Today's book of poetry:
New York, 1960. Barry Gifford. Curbside Splendor. Chicago, Illinois. 2016.

All the big themes are in here. Death and dying, romantic love and loss, Barry Gifford is all over them. New York, 1960 is part memory exercise and part dream catalogue.

Mexico, Argentina, Rome, San Diego and so on, they are all in New York, 1960, so is Sumatra along with her tigers and orangutans. Barry Gifford's New York is an all encompassing grand tour of a place and time that can only exist in poetry world.

The Unconquered Flame

Both the actress Hedy Lamarr

and the writer Clarice Lispector

outstanding beauties in their youth,

believed, as Lispector wrote,

"it was ugly to go out when one

was no longer young."

Still only in their forties

they hid themselves away, wishing

to be remembered as they had been.

My mother, also a great beauty

into middle age, felt differently.

She was relieved, she said, to not

have to bear the burden of being

looked at. "I was frightened

by the thought of others wanting

to possess and destroy me."

Nevertheless, she never stopped

asking those closest to her

how she looked.

One night,

in the Bar Chicote in Madrid,

in the company of a famous

film director and an actress

considered by many to be among

the most beautiful women

in the world, I was admiring

a photograph on a wall

of Ava Gardner at her loveliest

drinking in Chicote

with Ernest Hemingway

when the actress asked me who

I thought was more beautiful,

she or Ava Gardner.

"What an impossible question!"

said the director. "Don't answer,"

he instructed. "If you choose Ava,

this one will hate you, and if you

choose her, she'll know you're lying."

I looked at the actress.

"Please lie," she said.

...

In a brief final section of New York, 1960 titled "The Lost Graveyard Poems" Gifford visits the final resting places of Apollinaire, Proust, Balzac, Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire and Ezra Pound. Although these are cemetery odes they read less eulogic and more like a fancy tip of the hat. Gifford, like the rest of us, writes about his heroes to bring them closer.

Gifford has the sophisticated demeanour of one who has seen it all. New York, 1960 reads smart and crisp even when Gifford is playing the agent provocateur.

In his poem "Dinner Conversation" for example, he riffs between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore as though they were in New York right now, talking about current events. Gifford is persistent and persuasive and funny as hell.

Dinner Conversation

Albert Einstein, the Swiss physicist,
and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet,
met at a banquet in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1931.
"Tell me, Tagore," said Einstein,
"did you get hurt much in the crash?"
"I was lucky, Albert, I got out in '28. And you?"
Einstein shook his shaggy head, grinned
like a tiger, and said, "My wife keeps the cash.
She doesn't trust the market or banks, either.
Our savings are in a suitcase in a hotel vault."
"But you're Swiss. I'd have thought you'd keep
your dough in a bank over there."
"They charge too much," said Einstein. "The hotel
fee is peanuts, and this way I can get my hands
on the case in a hurry."
"What are the odds the economy recovers this year?"
"That won't happen until the next war, Rabi."
"So what do you advise?"
Einstein patted the poet on his right knee
and said, "Tagore, get a suitcase."

...

Gifford is no easy read, he wants you to know all about Agamemnon and Achilles too, it would help if Sonny Stitt and Jackie McLean came easily to your tongue and you better be comfortable with Eric Dolphy.

Today's book of poetry has been to a few rodeos and knows most of this cast but some of my younger office staff spent the morning looking up names. We played a few Dolphy songs during our morning read. I'm certain Eric Dolphy now has several new fans and so does Barry Gifford.

The Definition of Noir

My cousin Chris blew his brains out
sitting on the sidewalk in front of
a Jack-in-the-Box in Phoenix, Arizona.
I don't like the desert, never have.
Chris ended up in Arizona because he
had no place else to go and my sister lives there.
When we were boys he and I played together
but after he was thirteen and I was nine
we didn't see each other again for six years.
His parents divorced and Chris lived
with his mother. My uncle -- my mother's brother --
remarried and moved to Florida, so Chris
didn't see his father, either, during that time.
Chris and I kept in touch over the years
but never really lived in the same place.
He blew every opportunity he had, got in trouble --
had trouble -- sometimes, became an alcoholic
and a pothead, went to military school, the army,
then got a college degree in history, after which
he drove a taxi, worked construction, taught
in a reformatory school, dealt drugs, tended bar
and shot and killed a couple of guys who
double-crossed him. He was good looking, smart,
wrote a novel that got published, married and
divorced the same girl twice, then married
another girl and divorced her because she was lazy,
he said. Toward the end Chris lost it, mailed
racist and anti-semitic screeds to friends
and relatives, saw himself as a victim with
a capital V, blamed his failed existence
on everyone other than himself. The morning
he reported for induction into the army,
I drove him to the train station. Before he
got out of the car, Chris gave me three hundred
dollars in cash, told me it was his life's savings
and that I should spend it however I wanted to.
This was during the Vietnam War and he didn't know
if he'd get back home alive. You're all I've got,
cousin, he said to me, you're the only one who cares
if I live or die. This was certainly not true
but I think he meant it. I was sixteen.
As Marlene Dietrich, playing Tanya, the gypsy madam
in Touch of Evil, said about Hank Quinlan, the bad cop
played by Orson Welles, after he was dead,
What is there to say about such a person?

...

Barry Gifford's New York, 1960 is a cocktail party you want to be at. Great conversation, the ghosts of literary giants along with a myriad cultural cornerstones in a city that never sleeps. Gifford writes to his daughter, his granddaughter, to Pound and to Wilde, and then to the rest of us. These poems have the near urgent smell of necessity to them.

Gifford is an excellent host, he'll get you that martini while character sketching the room then he'll whisper something delightful in your ear.

Barry Gifford

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barry Gifford is the author of more than 40 books, which have been published in twenty-eight languages. His work has been awarded by PEN, the NEA, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. His film credits include Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, City of Ghosts and more.

BLURBS

"It's like this: It's late at night, or very early in the morning, and you're walking down an empty street, and everything is utterly still and silent; and then you pass by an apartment building and someone on the third floor has a window open, and you hear some music playing, very softly. The music bounces off the walls of the buildings and you can make out the tune, pure and intimate and playing just for you. And that's what you get with Barry Gifford's poetry. It's direct, tender, wry, and heartbreaking."
— Rob Christopher, Chicagoist

"Like Minerva Jones, the village poet in Edgar Lee Masters’ 1916 Spoon River Anthology, all-around writer Barry Gifford croons out these poem-prose reflections in a well-distilled voice that booms and whispers with life. Consider the beauty of aging women, including his own dying mother or the Andy Warhol film-cult star Ultra Violet. Consider loss and loss and Greenwich Village, ancient China’s poet Li Po, fellow Chicagoan Nelson Algren (whose Walk on the Wild Side precedes Lou Reed’s), baseball, the making of a proper dry martini, Beat-flowered Zen, screenwriting as key to worldwide travel. Consider romance, the constant demand and craziness of love, children, grandchildren, the social over-wash of adoption, the glory of creative life lived out. Picture a table fragrant with food and drink. Across from you, some character straight out of William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life, sits telling you stories. At comfortable, even-pitched Frank Sinatra level, he leans in to speak or chant of Sumatra’s tigers and orangutans, sighing, uttering: “Here in San Francisco techies jaywalk / talking on cellphones / women windowshop on Hayes Street / sipping gigantic takeout lattes / drivers weave through traffic / while texting / homeless people sleep on sidewalks” – and you get it. What connects New York, 1960 to post-War 1916 USA and Barry Gifford’s 21st century is the measure of his lyric, narrative breath.
— Al Young, California's former poet laureate

“Barry Gifford’s pure lyrical self shines in these poems.”
— Andrei Codrescu

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher. They are shown here for publicity and review purposes. For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

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Today's book of poetry:
Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands. Dean Steadman. Brick Books. London, Ontario. 2016.

Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands by Dean Steadman is one musical interlude you do not want to miss.

Nouvelles Pièces froides

Primo

[Ouvrez la tête]

Every year on her birthday she captured a rush of wind in a jar and labelled

the jar with the date. It was a birthday tradition she had begun as a child,

a precocious three-year-old, intrigued by the idea that something invisible

could be heard and deeply felt. Shelved neatly in chronological order,

the jars now numbered seventy-five and, as her birthday was in late December,

it was certain that if the winds were ever released, they would blow strong and

polar cold. Each jar displayed a fall of snow, some nearing blizzard conditions,

individual flakes suspended in mid-air, their crystalline structures unmatchable

in radiance. One jar, by far her favourite, contained a honeybee, a victim

of miscalculation having awakened prematurely from its winter sleep.

Its silvery wings were frozen in motion, inseparable from the glitter, while,

stark against the blustery pale, its black and yellow stripes buzzed electric.

...

Now wasn't that something beautiful and surprising. Steadman hands out a steady supply of just that sort of thing even though there is a central conceit to Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands that spirals around Erik Satie and the dada contrails of his period.

Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands is divided up into several sections that each start with a poem where the title is taken from a composition of Satie's. There are also notations in the style of Satie that accompany many of the poems. So, I guess the more you know about and understand Erik Satie the harder these poems will hit. But Today's book of poetry wants to give credit where it is due and we believe that Steadman doesn't leave anyone behind. Today's book of poetry is really only familiar with "Gymnopedie" by Satie. It's not an impediment because Steadman serves up, within his own self imposed framework, an astonishing variety of curious narratives full of surreal imagery and fantastic possibility.

In these narratives there are morality tales, love stories and much hope. There is also a menu of waltzing ducks, menacing lions and tigers in the shadows and even birds coming forth from the opened mouths of opera singers and so on. Steadman has rendered it all into plausible narrative for fools like me.

Trois Gnossiennes

Primo

[Avec conviction et avec une tristesse rigouresuse]

The night I performed as a maiden in the crane dance outside the entrance

to the cypress maze at the Grand Duke's Chateau Knossos, I fell in love

with a beast of a man, bullish and brutal, who could love me only physically,

a limitation not without its pleasures and one I welcomed until the day,

while rehearsing a sarabande, I became entranced by my reflection

in the mirrored walls of the studio and realized for the first time that I liked

who I was seeing, her long legs, slender torso, and regal neck, the fact that,

even flightless, she had the grace of an egret or sacred ibis and the ability

to slip through the cypress needles to solve the mystery of the labyrinth and slay

the Minotaur without weakening at the shocked look of betrayal in his eyes,

though never forgetting how he once spilled himself onto my body.

...

Dean Steadman seems to do this with ease and consistency, he writes poems that are self contained and self explanatory. The reader is immediately aware of and accepting of Steadman logic. And why not, these poems sparkle with wit, charm and a dark sense of humour.

We put Erik Satie on the box this morning while we had our morning read. Odin had never heard Satie before and sat in the corner all contemplative and full of quiet wonder. The rest of us took our turns reading Steadman aloud, one poem after the other.

Dans lequel les Pères de la très vraie et Très Sainte Église sont invoqués

[Devenez pâle]

A man in a navy blue suit and black wingtip shoes exchanges

pleasantries with an attractive bank teller. He withdraws a large sum

of money and places it in a leather portmanteau. He then enters

the bank manager's office, as if by appointment, and shoots him dead.

A silencer is used to muffle the shot and he leaves the bank unnoticed

by the security guards. No one but a woman, lightly scented with

the stamen powder of cactus flowers, witnesses the crime.

She is an accomplice in spirit, at one with widows and lepers,

and does not raise an alarm. The shooter deposits the gun in a briefcase

he finds on a window ledge outside the bank. He hails a cab and gets

into the back seat. The scented woman from the bank slides in beside

him. He does not know her but contains his surprise by focusing

on her beauty and a small scar on her upper lip. In time, you could

begin to love me, she whispers, her mouth close to his. "Could"?

he asks, his lips brushing hers as he forms his words, You're not sure?

Her eyes narrow, study the depth of his. Everything is only possibility,

she replies. And with love there are multiplicities that extend to infinities,

numbers that would make a money-changer weep. He likes the way

she thinks. That suits me just fine, he says. It so happens I have

possibilities to kill. She laughs, the tiny white fold of scar disappearing

in the full flush of smile.

...

Today's book of poetry had Milo go into the stacks and come back with Dean Steadman's Worm's Saving Day (AngelHousePress, 2015) so that we could take a look at what else Steadman had gotten up to. There's no doubt about it, Steadman is one interesting and clever cat.

