& the greyhounds were held back from
what they love to do: sniff, lick, scratch
the swollen belly with such curiosity
that a grander horror might come to pass:
the baby, or rather, the corpse of baby
spills out onto the sand: ten formed fingers,
curled toes, smaller, yes, nonetheless alike
the dozens of nuns left to rot, jungle-deep,
1980s, throats slashed & tongues pulled
out through the slits: Colombian neckties
it’s crudely referred to, but perhaps crudity
is the correct path up the mountain:
the crucified hundreds, if they were men,
always on a hill’s apex, were not given
loincloths, but rather, their penises, due
to blood flow restriction, body’s position,
were always erect, & most, even in throes
of blinding pain, would blush & beg to hide
themselves: or so it was told by an aging
priest, Friday, over Merlot, rice, & trout—
the fish, struggling against the water, saw
the hook’s milky glint, & in one swift gulp, bit.
This poem combines takes images of beauty and makes them grotesque, but it does so ruefully, remembering the grace that the fallen world corrupts. Thus beauty is present even amid the ruin. That's the power of these poems.
ERSATZ ANATOMY by Steven Sherrill
There's nothing erzatz in the witty poems of Steve Sherrill's Erzatz Anatomy, a book that reaches through its experimental forms into genuine emotion and insight.
I find "Latter-Day Sonnet" as a good example of Sherrill's technique:
Latter-Day Sonnet
In abject black, the crow, betrothed to up
bound to down, beats itself senseless against
the day the night O flea infested dupe
I envy you, your guttural pittance
Know this, the pine repudiates its root
The breastbone, excerpted, a fine tableau
To yearn (infinitive) bridge between two
us, un-conjugated. Out of the blue
out of the blue blue sky, dribbling pity
for the apple its dubious drop. Hear
the crow all ink black in its piety
is no less than a primer. However
unknowable you, I remain devout
and gift this, with true pause, to you my doubt
I'm rather fond of this poem, which embraces the traditional logic of a sonnet even as it pushes the boundaries of its form: moving through images of darkness, of night, the speaker remains "devout," while making a gift of "my doubt." It's a powerful paradox, deftly handled.