Public Poetry

Book of the Day: To Curve by Michael Daley

What I like best about the poems in To Curve by Michael Daley is the dreamy, yet precise, quality of their narrative: Daley is striving not for flat realism but the kind of heightened realism that constitutes memory. The scenes shimmer, with full awareness of their import.

This poem is a good example:

My Sister Is A Flight Of Birds

I'm standing on ice, a flight of geese
fleeing the moon, skimming the roof,
dampens the air. Seven quiet birds.
I have been saying their names so long
and now I can't remember
what their sudden rising means.
They call on the chill air
and let me be. When I slept, I hoped
never to wake and write these poems.
I'm not the man for this.
I wanted fire whispering over pages,
glowing in cloud. Instead,
I have spent my life as a man ice-fishing.
My line jigs down a hole
and sometimes in winter dawn
I draw up one freezing fish, and I'm surprised
holding it out, my glasses fogged like Dad's
under the small brim of his hat
on mornings he tightened our skates.
Can you remember anything from childhood?
I only know how ordinary we were,
sliding on the snow.
All night I kept these words beside my head,
white faces of skaters, a few haunted birds.

The image of "white faces of skaters, a few haunted birds"--that haunts the reader as well.

Book of the Day: Threat of Pleasure by Philip Memmer

Philip Memmer's poems are a form of thin ice: they seem safe to tread, but before too long the unwary reader will plunge through to the cold and darkness below, which in the case of Memmer is an enlarged awareness of the darker, hidden meanings of experience. Threat of Pleasure is both an elegant exploration of common life and the dangers that lurk beneath.

This poem is characteristic of Memmer's technique:

Parking Lot

Beneath the lights,
paramedics

tatter a sheet
of unmarked snow--

the shape in slush
the body leaves

tells how long help
took to arrive.

Already now
it fills with snow,

fading to gray,
then even white.

Even at night
the white hurts eyes

beneath the lights
of strip mall lots,

and nights are long--
the kids have hours

to find this snow,
unmarked, lit-up,

and waiting, still,
to be re-scarred

by sports cars named
for birds of prey.

Memmer's work is striking and unsettling.

Book of the Day: Liquid Like This by Leslie Anne Mcilroy

Leslie Anne Mcilroy's poems are always intense, and not easy to read. I don't know of a poet as skilled at distilling fine music from the raw emotions of love, loss, and pain. Liquid Like This is a relentless, breathtaking collection.

Consider this poem:

Again

To start with the smack of your hand
would be foolish. The start is in the preparation,
the sleek micro-fiber skirt over tight skin,
the thin-stretch blouse that scrapes the nipples,
hair up, neck long inside the collar of leather
and chrome you tell me to wear to dinner,
where I sit panty-less on a cool black chair
anticipating the next penetration
through an opening of your choice.

You tell me when to smoke
and light my cigarette, feeding me
one bite at a time--each smaller
than the last--richer. You tell me
to sit still and spread my legs, moist
and open, making room for your fingers
beneath the table. You say you will
whip me tonight and I am eager
for the burn, the bending over, exposed,
your mark on my body. Each touch--
lick and lash--fueling this graceless
need for surrender, the giving up
like a dark, hot storm when all the lights
are out and anything can happen.

All I can say is, wow.

Book of the Day: Glass Garden by Ken Pobo

I consider it high praise to call Ken Pobo's poems well-crafted. In Glass Garden, Pobo pays careful attention to the construction of his poems, and the result is work of crisp rhythm and sharp images: analogous to the glass sculpture that he often writes about.

Let's take a look at one of Pobo's stronger poems:

Cobalt Blue Vase

As I peruse creased copies
of Life, a cobalt blue vase grows
hands, taps me. I take him
off a shelf he gladly leaves--
no more waiting
behind inferior glass tumblers,
awful melmac cups. Home at last,

I carry him across the threshold,
dash out into the garden,
pick two Blue Girl roses,
six Pouffe bellflowers, and
an uppity penstamon, pour water,
stick in stems. How handsome
he looks in the sun. That was

eight years ago, and now
we're the neighborhood's
happiest couple--my glass vase
shines as I do when I hear

his blue heart beat,
see his open blue mouth.