Musical skull-duggery, dada wish list thuggery, Today's book of poetry is convinced that Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands is worth every second of your time.

Dean Steadman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dean Steadman’s work has been widely published in Canadian journals and e-zines, as well as in the anthology Pith and Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press, 2010). He is the author of two chapbooks: Portrait w/tulips (Leaf Editions, 2013), and Worm’s Saving Day (AngelHousePress, 2015). He was a finalist in the 2011 Ottawa Book Awards for his poetry collection, their blue drowning (Frog Hollow Press, 2010). Though he was born in Montreal and studied in Halifax, he has lived in Ottawa for most of his life.

BLURBS

“When he died, Erik Satie left twelve grey suits hanging in his closet. With surreal virtuosity Dean Steadman has pulled eighty-four sinuous poems and prose riffs out of their velvet pockets.”

—William Aide

“Shifting geography and perspective as easily as form, [these] poems beguile the senses as deftly as a menagerie of circus contortionists.”

—Sandra Ridley

Tree Reading Series Poetics Talk

12 Nov 09 -

Dean Steadman on Poetry and Meaning

Video: Tree Reading Series

brickbooks.ca

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:

If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You.

Adèle Barclay. Nightwood Editions. Gibsons, British Columbia. 2016.

If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You is the sort of title/line you want to write out on a piece of paper and hang it on the wall. As it turns out - reaching out to you is exactly what Adèle Barclay does in this spanky first book.

Today's book of poetry would be lying if I were to say I could follow Barclay footstep for footstep with any certainty. If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You is a curious beauty. If I stumbled and missed a few turns you're going to have to excuse me. To quote the electric Adèle Barclay, "I'm drunk, and I love you."

The Latest Summer

I will go into the latest summer

and learn how to bow down

to American heat.

I don't part the humid air

when I move through streets

it wavers for me because of my thirst.

I've done this before

picked figs, tucked cigarettes

into a turquoise pouch.

Sunless bathers adrift in the drought

later or sooner the sky

pulls up a chair

and it's not like you can

ask about the weather anymore

and expect sympathy when

units of time are expanding to include

melancholy. I'm sorry I said

I had done this before.

...

Adèle Barclay is running barefoot over burning coals and whistling Dixie while she does it. These poems rollick with ribald tenderness, they fishtail like a drunken driver in a lucid dream.

What these poems do with astonishing regularity is to spill out lines of such surprising and newly necessary verve that the reader takes an extra breath, a gasp. Barclay has some sharp tools and uses them.

Barclay seems to have a deep well of two-line knock-out punch moves, she goes magically metaphorical on command to broach time and space. The reader thinks she is being playful when in fact she is lining us up in her sights.

Corridors

I'm trying to think what yokes the Pacific Northwest and the Baltics--

witchery, rain, chanterelles and moss.

Today I ate the broth of a chicken with an egg in it.

Yesterday I asked for strength, picked fleas out of the IKEA rug.

Tomorrow I will fry

the last crumbs of my libido in duck fat.

I am offering my enemies a bear

made from carob and my long dead hair.

...

This morning's read was another spirited rodeo. Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, took a particular liking to If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You and once she got going she wouldn't give up the floor. We usually take turns, everyone reads a poem and then passes the book on. Not today, Kathryn was on Barclay's wavelength, dialed completely in.

Adèle Barclay has that rare gift of making something entirely new feel familiar, every door she opens we want to swoon right in.

Cardinal Versus Mutable

Katie, there's a lynx

across the street

or some animal

that is ambiguously

both feline and canine.

It's too dark to tell

and I'm so tired

I can't even curate

a good life

you know about blisters

from skiing

up a mountain

for three days

through avalanche terrain

and I know from dancing

at Red Gate until 3 a.m. --

either way it's good practice

to wash the bloody fitted sheet

before a stranger comes over,

but sometimes

I don't. Sometimes I do

see a world

where our bodies fit,

the depth of it is excruciating.

I said you were a heron

because I met you

on an island,

but now I think you might

be a comet--

a force rather than

a product of nature,

flight as in burning

and destination.

Please tell me the blisters

are worth the salt

I soaked them in, the path

I winced walking home,

the sheets I ruined.

...

Adèle Barclay's If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You is a debut we will all remember. These are intelligent, vibrant and exciting poems hard wired with a dark winged angel circling overhead.

Adèle Barclay

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adèle Barclay’s poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, Matrix, The Pinch and others. Her debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You, was shortlisted for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is the Interviews Editor at The Rusty Toque.

BLURB

"With a depth of feeling for places and their connecting joys and aches, these are beautifully written poems, vivid as the morning paper, bracing as moonshine."

- David McGimpsey, author of Asbestos Heights

"Dear Sara"

Adèle Barclay

Video courtesy of N Moore

nightwoodeditions.com

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Pacific Standard Time. Kevin Opstedal. Ugly Duckling Presse. Brooklyn, New York. 2016.

Dick Dale & the Deltones are handling the soundtrack for this smooth surfing opus so hang onto something. Keven Opstedal is someone we've never seen before here at Today's book of poetry and that is a shame. Opstedal has been pounding out small press magic since at least 1985 from the Californian coast and Pacific Standard Time is absolutely ripe with small masterpieces.

Kevin Opstedal's rambling narrative style is a surfers relaxed patios that he razor/laser focuses on the world, of course that surfer would have had to read Keats, Yeats, Coleridge, Bukowski, Kerouac and so on. Opstedal is sharp and nonchalant at the same time, his reasoned voice seems a familiar, he sounds like someone you think you know, or would like to - but you certainly never know what's coming.

Curse of the Surf Zombie

The late afternoon sky was like something

Miss Montana 1979 spilled on her bikini

out near the ice machine

at the Sea Garden Motel

in Pismo

& the light was all

nickels & dimes

dancing across the pavement

inside the sound of gears grinding

just a block from the beach

The sunset haze

reaching for the

pulse of the tide

w/compression dings

in silver mist

propped against a chainlink fence

it was like the Ark of the Covenant

dissolving in a shot glass...

Still there is that light & heavy wind to contend with

& a dusty swimming pool blue turquoise sky rocking

all the way back to the Land of the Dead

w/a few thin clouds feathering out

as though they had something to say but thought better of it

a sheet of silk torn right down the middle

if knowing what knowing might be would make any difference

The tree fern whispers out the side of its mouth like Elvis

in his decline & you set aside the machete

& plunge your wrists into the beaded foam

Seagulls calling from the jetty speak the same language as Aeschylus

though w/an accent that is straight from the surf ghetto

Palm trees hovering live divine sculpture

begging for more as if it was the only way to pinpoint the

exact coordinates that will transport us to the

here & now

A norteño accordion tuning up at the bottom of the sea...

Sheet music fluttering in the breeze...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge/Pacific Gas & Electric

Any meaning other than it so encumbers recognition
like a red Corvette driven straight off the pier

"There's more concrete in the world than there are good waves"

I was spilling the last glass of water in California
translated from English into Japanese into Arabic into Klingon
& back into English

"It all makes sense if you stand back & look at it from a distance"

I wore dark glasses beneath a desperate haircut & the
cypress trees were huddled above the beach like the Women of Thebes

(the sky breaking open behind them
partly sunny w/a prevailing sense of impending doom

I had to catch the replay in glorious technicolor
all kinds of low-end torque rumbling in transition w/cracked
bells & clarinets washing up onshore with the incoming tide

A tangle of mist laying flat on the wet sand at the ocean's edge

Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you've been there.
Playing Parmenides to my Heraclitus. A not quite harmonic
convergence. Drinks were served out on the veranda.
I preferred the rain puddles in the parking lot.

A fistful of sand & a rippling curtain of mist
is about all I'm going to need for the forseeable, I said

Standing in line at the beer store "looming" as maybe Frankenstein's
monster might on a Friday night in S. Cruz. I couldn't begin to tell you
& I won't even try weaving among the shadows. The vault of heaven is
wide open & the stars assume you know the name of every constellation
from Andromeda to Vulpecula, but that doesn't mean you can find your
car keys. The palm trees rattle their bones & a light seabreeze fucking
w/your equilibrium has you doing your best Joe Cocker imitation right
there in the parking lot. Just one of the many obstacles you'll encounter
along the path of least resistance.

Slick liquid neon palette of sunset still lingering in the heavy Pacific sky

X-number of gulls like
hours, moments, dreams, picking up speed
& putting it down again

The fogmist like a leadweight
holds the beach in place
when everything else is falling from your
bulletproof kimono

representing something that will remain
casually unresolved
locked away where the seabreeze goes
returning the sky to its default settings

& late night early morning ocean fog swamps the streets

the wet sidewalk is as dark as your eyes by now

Lights flickering along the pier
already under water

little left to the imagination / more than enough

(you know & I know) the tempo of the Dharma
is not always so easy to dance to

The Temple of the Drama used to be up at
RCA Beach, it was made out of drift-
wood & sand & the vague feeling that we were invincible

if I remember right I held your hand on the way down

& I made detailed drawings of your tattoos but
I can't show them to you because they are mine now
& this is how I will love you

...

Today's book of poetry simply marvelled at the partial list of books and chapbooks produced by Kevin Opstedal. Only the irrepressible Rob McLennan could possibly compete with this sort of output. Rob McLennan, an Ottawa institution, has over 30 books and an unknowable number of chapbooks out there in the wide world. Take a look at this list by Opstedal.

Kamikaze Blvd,
Jungles
Sand in the Vaseline
Like Rain
Crush
The Road to Hollywood is Paved with Tacks & Suicide
Beach Blanket Massacre
Next to Dreaming, or The Phone Never Rang
9th & Ocean
Variable High Cloudiness
Nine Palms
Radio Beach
Heavy Water
Straight Up & Down
The Deep End
El Tsunami
Coastal Disturbances (Bikini Machine)
400 Hawaiian Shirts
Minus Tide
Double Impact
On The Low
Rare Surf, Vol. 2: New and Used Poems
Baja
User's Manual to the Pacific Coast Highway
Saltwater Credentials
Santa Cruz
Maybe Ocean Street
Deja Voodoo
Drainpipe Sessions
California Redemption Value
Memory Foam
The Poetikal Works of Dude the Obscure
Curse of the Surf Zombie

That old Kevin Opstedal is a tricky slick dude. The reader is lulled into West Coast comfort, swimming at the edge of knowable civilization and then this Duane Eddy loving, cultural magpie and mystic starts dropping word bombs that burst delightful.

Today's book of poetry has a new poet we will be name dropping into every conversation. Pacific Standard Time is one of those finds that reminds this reader of why he loves poetry. To use the parlance, Today's book of poetry is a Barney, no doubt about it, but reading Opstedal leaves the reader Choka.

Bring Me the Head of Eddie Vedder

I had loaned her my crown of thorns
& before she gave it back she had it
cleaned & sharpened for me

The wind raking the eucalyptus
blue turquoise green & tinsel
raw beach concrete

& the 36 chainsmoking buddhas in my hip pocket
were preaching a kind of punk compassion I
could really learn to dance to

Like a message in lipstick scrawled
onto a tidepool mirror
nobody knows what it means but
everyone understands it'll break if you
drop it which is what keeps us
coming back for more

The girl with the crucified seagull
tattooed on her back
said she knew something I didn't

She told me where it was but I had to find it myself

My skull packed with wet sand
pure as the driven foam

...

Kevin Opstedal poetry machine-gunned our office this morning. After this morning's read there were bodies strewn about the floor, camps were organized and diligent pressure brought to bear. Milo, our head tech, wanted a particular grouping of poems, Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, had other priorities and choose an entirely different grouping. I was stranded by some crazy high-water mark with ten poems or so that I couldn't live without. An impasse was not passed. We had to drag Max, our Sr. Editor, out of his warren and set him to the task. As a result all of Today's book of poetry's inefficiencies can be blamed on good old Max.

You can send any complaints straight to me, I know how to handle them.

Cadillac to Mexico

We are as clouds that veil the 11:00 News, applying pressure to a
ruptured artery, stripping the paint off a 50 gallon drum full of Marlon
Brando's performance in On the Waterfront. The chainlinked molecules
of spring are waiting with crowbars & baseball bats. That was back
when I wore bellbottoms & beads & hung my head in shame. I thought
I had to explain myself as though there was still something left to prove.
My mistake. I meant to say Last Tango in Paris -- the final scene shot
in a parking lot in Juarex just south of the Olympic Blvd off-ramp.
November had sliced the ankles of the moon. Wind thrashing in the
trees the way a drowning man might gasp for air drawing in a lungful of
water. And in April we drove out to the beach to poison ourselves with
the sunset.

