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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I & WE by Joseph Wood

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.

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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.

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