These lines are as smooth and polished as the vase they depict.

Book of the Day: Flats and Riots by Michelle Stoner

The poems of Michelle Stoner's Flats and Riots are highly charged, even erotic, in their close attention to physical things.

Consider "Like Me":

Like Me

You're like me: amazed
when I don't hate
science
fiction,
amazed by physics
and her chemical brain;

like me in small tightening skin,
flat some days,
ethereal depths and riots
others
sun turns me
and the name of adventure
exotic messages sent
along untapped wires
like me.

Moving effortlessly between the abstract ("physics/and her chemical brain") and the physical ("like me in small tightening skin"), this poem draws unexpected connections. Stoner, with great economy, makes great leaps.

Book of the Day: How to Make a Mummy by Mike Smith

In reading How to Make a Mummy by Mike Smith, I often found myself chuckling or even laughing out loud. Smith guides us on a comic romp through history and contemporary culture, with a sharp eye for absurdity.

Consider this poem:

Tips for a Traveler in the Land of Giants

Not daylight, but a single bulb
hanging above, its brightness
a finger in the window frame's
smallest crevice...

You wake there to singing, lovers
bathing in a tub so large you squint
to see its far side. Start to step,
and everything

is soaked and slippery. Remember,
size counts, and you've yet to learn
what hazards even the smallest room
can hold. So when

they get to their feet, avert your eyes,
or thinking your wildest fantasy's
within your reach, and blinded by light
reflecting off their skin,

you'll tumble right over the sill.
(Once alone, vault the sink
with a toothbrush to reach the soap dish
and get a drink.)

Do not explore. That glistening razor,
sloppily perched, is always a danger,
and their falling towels may seem
a pleasant way

to go, but you can't think like that.
In fact, better not think
at all; it will only lengthen
the loneliness.

Slink, instead, between the slats of the vent
behind the sphinx-toilet. The trip
is hours long, but you're safe there.
The weather's temperate,

and they don't have pets. So get some sleep,
and in order not to feel the passing
pace of every fugitive
moment, tell yourself
that though morning is miles above you
where you are, it is happening
for someone,
somewhere.

This poem looks at a familiar landscape--the bathroom--with a strikingly fresh perspective. Seeing old things in a new way is the heart of Smith's distinctive vision.

Book of the Day: Theban Traffic by Walter Bargen

Walter Bargen's Theban Traffic is an adventurous book, retelling ancient myth in a contemporary narrative context in the mode of prose poems. I found the poems brisk and entertaining.

Here's a sample of Bargen's technique at work:

New Waves on Old Water

Stella travels two thousand miles to sweep up the dust of another relative. Whole mountain ranges pass below her quicker than dreams. She perches on the edge of a continent.

Because they cannot see each other, they cannot exchange diseases though the distant unease is worse. Though they cannot share a bottle of wine their separate glasses overflow with a blush of light. There is a smeared stain in the air like a burning city. Over the phone, he hears her say that's the sun setting over the Pacific.

The trees drop all their leaves. Each leaf falls into its own winter. They heap up words so the fire will thaw whatever has frozen. They throw children in and see how brightly they burn: one in Mexico, one repeatedly breaking his collar bone like a twig of kindling. Another crosses borders, not to flee old wars, but to escape into the skirmishes of marriage.

In a house facing west, Stella sits through the evening. The relentless line of horizon breaks through her. Waves claw the beach, dragging back the half-alive. Slicking the sand, the tide arrives like a rash. Plumes of water crown the tops of rocks. She feels a salty spray blow across her face. Marooned in the forgotten middle of a continent, Jake strolls uneasily looking around at what they've forged of old seas.

Never dull, always striking, Theban Traffic bustles and hums in its narrative flow.

Book of the Day: The One Remaining Star by Susanne Dubroff

Susanne Dubroff's poems in The One Remaining Star burn. They are incisive and unsettling. Consider this poem:

County Auction

You would not think
that among all these
rainsoaked to townspeople
and the worn down
possessions, placid, valueless,
wedding pictures would be auctioned off,
bid on for their frames.
But the face of the bespectacled,
Terrified, nineteen twenties bride
might have been the face that foresaw
They would come,
Rainsoaked, and stay all night
'til she was sold.