...

Today's book of poetry could play the Kevin Opstedal poetry game all day long. Pacific Standard Time is a whale of a book in the poetry world coming in at well over 200 pages - not nearly big enough for his new audience here.

Kevin Opstedal will renew your enthusiasm for poetry.

Kevin Opstedal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Venice, California, Kevin Opstedal is a poet whose line leaves three decades of roadcuts across the entire imaginary West. His twelve books and chapbooks include two full-length collections, Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, 1999) and California Redemption Value (Uno Press, 2011), and his Blue Books Press, one of many of his "sub-radar" editorships, belongs in the same breath as the great California poetry houses (Auerhahn, Big Sky, Oyez...) that his own poems seem to conjure like airbrushed flames on a lemon carrying Ed Dorn, Joanne Kyger, Ted Berrigan, and some wide-eyed poetry neophyte to a latenite card game in Bolinas. “His poems,” writes Lewis MacAdams, “are hard-nosed without being hard-hearted.” As identity and ideas duke it out in the back-alley of academia, Opstedal surfs an oil slick off Malibu into the apocalypse of style.

BLURBS

No one deserves a comprehensive collection like this more than Kevin Opstedal, a tireless soldier in the fields of contemporary poetry, both as discoverer/editor and as prolific poet. An Olson without mountain, a maximus of the Pacific, Opstedal roams the beaches of Venice or Santa Cruz picking up poems ranging from the sprawling epic of history and pop culture to the compact lyric effusion of observation and feeling. He’s as liable to find a poem ransacking a tiki bar as he is pouring over an inscription on an Etruscan urn, and there’s a superb indifference to poetic fashion in favor of devotion to his own chosen household gods that any poet would do well to aspire to.There’s a moral component here too, a “punk compassion,” as he says, sifting through the detritus of America to extract the gold of time.

- Garrett Caples

Welcome to Pacific Paradise, where the sky is swept with turquoise red sunsets–and Satan can steal a surfboard. Kevin Opstedal, master of the coastal metaphor, rides through the drama of these poems confident of where his heart is—"lapped and pummeled" by Pacfic waves. His poems take center stage in the drama of the surf zone. Take a bow, Kevin.

- Joanne Kyger

For decades Kevin Opstedal has kept the underground lit as prolific poet, surfer, printer of books by many and correspondent to all. A chameleon of classic styles, his poems are as vital as the water we drink. Filtered through a wave of narcotic clarity and witful nonchalance, Pacific Standard Time shows us that he's capable of doing whatever the poem asks, any time / any place.

- Micah Ballard

uglyducklingpresse.org

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Disinheritance. John Sibley Williams. Apprentice House Press. Loyola University Maryland. Baltimore, Maryland. 2016.

Disinheritance by John Sibley Williams is an epic cannonade of grief that echoes with the howls of the bereaved and the callous innocent whispers of the dead. Williams says it right out loud in his poem Procession, Disinheritance is Williams coming to terms with "This dazzling confederacy of losses."

Williams is deep into some desperately sad glamour but the reader connects to this urgent melancholy as though it were our own. Williams is touching our deepest fear, the loss of one of our beloved.

A Dead Boy Speaks to His Parents

Hush now:

you don't have to be anymore.

Whatever script you'd written for the stars to follow, they've missed

their marks,

gone true right instead of stage right.

Nightly, you whisper:

ever since perhaps because or even before --

but you don't have to thread cause through effect

or rummage through whatever beginnings you've captured on film to

discover a fixed point of departure.

The zeotrope continues to spin without image.

Mom and Dad:

you don't have to be contained anymore

between the lines I never had time to write

on the stars that don't listen anyway.

...

Banshee screams reverberate in the quiet sorrow Williams has invested in these poems. The loss and unimaginable emotional fatigue that underscores the restrained madness of grief is writ large in all these poems yet they never weigh us down completely. John Sibley Williams has "given sorrow words" to quote Maryse Holder - another writer who knew everything you get to know about loss.

These poems touch our hearts at the same time as they wrench our stomachs and pull at our throats. Ghosts reach out with their ghostly cold hands to offer some solace but the revenant have no skill at holding back grief.

Things Start at Their Names

Ice locks the river in place and my heart

is static for the season and traversable.

Sometimes a boy about the age

my son would be adventures

half way across me before remembering

the duty to destroy the one thing

beneath him. He writes his name

on my rib; it says Curiosity. I reply

with the name I've learned to wear:

Distance. A fluster of bluegill follows his body

downstream to where it meets the Columbia,

in time the ocean, which I cannot make freeze.

Next spring I will snare the things that still in me,

beat them against stone, and eat until empty. I have

his name written all over my body; it say Forever

be Winter. My wife calls him Gabriel; after all these years

she still calls him Gabriel, and sometimes from the shore

she calls to me: Thaw.

...

To say that this morning's reading was a somber affair would not be going quite far enough. Tears were shed. John Sibley Williams seems determined to unleash a quiet emotional fury on the reader and is entirely successful, everyone in the office "liked" the poems, much admiration was expressed, shared glances. muted looks. Reading Disinheritance will wring your heart right out of your chest.

So how does Today's book of poetry say I like something so sad? For the same reasons I like sad songs, I am touched. Williams builds tension like he was stringing a piano, everything is tight.

A Dead Boy Fishes with His Dead

Grandfather

The fish have broken the line again, Grandpa,

and everything we've held runs silver through our hands,

and out. Across the never-ending surface: disruptions and

echoes, waves our crooked fingers cannot flatten.

Our lines travel without us. You and I and the lives we must end.

But not today.

Today we've lost the death that keeps us.

Today we reverse: you are my child and I will love you

for the childish stories I've heard.

About the dead you cannot erase,

muddied uniforms and flags marked by the smallest red suns.

About how Grandma combs the long-dried blood

from your thinning hair, with her thinning hand.

About how each kindness is a reason to remain unpardoned.

How memory writhes below skin and is its own decision:

devour or release.

I will decide to love the empty hook of your body,

like a warning, your hands--

where they've calloused and where they've healed.

Today I will pretend to understand

why you cry like a knife stroke when I throw you back.

...

Grief can be overwhelming and terrifying and Williams isn't letting anyone out the exits without a heartscorch. Disinheritance is a pained pleasure, compelling as it is discomforting. This is wicked good writing.

John Sibley Williams

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Sibley Williams is the editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies and the author of nine collections. A five-time Pushcart nominee and winner of the Philip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: The Midwest Quarterly, december, Third Coast, Baltimore Review, Nimrod International Journal, Hotel Amerika, Rio Grande Review, Inkwell, Cider Press Review, Bryant Literary Review, RHINO, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

BLURBS

“In John Sibley Williams’ “amalgam of real /and fabled light” one is able to believe again in the lyric poem as beautiful—if difficult—proof of private space. Disinheritance contends intimately with loss, to be sure – but it also proposes the poem as a way to remember, to persist, to be oneself, to believe. And to persist when belief may not be possible within the bounds of the shores the seas impose upon us.”
—Joan Naviyuk Kane

“There is eternal longing in these poems of John Sibley Williams. A yearning for what cannot be understood. A song for what simply is. A distance beyond human measurement. A series of profound losses giving birth to words no different from medicine.”
—Zubair Ahmed

“There is a hunger in these poems, one of an empty handed wise man who wants to sing. And sing he does. Let these poems sing to you too. Let them hold you in that raw place of hope, let them be ships mooring us to the wild / bottomless sea.”
—Daniela Elza

“In John Sibley Williams’ moving, somber collection, the power of elegy, reverie, and threnody transcends the disinheritance caused by separation. These compellingly atemporal poems form the locus wherein generations of a family can gather. Here, Williams’ lyric proto-language—elemental, archetypal, primordial—subsumes barriers of time and space. His poems create their own inheritance.”
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

Daniel Klawitter, author of A Poet Playing Doctor and An Epistemology Of Flesh, reads the poem Sanctuary from John Sibley Williams' poetry collection Disinheritance.

Video: John Sibley Williams

apprenticehouse.com

527

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Homefront - Childhood Memories of WWII. Peggy Trojan. Evening Street Press. Dublin, Ohio. 2015.

Homefront - Childhood Memories of WWII is a gentle beauty of a book. Peggy Trojan's poems travel through time and take you with them. In Homefront World War II is in full swing and the poems are homespun missives, community updates and emotional weather reports.

Trojan's world churns past with such sweet simplicity and genuine respectful wonder that you almost think you are inside an episode of The Waltons - but the hearty sensibility of our narrator/heroine does see the cost of battle, the horrors of war that men inflict upon one another.

Winter Hill, 1943

Ten or twelve,

we met each evening on the hill,

dragging our sleds.

Built a fire,

threw in potatoes

from pockets of wool parkas,

started sliding.

Across the sea,

a world was burning.

At school, we practiced hiding under desks,

scanned the skies for enemy planes.

Together, we felt safe.

We owned the moonlight and the hill.

Tired out, near curfew,

we retrieved our cache,

rolled them out to sizzle on the snow.

Now hunks of oval charcoal,

skins burned thick.

We held our potatoes with snowy mitts,

peeled off the black,

passed the wax paper packet of salt.

Innocent as starlight,

we ate the winter night.

Mothers called from the village,

voices thin as string

stretching across the frosty air.

Jaw--onn, Jer--ree, Bill--ee

Secure as the moon,

we kicked snow on smoldering embers,

gathered our sleds.

headed home to porch light beacons.

...

Peggy Trojan's Homefront is a book entirely devoid of guile or avarice. These poems sound and feel as true as the day is long, they are written with a tenderness and affection of intention but they are never coy or affected.

Trojan has a voice we immediately trust as a familiar and all of her stories, though new to us, sound and feel as though they are family lore.

Blue Star, Gold Star

Cousin Roy was the first one

wounded from this little town.

He recovered and was sent

back to battle.

When he was killed,

they couldn't find any part

of him to send home to bury.

His father always thought

he would come back

to take over the farm.

There was no memorial service...

No minister was available

out there in the country,

and his Pa said he couldn't take anymore.

His sister even had a Christmas present

ready to mail when the news came.

Nothing to do

but take down the blue service star,

and hang a gold star

in the window now.

...

As you all know Today's book of poetry has a reading every morning of the day's book, this morning's reading was a real tonic. The poems brought forward our parents and our grandparents and played with memory so as to help us believe we know and understand them better., Homefront is not a historical document but it is true living history and here at Today's book of poetry we often feel that's the ticket.

None of this would matter much if the poems didn't work as poems but this is solid, dependable, straight forward as the wheels on the front of a train engine stuff. Today's book of poetry felt right at home.

Roosevelt Dies

The day The President died,

Our President, My President,

the only President I ever knew,

they interrupted Tom Mix on the radio

with the breaking news.

I ran across the yard to the Co-op

and leaped the two steps

to my dad's office.

"Oh, my stars!" he gasped,

and yelled to the whole store,

"The President is dead!"

He turned his radio on, loud.

Everyone stopped:

the clerks filling orders,

shoppers with their ration books,

the butcher weighing hamburger,

the feed man in the back room,

kids eyeing the bulk candy.

All came in shocked silence

to the office door.

Quietly, like fog, reality filled

the room with genuine grief.

Then everything moved

in slow motion

as people went back

to finish what they were doing

while our whole world changed.

...

In November 2016 it is hard for many readers to remember how World War II shaped the modern world and all those who experienced it. Time has not changed this tapestry, Peggy Trojan has woven something wondrous here, a glimpse, a beautiful detail, of how community and family come together when united by purpose and fear.

Peggy Trojan's Homefront is tender testament to the determination of those left at home and to the unfiltered bright eyes of someone who remembers.

Peggy Trojan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PEGGY TROJAN and her husband live in the north woods of Wisconsin in a house they built not far from her childhood home after they retired from teaching. She is the mother of six, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of two. She submitted her first poem for publication when she was seventy-seven, and has been enjoying seeing her work in print. She has been published in the Boston Literary Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Talking Stick, Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine, Thunderbird Review, Little Eagle's Re/Verse, Your Daily Poem, and many other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook collection of poems about her parents, Everyday Love, is available on Amazon. She is a member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

BLURBS

Peggy Trojan was there on the Home Front, an eight to twelve year old girl from northwest Wisconsin as “the world was burning” (“Winter Hill 1943”) thousands of miles away. We see through her eyes as she witnesses “the heroes at home” (“Home Front”), the rationing and the tragedy of neighbors switching the Blue Star for the Gold Star in the window. These are poems of great tenderness and simplicity, powerfully remembered… “the girls played house and the boys played war” (“Playtime”).
--Bruce Dethlefsen, Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2011-2012) author of Small Talk, Little Eagle Press

Peggy Trojan's poetry is straightforward and focused, yet lyrical and poignant. Through clean images and sharp details, she takes us to a time when war was a daily reality. This book is both a poetic and historical treasure.
--Jan Chronister, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College author of Target Practice, Parallel Press

What a pleasure this collection is! Clear-eyed and perceptive, these narrative poems in Homefront by Peggy Trojan tell the story of a child in small Midwestern town during World WWII: the music, the girls playing jacks, the buttons on underwear, the ration books, the small town general store, and “for the first time/ questioning if man was kind.” It’s a chronicle of the war effort, and readers will be delighted with the sharp images of growing up, the privations and pleasures, the interesting portraits of people, and the news dispatches of the war and Holocaust seen through the eyes of a child. Every poem is necessary to this collection, and each captures a time and a place, returning to us the stories and strengths of our parents and grandparents. She paints with words, and her language is both plain-spoken and beautiful and full of pathos. These poems are lit with love.
--Sheila Packa Duluth, Poet Laureate 2010-2012 author of Night Train Red Dust, Cloud Birds, and Echo & Lightning
eveningstreetpress.com

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Primary Source. Jason Schneiderman. Red Hen Press. Pasadena, California. 2016.

Winner of the Benjamin Salter Award, 2014

To Please and Instruct

The purpose of art is to please and instruct

-- Horace, Arts Poetica

The moral of this poem is fuck you.

The moral of this poem is I'm drunk.

The moral of this poem is I'm too drunk to be held responsible for what I'm

saying to you right now.

The moral of this poem is you're fat.

The moral of this poem is if you come after me, I will have your Hotmail

account turned off, true story.

The moral of this poem is herpes.

The moral of this poem is the Pope's a liar.

The moral of this poem is I'm sorry I threw up through my nose on you.

The moral of this poem is getting through customs without a passport.

The moral of this poem is gestalt therapy.

The moral of this poem is terrorists.

The moral of this poem is you like Tarantino movies because you're stupid

and I like Tarantino movies because I'm smart.

The moral of this poem is cats that look like Hitler.

The moral of this poem is reality television.

The moral of this poem is don't have sex with your siblings, parents, or

anyone under eighteen, sixteen if you're in Greece, fourteen in Denmark.

The moral of this poem is meth mouth.

The moral of this poem is gun-show loophole.

The moral of this poem is Gawker.

The moral of this poem is two state solution.

The moral of this poem is too much rage.

The moral of this poem is rehab sucks.

The moral of this poem is your wife being fingered in the bathroom at a

party by this guy you invited because you thought he was cool and look

where that got you.

The moral of this poem is rules change.

The moral of this poem is George Washington filling his dentures with

teeth pulled from his slaves.

The moral of this poem is kill me.

The moral of this poem is hip surgery.

The moral of this poem is drone strike wedding massacre.

The moral of this poem is thong.

The moral of this poem is shut up.

The moral of this poem is make me.

...

Let's get this party started with a kick-ass list poem. That's the ticket. Today's book of poetry loves a good list poem and "To Please and Instruct" is a stone-cold killer and the best list poem we've come across in a good while.

Jason Schneiderman's Primary Source is a playground for avid readers of poetry. There is no commitment by the poet to any particular school or style of poetry, Schneiderman is all over the stylistic map and that is a total win for the reader. This poet tears it up with ribald wit, no obvious sympathies, and a willingness to go in for the kill. If Schneiderman were an athlete Today's book of poetry is convinced he'd be a wicked smart decathlete.

My Rich Friend

My rich friend wasn't always rich

but now he's very good at it,

by which I mean he's generous,

has excellent taste, never makes

anyone uncomfortable, has good

boundaries, and please don't tell him

but if I were ever to kill myself,

he has this wonderful window

in this perfect little dining nook

that's fifteen stories up and opens

all the way. The last thing

I would see is a soapstone zodiac

carved into a recess in the ceiling,

and then the city going by

ever so fast. I'm not usually tempted

by an open window. I don't know

how he survives it every day.

...

Primary Source does all those things Today's book of poetry looks for in a book of poems. These poems are clever but not coy with wicked dry humour and instructive without ever being overbearing.

Schneiderman dives into Cole Porter water with a pseudo-song of three verses that he uses to start off each of the three sections of Primary Sources. Schneiderman is tipping his hat and it is a big hat because he has something to say and is surrounding himself with a litany of poets and a peppering of cultural pop shots. Here's a partial list: James Merrill, Helen Vendler, Stephen Spender, Yoko Ono, William the Shake, Thom Gunn, David Lee Roth (of all spandex wearing people), Marie Howe, John of Ashbery, Farah Fawcett, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Dale Young, Ashton Kutcher, Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, William Matthews and so on. It's a hearty list of playmates and influences and guilty pleasures.

Jason Schneiderman knows how to play hard and in these poems he talks about gender and the performative nature of gender and how cruel and ignorant love and lust can be. Schneiderman also muses on racism, John Cage and the fear of bears. Today's book of poetry found it all compelling.

The Turing Test

It might be urged that when playing 'the imitation game' the best strategy for

the machine may possibly be something other than the behaviour of a man.

-- Alan Turing

Who do you think he is, this boy in the Midwest

jerking off to the end of Alan Turing's biography,

getting aroused by the parts where the shame

and degradation are exactly what he's always wanted,

at a pornographic remove, and his history teacher

knows nothing about the end of Alan Turing's life,

which this boy will wisely leave out of his report.

Chemical castration? Hot. Nascent breasts? Hot.

Driven to suicide? Hot. Hot. Hot. And yes,

in the morning, on the school bus, or in the passenger

seat of his friend-girl's car, he'll think, That was

seriously fucked up, jerking off to that, and he won't

even tent his pants by the light of day, knowing

he erased his browser history of all the chastity

blogs, and all the chat rooms where he gets to be

six-foot-two and the captain of the football team

who always just turned eighteen yesterday and

is enslaved to his coach, but that fantasy is getting

tired, and his mind wonders to tomorrow's trig

exam, and soon he'll get back to Alan Turing,

cock-slave to his government. Hot. Defeater of Nazis.

Hot. And by day, this you're-not-fooling-anyone

president of the Gay/Straight alliance may be furious

at how this hero was treated, will start a petition

to get the science lab named for Alan Turing,

but at night he wonders, in one recurring fantasy,

if he could ever pass the Turing test, but in the other

direction. If maybe, just maybe, no one could ever tell

he was human.

...

Sunday morning usually makes for a quietish office read but the Today's book of poetry staff were full of piss and vinegar today. Schneiderman isn't just brilliant he can be incendiary. Milo, our head tech, was particularly taken by the strong and fearless head on Schneiderman's shoulders. Milo insisted we include a fourth poem today and he made a good case for it. Today's book of poetry was easily swayed.

In the Next Room

She said, "Remember when you liked me

more than crack?" and he said, "Yeah, that

was when I hadn't met crack yet." and when

she huffed and tried to leave the booth

he grabbed her arm, and pulled her back

and said, "We have to talk about the dog,

remember?" and she said, "I thought

we were talking about the dog?" and he said,

"We have to finish talking about the dog,"

and she said, "So fucking finish talking

about the dog." and he said, "So stop being

a giant cunt and I will," at which point,

in a single sweeping movement of her arm

she knocked every single thing off the table,

and the cups and plates broke against

the floor, and the coffee flew up and stained

my pants, and the silverware clattered, and

we weren't overhearing anymore, we were

paying rapt attention, and he said, "You're paying

for that, you bitch," and she said,

"Pick up the tab, asshole," and not one

single person tried to stop her as she left.

...

Jason Schneiderman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason Schneiderman was born in San Antonio Texas, but was raised around the United States and Western Europe owing to his father s military service. He holds BAs in English and Russian from the University of Maryland, an MFA from NYU, and a PhD from the Graduate Center of CUNY. He is the author of two previous collections of poems: Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004) and Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press, 2010), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize. He is also the editor of the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2015). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, Verse Daily, The Poetry Review, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Schneiderman has received Fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and is the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Michael Broder."

BLURBS
Jason Schneiderman's Primary Source is a sparkling demonstration of this principle: a poet evolves by making as many aspects of the self as possible available on the page. By turns sardonic and sincere, nakedly vulnerable or armored in irony, the wild magpie intelligence shaping these poems plucks threads from Shakespeare and Stein, borrows forms from Cole Porter and Wittgenstein, and bows to a variety of influences so vast (Sylvia Plath and David Lee Roth?) as to constitute a way of situating the self, influencing the dizzily happy reader to a queer subject, a livewire thinker at work, a breathing human presence."
- Mark Doty

Schneiderman's poetry goes beyond camp, slapstick, and coterie aesthetics, although that's his terrain, too; his quick-dazzle intellect is its own happening, a commedia dell'arte cutting through the noise, offering both literary and social critique. The pleasures are here, the mystique of Schneiderman is Schneiderman."
-- Major Jackson

'Elegy VII (Last Moment)' by Jason Schneiderman

Video: PBS Newshour

redhen.org

529

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
And the cat says... Susan L. Helwig. Quattro Books. Toronto, Ontario. 2013.

Any of you who truly know Today's book of poetry will know our true feelings about cats, so you can imagine with what trepidation we opened Susan L. Helwig's little marvel And the cat says... . What we found were poems like "Letter to Philip Roth" and the extemporaneous explanation of the connection between eggplants and love.

And the cat says... is a cornucopia of entertainments. Helwig has found a comfortable spot with enough humour and pathos to suit her sly needs. It's like she has them tied together at the waist and and knee and this book is the dazzling three legged sprint.

Original Sin

The Bible got it wrong

it wasn't an apple that Eve ate

no apple spurted bright thick juice

stained her chin

made her breasts glisten

It was a tomato

Listen

What virgin bride in the Old Country

did not thank a tomato

hiding where the hymen used to be

for the groom's prideful groans

and carmine sheets in the morning?

when a mob spews anger

it's tomatoes that shout Revolution!

Tomatoes made the sauce in Little Italy

when young Corleone shot the Chief

no apple caused that amount of trouble, ever.

Why just the other day, dining el fresco

I planned a sensible order, salad, dressing on the side

vegetables in season

when the sun caught the ketchup on someone else's fries

I swear that red stuff winked at me

two shades off ruby.

...

Today's book of poetry wouldn't call Helwig bawdy, that would be less a compliment than a snide remark. Helwig isn't bawdy but she is delightfully frank.

My wife has a coterie of amazing female friends called "The Nasty Girls" (apologies to recent news cycles but my wife's friends coined this term for their tribe over a quarter of a century ago), women of sardonic wit and relentless humour and all of it tinged with their many years of life experience wisdom. Their motto, if they had such a thing, could easily be "no bullshit allowed" and I'm convinced that they would welcome Susan L. Helwig into their fold as one of their own.

Da Capo, with repeats

Hard to do with a partner

what I've done alone for so long

the breathing, the rhythm

everything throws me

we start, we stop, soft laughter

high-pitched nerves

Underway again

he has a man's love of speed

I was thinking adagio, with no strings

and presto! here we are at the end

Perhaps a different position

if I were the one erect

bowing the violin in long caresses

and he sat at my piano

tickling the ivories

Afterwards, neither asks, how was it for you?

knowing full well which bars

were peppered with mistakes

the music doesn't lie

all we can hope is same time next week

another chance to come together.

...

Today's book of poetry is impressed by how tidily Helwig is able to keep her business. These poems can be ribald but they're never rude, they are experienced but not tired, wise without the tiresome burden of wisecracks. Today's book of poetry liked Susan L. Helwig's style.