The tone is sinister, the implications powerful. Dubroff is a compelling poet.

Book of the Day: John Henry's Partner Speaks by David Salner

John Henry's Partner Speaks by David Salner is a compelling volume. Salner closely examines the experiences of working people, and the result is consistently illuminating.

Consider "The New World," which recalls the life of his immigrant grandmother:

The New World

I have been imagining how my grandmother
would have left Hungary, with only a sweater
to cover her bones, squinting at the sun
in the haze of the ocean, as her new husband
plays something like a guitar, but smaller.

She joins him in a chorus about a horse
who responds to the touch of a Gypsy trainer
but not the whip of the Hungarian master.
These newlyweds left in a hurry, carrying only
the little guitar and the old gray sweater.

The wind whips over the great steel decks
as she tells a joke about the subtle difference
between luck and fortune. They squint at a spot
suspended over the ocean. Even I see it--
that opal haze, brilliant with vagueness.

The "great steel decks," looking out over the empty ocean, are an evocative image of seeking a new life. Salner is quite skilled with these kinds of subtle, resonant images, and they enhance the narrative arc of his short and long poems.

Book of the Day: Fallout by Frederick Feirstein

It is hard to imagine Frederick Feirstein's poems outside the landscape of New York City, where so many of his lyrics and dramatic monologues are set. His newest book, Fallout, powerfully considers the scarring of that landscape after 9/11.

Here's a poem that exemplifies the strengths of Fallout:

To My Younger Self

The past is like a library after dark
Where we sit on the steps trading stories
With characters we imagined ourselves to be.
Neighbors in clothing from our childhood stroll by,
Unmolested, nodding at us, benevolently.
One with your father's face tips his fedora.
You lower your face in shame. I look back.
Someone is sitting at a long table,
Reading in the moonlight. I must look startled.
He holds a forefinger to his lips,
As if it is a candle for the dead.
You tap me on the shoulder and I turn back.
The street is dangerously empty,
Except for the newsstand lit yellow
Where your mother in a blue nightgown
Showing beneath her coat buys The Times,
A pack of Kools and, eyeing us, lights one.
You race to her, turn a corner. Goodbye.
I'm frightened as if I'm a foreigner
In a city under siege. Yet I know
It is still mid-century. Underground
Are only subways carrying boisterous
Party-goers or somber family men
Working the night shift or harmless bookies
Respectful of the No Smoking signs.
I walk to where the newsstand, shut,
Advertises brand names I'd forgotten.
I shove my hands in my pockets and whistle
A song we danced to when we were young.
I walk on for blocks, until I smell
Smoke from the burning borough of the Bronx.

"A city under siege": this is the feeling that these strong formal and narrative poems capture. The fallout is considerable indeed.

Book of the Day: Pointing at the Moon by Bill Wunder

Bill Wunder's Pointing at the Moon is a haunting series of narratives and lyrics about the Vietnam War. Wunder has the unusual achievement of finding the larger spiritual import of the scenes that he narrates: as a result, the Vietnam of his poems seems different than other poetic work about that war and landscape.

Here's one example:

Mama-san

Old woman squats at barracks end,
boils cabbage, fish heads and rice,
jabbers over a dented, black steel pot
left behind by the retreating French.

Every day the same smile,
rotted teeth, red from betel-nut.
The same stained black, silk pajamas
and pointy, sun-bleached hat.

She never learns our names. We think
it's the language, but she has seen too many,
knows we will all leave
one way or another.

The figure of Mama-san is one of permanence: the American soldiers are evanescence. Wunder draws this contrast quite effectively, and the result is a powerful poem.

Book of the Day: A Temple Looming by Lenard D. Moore

Lenard Moore's A Temple Looming is a series of deftly-etched portraits in miniature. Moore, well-known as a haiku poet, writes these free verse lyrics with a light, spare touch, but every detail burns:

The Soldier

The photograph's subject now aged
through time's ripening; decades later
the background gray,
a dream.