Our morning read welcomed a couple of guests this morning and as you all know by now - everyone present has to read at the morning go round. Dexter read a few in his slow and quiet loquacious fashion, then our friend Sara teased some sorrowful music out of one or two and some belly-laughs out of few more. Our regular staff were inspired by our guests and upped their game. And the cat says... sounded like the life of the party.

Now that we two love again

The world glows peppermint, rain-washed, new

and we can dally in a house the size of April

without the hurry-up of student sex

the roommate back from class too soon

now Marsalis, not Mingus, warms our tea

Out the window and down the street

the Salvation Army band, its jolly tuba

leads the parade

Later in the garden, grandchildren, yours

will make their shrieks and finds,

the softly tinted Easter eggs I hid last night

adobe cream and evergreen mist

the chocolate bunnies, bittersweet.

...

Today's book of poetry appreciates his job more every day - books like Susan L. Helwig's And the cat says... make it so. Helwig has poems that ask important questions, laments about love and social issues and so on but mostly Today's book of poetry sees books like this as reportage from the generous heart and inquiring mind of another traveller.

No cats were harmed in the production of this blog.

Susan L. Helwig

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan L. Helwig grew up on a dairy farm in southwestern Ontario just outside of Neustadt. From 1994 to 2002 she interviewed Canadian and international authors for the radio programme “In Other Words” on CKLN 88.1. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in Canada and abroad, and she has two previous poetry collections: Catch the Sweet (Seraphim Editions, 2001) and Pink Purse Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2006).

BLURB

Delicious. Entertaining. Susan L. Helwig's And the cat says... (her best collection so far), is so readable it makes poetry seem like a naughty pleasure.

- David Gilmour

quattrobooks.ca

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together. Stephen Brockwell. Mansfield Press. A Stuart Ross Book. Toronto, Ontario. 2016.

"Dust falls over the ocean too, as I recall."

- The Saline Diminishments

All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together feels like a departure and an arrival for the multi-talented Stephen Brockwell. Today's book of poetry has long admired the work of Brockwell, All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together is his fourteenth or fifteenth poetry title and we have been watching all along.

The departure, if we can call it that, is an emotional one. Brockwell has always had a keenly expressive and fiercely intelligent voice but with All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together Brockwell draws back the curtains to reveal the inner dimensions of a complicated heart. Brockwell has always had an ample tool box of poetic tools to draw from but with this latest book he ups the ante, the closer you get to the heart the sharper the poems become.

This book was edited for press by the omnipresent and galactic Stuart Ross and it shows. It is tight as a drum.

And there are a couple of list poems and you know how much we like those here at Today's book of poetry.

The Location of Culture

At a truckstop counter in Paris.

Over by the Starbucks in Nagoya, I didn't understand a

word. Inside Zanzibar's Coffee Adventure, finest beans in

Iowa, I caught a word I knew.

Curbside near a Philly cheesesteak joint on a sizzling

Friday in August, Brandon insists we take it with

Cheez Whiz.

Under plane trees and palms at the San Diego Zoo, polar

bears soak on wet concrete.

Underneath the oak, a bench has been installed, site for

lapdogs, evening weed, Viola-Cesario soliloquies.

Through the ear canal, the caw of the crow on the street

lamp resonates in the ossicles.

Across Coltrane's reed.

In deer-hide drums I wish I had an ear for.

In neck, fret, and peg, braced spruce and manicured nail.

Through humbucker and valve.

At the Blackburn Arms where Jack McGuire performs

songs no one hears over the off-key accompaniment of

hammered regulars.

Through noise-cancelling Beats, Bluetooth Queen of

the Night.

Notwithstanding my mother's Sinatra, my daughter's

#queenbey.

Throughout the exhausted sleeper's veins. Between

treatment and injection site. In small-print

contraindications.

In bed, in a hammock between trees, in the bath, on moss,

in cold lakes, our bodies pair by prepositions.

On the lips of the toddler smooshing pages with jam. In

the theatre of her hands. She tilts her head to the right,

mimics her father's imitative coos.

Throughout the primary school hallways when the bell

rings on a May scorcher as the shrieks of recessing kids

are at their peak.

At the public library beside the canal, on a table behind

rare-book stacks, volumes open, spread.

Between the pages of my great-uncle Eddie's Leaves of

Grass. In the handshake of his Bajan lover, Colin.

On the handles of my grandfather's paintbrushes:

accidental abstract expressionism.

In the cellar, inside the chest with mould-dusted leather

locking straps; "Man on the Moon" newspapers, a loaded

handgun, plastic-wrapped vintage pornography, rags sharp

with turpentine.

Inside shelves installed in his dresser drawers, we found

the alphabetized complete works of Edgar Rice Burroughs,

Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey.

Toward Mont Royal's cross, the white spruce, or the fly on

the window at the Montreal General Hospital where my

father's eyes finally settled.

In Parc Jarry bleachers, hot dog in mouth as Bailey singles

Woods home. In the T-shirt's cherished mustard stain.

In Muzak accompanying the Zamboni's peculiar figures.

At Arena Robert Guertin, in locker rooms of broken sticks,

what might Guy Lafleur's poster eyes have seen?

On the court, hoops: in court, hoops.

Around the ditch where the sewer crew shovels through

effluent, hoping to find and close a valve.

Abaft the engine room, reeking of fish and fuel.

From the combine harvester's thousand-watt stereo, barley

field Marley.

Under the boardroom table of the princes of power, bless

their blue silk ties, there's gum. For all their financial

instruments, pick your prepositions; govern them by

sharp verbs.

In my mother's blueprints for Montreal trunks.

Over the copper pair, the glass fibre, between towers:

packets of everything. We like it.

Under the Cisco bridge, trolls creep.

In diodes emitting a radiant moving window of briefest

eternity.

In the palimpsest of typewriter roller and plasma screen,

PINs for accounts of the poorest and richest.

In Homer.

Between rings in birch grain, inside axe and saw cuts,

under initialled bark.

Under the throat of the slaughtered calf, along the blade of

the sakin.

At the cathedral for her funeral, in liturgy and hymn,

unexpected comfort.

In the LAV -- none of us wants to hear it -- when the RPG

renders acronyms disgusting.

@Cranium Central Station, a bat in the attic hangs itself

to sleep.

...

Stephen Brockwell's All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together feels like a clearing of the deck. Parents and grandparents and various other ghosts are ceremoniously debunked into their eternal beds amid the cathartic tumble. Brockwell is searching for a new kind of honesty and it is not an easy purchase, people get hurt, bruises form, seen and unseen.

It's difficult magic to reconcile your heart with your hopes and it is almost impossible not to remember expectations as responsibilities. Brockwell is swimming against some harsh and well established currents but his stroke is strong and true. It's always hard to be who we want when dealing with who we are gets in the way.

Accidental Vegan

My fridge had more food than I needed.

Jane, I asked you to come to my house and cook with me:

onions, garlic, long beans, fish -- no fish!

It was never about the cooking --

you knew that --

it was our way of putting our lips on the same dish.

In the rain, face to face

at the market, we huddled by the fish tank,

watching the slow, sad carp,

gills pulsing, mouth opening, eyes wet, of course.

...

Stephen Brockwell is a disarming poet. In the past his wit and intelligent charm always made for smart, sharp poems worth reading. With All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together Brockwell has added a new level of emotional candor and intensity that is both jarring and exciting.

This sort of honesty, when honed by the articulate hands of an old pro like Brockwell makes for some compelling poetry and rewarding reading.

Today's book of poetry understands that Brockwell had some misgivings about All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together and it is easy to see why. When you put that much on the table the room turns quiet and all eyes focus on the gambler. Brockwell plays the winning hand and doesn't even crack a grin.

Biography Of Mistaken Identities

I was mistaken for Steve Martin at a bar in Montreal.

I was mistaken for someone Richard Simmons could love

by Richard Simmons on a flight to Los Angeles.

I was mistaken for Olympian Ken Read

but I've never needed skis to hurtle downhill.

I was mistaken for a gay man at Swizzles

and played it to my advantage at the slam.

I was such a flirt! Were they mistaken?

I am told I could be mistaken for Henry Rollins.

Soon my dog will mistake me for an old hound

on the porch, bark in my face, and tear my ears.

I hope to be mistaken for soil by seedling pines.

...

We had guest appearances at the Today's book of poetry offices this morning. We had just started our morning read when the doorbell rang. In walked Ayano Omota, Yuka Kashino and Ayaka Nishiwaki. I didn't recognize any of them at first but Ayaka had Pharoah Sanders at the end of her arm and I certainly knew who he was right away. They'd just tumbled out of a rusted old '56 Caddy short that was sitting in the laneway. I almost lost my mind.

But like all other guests Pharoah and the ladies had to take their turn reading a poem. Stephen Brockwell has never sounded better.

Today's book of poetry has been a big Stephen Brockwell fan for a long time and we believe that All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together is his best book.

Stephen Brockwell

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth in the ’80s in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both Véhicule Press, 1982). George Woodcock described Brockwell’s first book, The Wire in Fences, as having an “extraordinary range of empathies and perceptions.” Harold Bloom wrote that Brockwell’s second book, Cometology, “held rare and authentic promise.” Fruitfly Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in Ottawa in 2005. Brockwell currently operates a small IT consulting company from the 7th floor of the Chateau Laurier and lives in a house perpetually under construction.

BLURBS

“In All of Us Reticent, Here, Together, Stephen Brockwell tenders an unsettled confessional: the poet decentring himself to cast light on the shame of being human. Awkward, wry, acerbic, these poems nonetheless find intimacy in all the locations of culture.”

—Soraya Peerbaye, author of Tell: Poems for a Girlhood

“Stephen Brockwell’s poetry, already luminous with intelligence and subtle musical energy, pulses with a new, raw, elegiac edge in his latest collection, All of Us Reticent, Here, Together. Ever curious, ever vigilant, Brockwell’s voice sorts through bruised truths and reverberant detail to deliver these poems of startling tenderness and honesty.”
—David O’Meara, author of A Pretty Sight

Stephen Brockwell

Reading at 17 Poets

Video: Megan Burns

mansfieldpress.net

531

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Tiller North. Rosa Lane. Sixteen Rivers Press. San Francisco, California. 2016.

Rosa Lane's Tiller North makes Today's book of poetry think of Alistair MacLeod's short stories in marvels such as The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories if they were written by a woman of equal power and persuasive gifts. Or Michael Crummey's stunning novel Sweetland. These poems feel like they are familiar, like they take place on or near the same water.

Today's book of poetry says this because these poems are big, they feel like stories, fill up the space and imagination just like a big novel. These poems situate you in a rural/remote fishing community surrounded by sea and brush. You are in the kerosene lit kitchen, you are in that death-watch bedroom.

But most certainly, you are there.

The natural path Rosa Lane pushes you down in these poems is strewn with hard work and calloused hands, hard living and some hard luck. Yet there doesn't seem to be much complaint, this is reportage using memory rendered poetic. Lane isn't asking for any empathy, her heart is full to bursting with memory.

June Bugs

Electricity buzzes the yellow bulb

in Maine's humid heat. June bugs bomb

the porch light with spiny legs -- date-colored

and oversized.

Spring peepers pin the night,

pitch a universe in my mother's kitchen, except

I have not yet occurred to her. She is sixteen,

and I will be hers in less than a year.

Supper's on the table for the boy who will be

my father, his nineteen-year-old body big

and husky. He rinses dried splashes

of work from the day's ocean into a small

blue basin, enameled and filled

with hand-pumped water drawn from the well.

Fireflies light the field aflame. Conceived in the heat

of summer, I appear a small spark of night

planted in the deep crevice between them.

...

Lane takes the reader to a time and a specific place in these poems. We'll never truly understand the life of a small and remote fishing village but we certainly understand more now. We can't smell the kerosene or the fish but Lane gets us there, we are on the coast of Maine gazing west towards civilization.

Today's book of poetry was terribly enamoured reading Tiller North, Rose Lane has that steady Andrew Wyeth gaze and hand, and it would appear some of his same ideas about story, narrative and how to make the heart arc. Many of Wyeth's paintings seem stark but in fact they never are, Rosa Lane has that trick finessed. There are some hard moments in Tiller North but a warm and tempered heart is leading the way. Tiller North is coming of age poetry writ large over the working class background of a young woman in a remote place.

Tiller North

Take Route 130 nine miles

where it dead-ends at the coastal tip,

keep your eye on the spire,

how it peaks above ragged pines

torn from a small length of ocean:

shingled shacks drunk with fog,

the mouth of John's River, a bar

of khaki sand, a stand of piers rusted

in salty air, Dora's cow pasture blurred

with brutes down meadow. How the fog

dampens fisher boats wedged at the wharf,

arched glass stained with light on the hill.

Households begin at the Point,

where fisher boys drive

their cars fast to the cliff,

test their brakes, scare

their girls, who squeal and dive

for safety into dangerous

arms. Tongues of the bell buoy

bang a rhythm of ocean in backseats,

when sixteen-year-old bodies grow

pregnant, birth armloads that suck

tiny breasts, unready. The young stumble

along a path of church bells calling them

to kneel Protestant pews and swallow

white wafers of a single mind.

Fisher boats named women wait in the cove,

anchor lines tied at the nose, nets piled

in the hold. Our father stands there waving

across the salt air, our mother at the shore

squinting the sun, seaweed floating

her black hair across the surface ahead

of winter already moving in. The three of us

run to the school bus each morning.

Our father's fingers, cracked with cold, count

singles laid on the kitchen table at night,

our porch lights lit proof of survival at the edge

of the harbor we are damned to leave.

...

No guests for this morning's read as Ottawa was covered in snow this morning. A number of our staff didn't make it to our digs on Dagmar. I was out shovelling snow for over an hour earlier this morning and will go back out when it stops snowing altogether. Milo, our head tech, and Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, both made it through the snow, they live close by and walked. The three of us batted these poems around until we reached shore.

Today's book of poetry really liked the tone Lane establishes from the start, she has such confidence and is so self-assured that you feel like some of it might rub off, a little osmosis through hard living.

Bingo

Lucy's shack sat on cinder blocks

pressed into peat near the bog,

a piece of real estate

no one wanted. Saturday night

down at the hall,

she laid navy beans

on numbers, played six cards,

won a few coins

on the left straight.

She drives

headlights up the throat of driveway

pounded hard by the last rain. Trees

crawl across the face

of the house. Her porch light

burns a small hole at the door.

Her boyfriend can't wait up,

he said -- her daughter's silhouette

in the upper window riding horseback

on a horse she never sees.

...

Rosa Lane's Tiller North is the 37th title from San Francisco's Sixteen Rivers Press. Lane joins a fraternity that includes Nina Lindsay, Stella Beratlis, Ito Naga and Beverly Burch, very fine company.

Today's book of poetry thinks you should join Rosa Lane on her journey back to the Maine of her youth. Lane's Tiller North imparts a portrait of family and community, loss and found, in one elegant nostalgic yawp.

Rosa Lane

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROSA LANE is a native of coastal Maine, with familial and ancestral roots steeped in lobster fishing. She earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of the poetry chapbook Roots and Reckonings(Granite Press, East, 1980). Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Briar Cliff Review, Crab Orchard Review, New South, and Ploughshares. After earning her second master’s and a Ph.D. in sustainable architecture from UC Berkeley, Lane works as an architect and divides her time between coastal Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her partner.

BLURBS
“Tiller North ends with the word sing, a final act in a volume of poems that narrates sorrows and pays tribute to the Maine people Rosa Lane comes from. She offers scenes looked over carefully, as everyone takes their place at the table. She tells of making it through a sense of unbelonging, imprinted by rejection based on class and cut-off dreams mitigated by fierce love, hard work, and constant relation to family, place, and the rules of the season.”
—Beatrix Gates, author of Dos and In the Open

Rosa Lane’s poems in this remarkable volume are reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop’s in the author’s fierce dedication to craft….Lane’s poems build through the architecture of the image; the texture of physical detail; and a sparse, understated language that resonates a profound love of humanity, an embrace of the people around her, and a deep, inward movement of the poet’s imagination.”
—Stephen Haven, author of The Last Sacred Place in North America and Dust and Bread

“In Tiller North, Rosa Lane gives us a world—not just one compass point, but all of them. In poems as lyrical as they are narrative, she presents a family and a landscape with precision and compassion. Her writing is as sharp as her heart is full. Tiller North is a moving and accomplished book.”
—John Skoyles, author of A Little Faith and Permanent Change

Rosa Lane’s poetry reminds us why, at a certain time in our lives, we’ve had enough of innocence. Here is a compendium of those so crucial, chronology-defying self-revelations that we only know through our skin….Each poem is a skiff sculling through sounds almost Hopkinsesque, each measure of music anchored by the ground base we feel more than hear.”
—Jeffrey Levine, author of Rumor of Cortez and Mortal, Everlasting

sixteenrivers.org

532

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:

ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация.

Moez Surani. Book Thug. Toronto, Ontario. 2016.

Moez Surani does a couple of things in ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация that go entirely against the grain of Today's book of poetry Poetry Belief System. Today's book of poetry generally disapproves of introductions in books of poetry where the introduction is explaining how or why the poem works. It is like muddying the water before you can get your feet wet. But there are always exceptions and ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация is an exceptional exception. In this particular case the introduction is a necessary part of the whole.

Turns out ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация may also be the mother of all list poems - and you know how we love those here. Max, our Sr. Editor has taken a dislike to the list poem in his tired dotage but we love him anyway. This morning we pushed a saucer full of shortbread cookies and another saucer full of scotch under his office door. With any luck at all that will mollify, read sedate, his ire.

1959

Burnt Cork

Concord

Executor

Friendship

Grapple M

Ice

Mastodon

Repack II

Shuttlecock

Sputnik

Trousseau

Vague II

Vixen

Visage

Hotfoot/White Star

Jumelles (Binoculars)

Orpheus

...

Not to give away the plot but ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация is a found poem constructed from the list of military operations undertaken by member states of the United Nations between 1945 and 2006. This poem is a haunting indictment that opened Today's book of poetry's eyes. How dare these military operations have humour, irony, wit and pathos amongst their names.

We owe Moez Surani a great debt for his research and diligence in creating this highly disturbing and menacingly masochistic nihilist literary stream of conscience gem. Exactly what Mr. Surani intends to say with Operations will be sorted and discussed by higher authorities than Today's book of poetry but we are honoured to look at it here.

1972

Dhib

Marble

Keystone Owl

Putney

Prek Ta

Seahawk

Eastertide: Quang Tri

Freedom Train

Eastertide: An Loc

Bullet Shot

Constant Guard I

Constant Guard II

Eastertide: Kon Tum

Keystone Pheasant

Plathond

Pocket Money

Isotope

Linebacker I

Constant Guard III

Koteka

Thunderhead

Keystone |Wren

Folklore

Pacer IVY / Pacer Inventory

Toggle

Ticky

Motorman

Keystone Pelican

Boulder

Constant Guard IV

זעם האל [Wrath of God] / Bayonet

Waverider

Zealous

Marosca

Linebacker II

...

ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация is way outside Today's book of poetry's usual bailiwick of narrative, descriptive and casually accessible poetry, way outside. This book is a challenge but that is not an obstacle, it is an incentive. Surani has written the best sort of anti-war, anti-violence tract possible, it hoists these nations by their own petards with clarity and conviction.

1998

Recuperation

Noble Response

Solar Sunrise

Stanhope

Determination

Pollard

Prudence

Murat

Excite / Hilti / Prone

Bevel Incline

Shakti [Power]

Chagai - I

Chagai - II

Quartz

Safe Departure

Shepherd Venture

Determined Falcon

Joint Forge

подкова [Horseshoe]

Kitona

Vagabond

Resolute Response

Infinite Beach

Persistence

Boleas

Shadow Express

Eagle Eye

Central

Sovereign Legitimacy

Badr [Full Moon]

Joint Guarantor / Determined Guarantor

Fuerte Apoyo [Strong Support]

Rivibala [Rivi Force]

Desert Fox

Spartic

Climate Change

...

This morning's read was a steam-roller that barely paused for breath. ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация is a military fugue where the volume and beat have been pumped up until it makes you catch your breath. Surani has discovered what sweet horror we casually inflict upon the world and has made poetry out of it.

Moez Surani

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Moez Surani has travelled, studied, and worked in countries around the world. His writing has been featured in numerous publications, including the Best Canadian Poetry (2013 and 2014), The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Harper’s Magazine, and PRISM International. His first poetry collection, Reticent Bodies (Wolsak and Wynn), was published in 2009. In that same year, he won a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and later, attended artists’ residencies in Italy, Finland, Latvia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Canada. His second poetry collection, Floating Life (Wolsak and Wynn), was published in 2012. ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация, Surani’s third book, was a finalist for 2014 Les Figues Press Book Prize.

BLURBS

“Words, first, then evidently turning into names, but names of what? Racking up four thousand military operations by United Nations member states since 1945, Moez Surani’s list is far from simple. Who knew that the UN was writing a long poem? Or that this particular long poem would resound in the mind like Pound’s Cantos, that ‘poem including history’? A stunning compilation of linguistic fertility—and fertilization— courtesy of a political organization listing in the wind over half a century. But it takes a listener to detect that shiver in the atmosphere, and this astonishing book is deep listening through and through.”

—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century

“Morning light. June dawns. Moonbeam. Bumblebee. Wren. Tulip. The code names of military operations conducted by the United Nations mark and disguise the costs of war and humanitarian interventions, like modest arrangements of flowers at unseen necropolitical funerals. ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация appropriates these code names without deploying the arsenal of juxtaposition, displacement, and framing conceits. It is a stark, stripped down, relentless list poem that organizes and recognizes the many faces and names of historic international cooperation. Surani’s new book reimagines appropriative writing as an “inadvertent collaboration” between nations. It documents the civilian and ecological devastation of collaboration and divests idealism from the notions of “agreement” and “co-production” between imagined and real communities. It is appropriative writing that queries how language is resignified and renovated for artful and affectively profitable cooptation by the state. And, true to the project’s claims, the book eschews the pleasures of euphony, pursuing instead a terrifying cacophony between sound and sense. An unnerving, frightening book that calls for expansive and paratextual reading.”
—Divya Victor, author of Natural Subjects

Moez Surani reads from Floating Life

Video: Wolsak & Wynn

bookthug.ca

533

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
What Can I Ask - New and Selected Poems 1975 - 2014. Elana Dykewomon. A Midsummer Night's Press & Sinister Wisdom. Sapphic Classics 96. New York, New York. 2015.

The Jewish lesbian-feminist activist poet with the extraordinary name of Elana Dykewomon brings a myriad of irons to the fire, isms, movements, belief systems and survivalist strategies. They are all welcome. Today's book of poetry is here to champion Dykewomon's persuasions with all the respect we can -- but it is only because we like the poems that we are here.

Intelligent passion is always a good way to go and Elana Dykewomon is all over that. These poems are a rebuke to a culture that has yet to embrace women as equals in every way. Today's book of poetry read What Can I Ask with reasonable diligence and we can say that Dykewomon never asks for anything, she's long past that, the women in these poems are making demands, living with strident purpose,

my mother used to have that dream

We were standing in her kitchen

the kitchen of the womon who

had been my lover

I was trying to leave

She didn't want me to go

I didn't want to go

but I could see no other

way to be

She could not move toward me

she was crying

she said it wasn't that she

didn't want to, she didn't know

what stopped her

my need wasn't strange or

unreasonable to her still

she could not respond to me

unless we were having this scene

she said she dreamed she could not

move, she opened her mouth

and no words came out

I said

my mother used to have that dream

she was standing on a beach

watching her children drowning

swept away on the surf

and she couldn't move to save them

she opened her mouth, like you

but she could not scream

I am my mother's daughter

I am out beyond the breakers

in dangerous water

the womon on the beach

sees me go down

tangled in kelp, exhausted

or a huge wave

catches me in its break

I see her standing there

fixed unable to swim toward me

unable to make a sound,

neither cry for help nor encouragement

I have been lost at sea

to many womyn in just this way

including my mother

one minute they are thinking

everything is well with us

and the next

I'm a ghost

What they never see is how I

surface on the other side

of the wave

paddling slowly

for another coast

...

Remember that Today's book of poetry has no agenda other than poetry and frankly we tread with some trepidation when venturing into Dykewomon world. Elana Dykewomon is writing for an audience of women/womyn and doing so without apology.

Today's book of poetry wants to be clear that when we see the big hearted, big loving, big eating, big thinking poems Dykewomon has hammered out over the years we are filled with admiration. But how does a sixty year old straight man, a product of a patriarchal culture and of Protestant/Catholic heritage and culture write glowingly about a Jewish lesbian activist and her poetry?