Splendid in uniform,
the barrel-straight stare
of his pure black face
shines like a bullet.

Imagine he'd not returned
from the Great War,
leaving a void in his family,
and in this picture.

These poems fill that imaginary void nicely.

Book of the Day: Easy Marks by Gail White

Here's the most appropriate comment I can make about Easy Marks by Gail White:

Gail White
has bite.
Her poems,
no tomes,
can snap
or slap.
How daft!
I laugh,
but see
just me
entwined
in her lines:

For My Niece as She Enters Her Teens

One thing the Puritans were right about:
Children are savages. They have no mind
or morals, and their art-work doesn't count.
But now, thank God, you leave all that behind
and count as almost human--golden ore
that only wants a little smoothing down.
So now, the news flash you've been waiting for:
Your aunt and uncle didn't come to town
on a load of melons. We discovered sex
without your help; we drove our elders wild
with music, alcohol, and politics,
and wore our hair as long as yours, my child.
So don't suppose you understand pop culture
when you don't even know who Pogo was.
The Beatles aren't yet ready for the mulcher.
I still know several ways to get a buzz,
the Buddhist creed, and how to write free verse.
Your generation, love, could do much worse.

Cold. Nice
as ice.

Book of the Day: The Last Eclipsed Moon by Linda Casebeer

I greatly enjoyed The Last Eclipsed Moon by Linda Casebeer. It is a strong book about the connections between art and the world, about how vision and seeing.

Casebeer's poems are strongest in their images and the surprise they can lead to, as "Matisse Picasso" shows:

Matisse Picasso

Fountains silent in a year
too far gone for the rushing
water of summer pools,
the Paris sky heavy
with drizzle and mist
on our expectant faces.
We wait in a queue
on the steps of the palace
with the others to find
what passed between them.
To find myth revealed
in the line of a rosy nude,
in blue on blue. How easy
to love the graceful curve
of hip or breast. To love
the way works are hung
in pairs, patterns that repeat.
The way they give up
their essence until slats
of shutters become
the metal strings of a guitar.

Here, art transforms, and is transformed in turn, bringing the reader along.

Book of the Day: Country Music by Allen Hoey

Allen Hoey's Country Music contains an unusual amount of life, and I don't mean this as faint praise. Ranging between short lyrics and long, loping narratives, Hoey brings in a multitude of voices and experiences, as well as brief evocations of the natural world.

The title poem gives on instance of the capaciousness of Hoey's work:

Country Music

Mothers and dogs die, and fathers too; in the fullness of time
they all do. Wives and husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, and lovers
run away or break your heart. Someday, someone will smash
your car, your truck, whether it's some dumb-ass in an SUV
or only a deer whose trajectory through life has the misfortune
of intersecting yours a few feet this side of the shoulder--
crumpled fender, bent frame, or just a broken headlight, your baby
ain't the same, and, even apart from the increase you know
your premium will reflect the next time the bill comes due,
it hurts. At some point in your life, unless you're someone
I'd never want to sit next to and sip a beer, you've felt
a little sad and maybe lonely when you've heard a train whistle
keening through the trees on a dark October night. At three o'clock
the wind batters rain against the bedroom window, debris
from the porch roof clatters on the pane, and you lie awake
thinking about how years ago you might have done something
different than the way you did it and rehearsing the many ways
your life might've changed. But would you give up the feeling
you get listening to the slow breath beside you, reassuring,
keeping you in bed when part of you wants to get up, get
the bottle and sit at the kitchen table with only a smudge of light
coming in from the one lamp you've switched on in the living room,
listening to that wind, those twigs and branches racketing
against the glass and clapboard--would you, could you
be any happier, really? A piece of pie, maybe, some stale
remnants of a birthday cake. Instead, you lie in bed, hear
the faint strains of a fiddle, the twang of a Telecaster,
and in the wind the wailing sound of a pedal steel guitar,
all of this put to music--this life you've maybe lived.

Tinged with regret, this poem is nonetheless a celebration of wisdom hard won. Well done.