I went outside a few minutes ago to take a break and have a smoke. I always have a celebratory smoke between finishing writing the blog and actually typing it out to post. I write the blog by hand, usually on lined paper folded in half lengthwise. It is very cold here in Ottawa this morning, -11 C. So, I'm outside for my smoke and our newest staff member Odin was with me. He doesn't say much most of the time and he wasn't saying anything this morning. But Today's book of poetry remembered that Odin, more than anyone TBOP has ever known, greets every single person he meets with the same gracious and open welcome and we remembered that is why we love him, that excellent example.

The lesson here, Today's book of poetry doesn't want to try and mansplain Elana Dykewomon or her very powerful What Can I Ask. But we certainly encourage you readers to enjoy it.

We change each other

I am a womon of opaque windows

set at oblique angles

a face in each one

covered in nylon stocking or gray crepe.

You know

this image.

I close the shutters of my body

one by one

-- let no light in this house

and don't poke around in my vagina either.

You refuse to take it

seriously.

Suddenly I turn a corner

in the twenty-fourth corridor

where all the windows are made

of polished black amber

and the sills are volcanic ash.

There you are

you've brought your bright red pillow

you've got your feet up against the window

and have hung your god dam plants.

Doesn't that look nice?

No I say get out

I may love you in meadows

but this is queer palace

no room for two.

Effortlessly you unhinge the locked blinds.

There that's better these vines need sun.

Come on now -- we have to live where we can.

I start to weep

and you pull me to your breasts

with tough hands

...

Elana Dykewomon is writing for womyn but I doubt she she'll mind that there are men who admire her poetry.

Our morning read was an all women affair today. Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, thought it only right and proper that these poems be read by women so she brought in two friends. Sally and Jody were a hoot and good readers to boot. They were also wearing two pairs of cowgirl boots between them, one from each pair on both of their feet.

A fool for love

It's harder now, to organize,

than in my 20s. Then

when I said I wanted to do it for lesbians

if there was a question

the question was

why do it for lesbians, who are they?

I was sure of my answer

of my love and pride

my pride in love

But now I fear

when I say I want us

who so clearly need each other

to speak every phrase of that need --

I want journeys with womyn

I can depend on, who can depend on me

I fear

the answer will be:

o that old thing

And no one wants to be a fool for love

Redwoods gutted by fire and ax

still grow

Where one redwood is destroyed

a ring of young trees sprout

redwoods have shallow roots

they need these circles

where root holds fast with root

after everything that's happened

because of everything that's happened

I want to imagine a world

in which we thrive

where difference engages us

and root hold fast with roots

...

Today's book of poetry thought Elana Dykewomon's What Can I Ask - New and Selected Poems 1971 - 2014 was properly incendiary. This book brims with brave and honest poetry.

Elana Dykewomon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elana Dykewomon is a Jewish lesbian activist, award-winning author, editor, and professor. Her first novel, Riverfinger Woman, published in 1974, was selected for The Publishing Triangle’s list of 100 best lesbian and gay novels. Best known for her Lammy winning historical novel, Beyond the Pale, Dykewomon was also awarded the 2009 James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist’s Prize. She was the editor of Sinister Wisdom from 1987 to 1994 and currently lives in Oakland, California.

BLURB
Elana Dykewomon’s poems are reminders not to take anything for granted: to listen to the messages embedded in others' silences, to look beneath the rubble of violence, and to value the pleasures of intimate loving. Presenting the poetry written over the past four decades, What Can I Ask is wise, passionate, and inspirational. I so value this work and always keep it close to my heart.”
--Irena Klepfisz, Author of A Few Words in the Mother Tongue

Here is a video of Elana Dykewomon in Belgrade, the video is courtesy of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nH6_lbj9V0

amidsummernightspress.com

534

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Look At Her. Vanessa Shields. Black Moss Press. Windsor, Ontario. 2016.

Two years ago this month Today's book of poetry raved about the bawdy, brawny and bold I Am That Woman (Black Moss Press, 2013) by the incandescent Vanessa Shields. We are back for round number two.

You can see what Today's book of poetry had to say about I Am That Woman here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2014/12/i-am-that-woman-vanessa-shields-black.html

Look At Her, Shields second book of poems, picks up the torch exactly where she left it, scorching.

Only this time Shields is struggling to come to terms with a body that is changing/changed and challenging our notions of what is sensual/sexy. We find Shields firmly in the school of loving oneself and she does it well. Not through ego or narcissism but acceptance and a wicked sense of humour.

When Yelling At My Kids While

Bike Riding Could Be Sexual If

I Changed My Voice And Said

The Words To My Husband

While We Were Making Love

Wait!

Slow down

It's not safe!

Look where you're going!

I'm here

Slow down!

It's not a race!

Don't get so close!

Turn right here

Slowly

Good job!

Okay, you can speed up a bit but stay close to me

Be careful!

You have to listen to me!

Turn here!

Now wait for me

I'm coming!

...

Shields works us over with her sense of humour and then works on our reason. Motherhood to her seems as difficult and surprising as it is rewarding and Shields is candid about it, about motherhood and then about the beating of her carnal heart.

Sure, Vanessa Shields writes about Dionne Brand's hair, reads Sylvia Plath and worries about being a good mother, as many of us do, but the fireworks start loud and concussive with poems like "In My Next Life" which made Today's book of poetry howl with laughter. Our Foreign Correspondent Luba hasn't read "In My Next Life" yet but we already know it will be one of her favourite poems.

In My Next Life

I will be a slut

A fun-loving

Safe-and-clean

Let's-party-and-fuck-all-night

Kinda slut

A by-choice slut because

Sex is fun and feels good

And makes me feel alive

And I want to feel alive with as many

People as I can

As often as I can

I won't be prejudiced or picky

Prudish or proud

I will French kiss until my lips

Bleed and bruise

Because the world needs more kissing

I will bring back foreplay

I will embrace pleasure toys

I will spin in the lace of expensive lingerie

I will be a jazz singer and

Wear long red gowns with no underwear

My vagina will be at my command

As I splay on piano tops in basement bars

Smoky with lust and lies

I will be a jazz singing slut

And I'll wear wigs to match my moods

And heels to match the colour of my soul

And I'll dance every day not on a stage or with a pole

But in the moments before I spread my legs

Over under up and down

Across the slut-studded universe

When my body gets tired

When my heart gets weak

When my vagina gets dry

Because it will

It will

I'll shut down my slut-dom

Look around and find my true love

He'll be old but I'll be old too

And when we hit the sack for afternoon naps

After we put our dentures on the bedside tables

I'll fuck him like the slut I was.

...

Today's book of poetry thinks that Vanessa Shields is all about empowerment and Look At Her is her latest installment.

A quietish day in the Today's book of poetry offices so far, our morning read was slightly muted by the shovel-weary demeanour of all present. It snowed all day long yesterday here in Ottawa, that was after snowing all night long the night before. We shovelled the lane way four times and swept it once yesterday. But the poetry of Vanessa Shields sure did get our blood flowing.

Shields can sound like she is just celebrating sex, and she is, but only after she champions family, self-awareness and self-empowerment. This isn't a Kama Sutra but a primer on how women learn, mature, experience and dance with desire. And so on.

All that and Vanessa Shields even managed to work in a list poem. Bless her cotton socks.

Avoidance

I vacuum to avoid doing laundry.

I change the bed sheets to avoid vacuuming.

I fold clothes to avoid doing dishes.

I do dishes to avoid putting the folded clothes away.

I visit family to avoid doing groceries.

I do groceries to avoid cleaning the house.

I text to avoid talking on the phone.

I talk on the phone to avoid visiting someone.

I send emails to avoid making a phone call.

I read a novel to avoid writing one.

I write in my journal to avoid writing poetry.

I write poetry to avoid telling the truth.

I tell a lie to avoid feeling scared.

I eat chocolate to avoid feeling sad.

I pretend to sleep to avoid having sex.

I have sex to avoid doing laundry.

...

Vanessa Shield's Look At Her leaves no doubt about the promises made by I Am That Woman, here is a celebratory poet we can look forward to. Shields is a realist and pragmatic too and as unafraid of her passion as Eros.

As Dexter Gordon would have exclaimed, "she can cook."

Vanessa Shields

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shields has made her home, her family and her work life flourish in Windsor, ON. Her passion for writing was discovered at a very young age through the vein of writing in a journal. Her first book, Laughing Through A Second Pregnancy – A Memoir, was published by Black Moss Press in 2011 to rave reviews. In April 2013, Shields edited Whisky Sour City, an anthology of poetry about and for her hometown city of Windsor. I Am That Woman, her first book of poetry, was published in November 2013. Her poetry, short stories and photography has been published is various literary magazines. She mentors, guest speaks and teaches creative writing, and she also created Poetry On Demand, on-the-spot poetry that helps make poetry fun and accessible for all. She also created and hosts Mouth Piece, a reading series created in an effort to bring people together in story. Her latest work Look At Her was launched by Black Moss Press in the fall 2016.

BLURBS

"With Look At Her, Vanessa Shields rightfully holds her place as a Canadian poet to watch. Fiercely honest, tender, and wrenching, Shields treads into the secrets that so many of us would prefer to keep to ourselves. Unapologetic and unforgettable, Shield's voice can't be ignored."

- Liz Worth, author of No Work Finshed Here: Rewriting Andy Worhol

"There is humanity in her work that is genderless. This work is about who we have all been, are, and may someday be. Shields invites you to 'look at her'. Accept the invitation."

- Christopher Lawrence-Menard, author of Whatever It Was,and The DRAG Trilogy

"Look At Her is not a gentle read. Vanessa Shields' blistering honesty and raw unapologetic use of language marks her readers and leaves them blinking hard against the harsh, brilliant light. She tears down the comforting image of the silent, sexless female, with no opinions, no voice, nor even the desire to speak. Instead, she compels her readers to deal with the love and hate, pain and pleasure, doubt and heroism, the comples, contradictory, unresolvable mystery that is Woman. In short, Shields commands us to Look At Her, and when we do, dares us to try and look away."

- Penny-Anne Beaudoin, author of holy cards: dead women talking

Vanessa Shields

"I Am That Woman"

Video courtesy: Black Moss Press

blackmoss.com

535

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes. Cheryl Dumesnil. Pitt Poetry Series. University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, PA. 2016.

Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes (Pitt Poetry Series) by [Dumesnil, Cheryl]

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Lao-Tzu

Cheryl Dumesnil must have all the patience in the world at her fingertips to get to the clear water she shares with us in Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes.

We are a big fan of good titles for books of poetry and Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes is an absolute classic. We knew it was going to be almost impossible not to like a book with this title and a juggler without hands on the cover. We were right.

Dumesnil starts this collection with a quote from our old buddy Lao-Tzu and ends the book at "Lake Dharma" and along the way we see/hear Dumesnil fight the good fight (as John Hoppenthaler suggests), set that good example. These very human poems remind us all of what we require of love, what it takes out of us.

That I Could Keep You Like This

That you were

falling, we all knew.

How sound travels across

a morning lake is how

I hear voices calling

always -- that's what you

need to remember about me.

That you have fallen

is a fact the water

will neither swallow

nor erase.

Trust this: You will

not understand me

when I stitch sound

in the language of my mind.

The last time you left,

I carried your glass

to the sink, dunked it

in soapy water. That your

fingerprints sifted upward

like lace is what I imagined,

that I could pinch them up

off the water's surface,

press them to my lips --

A distance, by definition,

cannot be closed,

not even by sound.

-- is what I dreamed.

...

Today's book of poetry has been distracted this past week. A series of heavy snowfalls, the death of a family friend and a big old 750 page What About This - Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) have kept me from due diligence. I'd purchased the Stanford book several weeks ago and had gone through it lightly but hadn't had a chance to dig in. Well Frank Stanford is an astonishment and What About This reminded me of how exciting it was to discover a new poet I admire.

Same thing with Dumesnil. From now until the end of time I will automatically pick up anything with her brilliant name on it. Why? Same reason as Stanford. Poems about the lives we live that are so full of wonder and new reason that you don't want to finish.

Cheryl Dumesnil's Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes is just the excellent vehicle needed for Today's book of poetry to get back on track and everyone at this morning's read seemed to agree. Dumesnil's San Francisco birds enthralled Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, "Love Song for the Drag Queen at Little Orphan Andy's" did the trick for Milo, our head tech.

At the Reunion of Lost Memories

High School snorts Ritalin in a bathroom stall,

smears lipstick across the back of her hand,

snags her stiletto in her skirt hem, tears it

while slam dancing with the custodian's assistant.

Streamers droop from the ballroom ceiling,

crepe eels lolling in the fan breeze.

Fifth Grade hocks a loogie in the fruit punch

while College works hard to recall names,

anyone's names. Who painted Air Force insignias

on his '64 Mustang? Whose kiss felt like

a dead slug in her mouth? Which sorority

sister got caught poaching care packages

from the dormitory mail room? Nothing

to worry about, Old Age whispers, this is just

how it goes; even the good ones get lost --

the midwife who caught your first baby,

the coworker who let you sleep on her couch

after your divorce. At the podium, Midlife

taps the microphone, clears her throat -- this was,

after all, her idea: the chicken croquettes,

the all-star band. She wants to explain why

she's called everyone here, but before she can speak,

Etta James saunters onstage, croons, At last...

In a botched confetti drop, ripped-up secrets

flutter down, accumulating on the polyester rug,

like the snow that fell and fell that one spring day,

cloaking all the cars, covering their tracks.

...

Dumesnil is funny when she wants to be but Today's book of poetry was swayed by some deeper force at work. Dumesnil wants us to see through the veneer of our lives. Reading Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes was like having a freight train pull into the yard, car after car, solid as a rock, each one as dependable as the last and the next and each filled with its own necessary and perfectly delivered cargo.

Melodrama of the Suburban Kindergartener

You would think I had asked him to swim

naked across an alligator-spiked swamp,

my son whom I have sent walking across

a flat acre of asphalt, to his classroom,

alone. though I pressed language

into his hand: this feels scary, but it's not

dangerous; you are taking one

for the team, twenty-five yards in,

he looks back at me and melts his face

into a tragedy mask. This morning

his aunt is losing her breasts to cancer.

He doesn't know. This morning Cairo

has erupted into chaos. He has

no idea. How many kids ate hunger

for breakfast? In the car, his sick brother

coughs spit into a cup, while I watch

my blond boy shuffle away from me,

molasses pace and sobbing. This is where

survival begins: that boy finally crossing

his threshold, this mom letting him go.

...

Cheryl Dumesnil's ferociously smart poetry is exactly what Today's book of poetry needed on this cold, cold Monday. Survival songs for the new age.

Oh yes, Cheryl Dumesnil is a lesbian and it is clear a lesbian is the narrator of some of these poems. Today's book of poetry is often confused about how big of an issue this is. To ignore the obvious might imply some sort of negative implication, and to point it out sometimes implies the same. Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes rattled my cage in the best poetry ways possible, Cheryl Dumesnil meets every criteria we have.

Cheryl Dumesnil

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cheryl Dumesnil's books include the 2008 Agnes Lunch Starrett Poetry Prize winner, In Praise of Falling, the memoir Love Song for Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood, and the anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos, co-edited with Kim Addonizio.

BLURBS

“Cheryl Dumesnil transforms the seemingly useless—the discarded, the broken off, what we keep in the kitchen drawer—into proof of our humanity, asserting that it’s to the things of this world, whether they be oil-slicked puddles, cathedrals, tampons or Pink Floyd, that our lives are anchored. These poems are as tactile as that kitchen junk drawer and just as rewarding to rummage through. Each poem begs to be picked up, turned over in the palm.”

—Dorianne Laux

“Dumesnil’s precise observations, vivid images, deft humor, and brave willingness to invite in the whole of life, makes for a poetry that’s rich and meaningful. This collection gives us the world with its beauty and love and the loss that always hovers close.”

—Ellen Bass

“Dumesnil navigates the hallways of illness and childbirth with grit and grace. She offers us soaring birds, revolutions and plums. This is a book full of the love of women and sons, drag queens and last calls, and always the gospel of the body, and its constant prayer of falling.”

—Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of All You Ask for is Longing: Poems 1994-2014
“What the poet knows is this: there are no lost causes. There is loss, of course, but to love enough to take up a cause is to keep faith. Dumesnil’s collection is the good fight in miserable times; it is how we endure knowing that part of us always / stays back, while the rest marches on. This fabulous book is the part marching on.”

—John Hoppenthaler

Cheryl Dumesnil

at Radar Reading Series

Video courtesy of San Francisco Public Library

upress.pitt.edu

537

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry would like to announce the winner of the

4th Annual
Kitty Lewis
Hazel Millar
Dennis Tourbin
Poetry Prize

Stuart Ross, A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. A Buckrider Book. Wolsak and Wynn. Hamilton, Ontario. 2016.

To see Today's book of poetry blog/review of

A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/05/a-sparrow-came-down-resplendent-stuart.html

Stuart Ross

⧫⧫

Today's book of poetry would like to thank Christian McPherson and Cameron Anstee for their generous assistance and support. Today's book of poetry would also like to thank every poet and publisher who sent us books, that's what we live for.

It's been a curious year, our staff has increased in happy size and we would all like to wish you the very best for the holiday season.

Our readership has grown. Last month we had 20,000 readers. Today's book of poetry has now posted 536 blogs/reviews.

The winner of the Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize is invited to have dinner at the home offices of Today's book of poetry.

Past winners of the Prize:
2013 - Nora Gould, I See My Love More Clearly From A Distance (Brick Books)
2014 - Kayla Czaga, For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions)
2015 - Eva H.D., Rotten Perfect Mouth (Mansfield Press)

We will return in January fully rested and full of piss and vinegar.

537

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips.
Raymond Luczak. Squares & Rebels. Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2016.

Today's book of poetry would like to welcome you all back. Our entire staff has been away on various holidays and adventures but we are all back in our various saddles and excited to see what 2017 is going to bring.

2017 at Today's book of poetry is starting off with a firecracker of a collection that lives up to the promise of the glorious title. The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips is written in the rarely used nonet form, nine lines and Bob is your uncle. Luczak has forgone traditional rhyming schemes and instead gives us 82 love songs full of wonder all aimed in the direction of Walt Whitman, American poet/saint and author of Leaves of Grass.

Rayond Luczak is among a chorus of trailblazing LGBTQ and QDA poets who are changing our ways of seeing them and the world. A lot has changed since old Walt laid down the law. The timbre of these poems comes in fire engine red and firing on all cylinders.

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips

Just like how some men like to compare their dicks,

he and I compare our beards. Though eight years older,

his beard is darker, thicker, dense. Amidst his prattle

about his favorite painters (Vermeer and Leonardo),

Corinthian columns, and Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth,

he peers closely at my beard: once a fiery red,

now a cropped ginger mellowing into ashy white.

I await the flame of question in his eyes.

My answer is ready: yes, you can fondle my beard.

...

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips is part loving elegy, part eulogy, part love letter, part confessional, part sexual fantasy and more, but all of it tender, all of it like a warm and wanted embrace.

Raymond Luczak is an open door, these poems can't wait to welcome you into his conversation.

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips

Leaves of Grass had initially sprouted out of the mish-

mash of pithy lines scribbled in financial ledgers.

You'd cut and pasted clippings from here and there.

You didn't know what to do with them at first;

only when you returned from a trip to New Orleans,

where you met a man whose name is lost to all but you,

did you at last see: O passion! O sweet love! O America!

The wanton filth you self-published was a pink grenade

detonating in an atomic cloud straight from the future.

...

This morning's read, the first of the new year, was a relaxed affair. Milo, our head tech, has become a loquacious and dedicated reader so he led the charge. One of Today's book of poetry's nieces has taken up residency in the Stuart Ross Poetry and Guest Room so she joined in for the mandatory reading. If you stay under this roof you are forced to read poetry out loud, it is a law.

You'd never guess to think it but The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips goes extremely well with Pharoah Sanders Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah (Jewels of Thought, 1969). At least it did this morning.

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips

Please rescue me from the sterility of America.

Everything's been shrink-wrapped and digitized.

I can't touch or feel anything real. Damnpissshitfuck.

It's all up here, not down here or there.

It's all commercials and franchises.

Even death has its own antiseptic soap dispenser.

Advertisers use sex as their biological weapon.

Demographics are a communal sport of saturation.

Christ! Just scrape the ISBN bar code off of my DNA.

...

Today's book of poetry wants to be gender aware and gender sensitive and writers live Raymond Luczak certainly help to broaden our participation in that particular conversation. But for the purposes of Today's book of poetry this conversation would not be taking place if we didn't like the poems, period.

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips is a hearty, lusty and loving romp. Luczak steps across time for love and what could be more romantic than that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RAYMOND LUCZAK (pronounced with a silent "c") is perhaps best known for his books, films, and plays.

He was raised in Ironwood, a small mining town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Number seven in a family of nine children, he lost much of his hearing due to double pneumonia at the age of eight months.

After high school graduation, Luczak went on to Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C., where he earned a B.A. in English, graduating magna cum laude. He learned American Sign Language (ASL) and became involved with the deaf community, and won numerous scholarships in recognition of his writing, including the Ritz-Paris Hemingway Scholarship. He took various writing courses at other schools in the area, which culminated in winning a place in the Jenny McKean Moore Fiction Workshop at the George Washington University.

In 1988, he moved to New York City. In short order, his play Snooty won first place in the New York Deaf Theater’s 1990 Samuel Edwards Deaf Playwrights Competition, and his essay "Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer" won acceptance as a cover story for Christopher Street magazine. Soon after Alyson Publications asked him to edit Eyes of Desire: A Deaf Gay & Lesbian Reader, which, after its appearance in June 1993, eventually won two Lambda Literary Award nominations (Best Lesbian and Gay Anthology, and Best Small Press Book). He hasn't stopped since!

In 2005, he relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he continues to write, edit, and publish.

BLURBS

“The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips is an unabashed celebration of one man’s relationship to Walt Whitman: poet, publisher, lover, impromptu nurse, artistic creation, organism, man in full. Like Whitman himself, Raymond Luczak arrives at an unified vision of love in all of its poetic manifestations: sensual, sexual, and textual, a source of electric vistas and voluptuous possibilities of spiritual renewal. He provides precisely the kind of tender reassurance we cannot find words for some nights, but which we so desperately need.”
—Eric Thomas Norris, co-author of Nocturnal Omissions

“In The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips, Raymond Luczak has awoken entwined in the arms of the American bard. And here is the bed chat and letters from one poet to another, a communion of fleshly living. Luczak has created a work in the tradition of Ginsberg's odyssean dreaming of the lost America of love—a vibrant examination of what Whitman called a ‘richest fluency’ of historical gaiety and modern loving, and a clear transmission of honest affection across the ages.”
—Dan Vera, author of Speaking Wiri Wiri

Here is the video trailer for Raymond Luczak's The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm_UNgAfddM

squaresandrebels.com

538

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
The Persistence of Longing. Lynne Knight. Terrapin Books. West Caldwell, New Jersey. 2016.

"What if memory and longing were one,"

- Lynne Knight

Lynne Knight is poet brave in some rather spectacular ways in The Persistence of Longing. Today's book of poetry doesn't like using the word brave to describe poems but Knight is a Jedi-laser-ray-gun poet who cuts through to the emotional truth with eviscerating effect.

It's so easy to read these robust narrative gems that you might overlook the fact that these poems are rock solid. Knight is building solid ships and then she sends them out onto dangerous seas.

The Snow Couple

I used to wait at the window for lake-effect snow.

First wind, then a thin smattering of flakes

swirling suddenly white while the village

disappeared and my house with it,

the husband drunk and asleep on the couch

or not yet home, missing as he was in dreams

where I killed him without knowing who it was,

waking to panic that I'd done a thing so horrible,

some night wondering if I really had killed,

the dream so real, as the vanishing house

seemed real while I stared into the silent rush

of snow, never thinking I'd be gone, too, then,

until the night the car smashed the maple tree

at the edge of the lawn, metal crumpling, a horn

unstoppable, then through the snow human cries

so pitiful I grabbed my coat and ran

to my husband, banged up a little, bloodied,

but all right, so I led him inside, I made coffee,

I tended his wounds, wondering If I would

ever awake, if I would ever stop feeling this

snow pour from my hands, my mouth,

covering him, the table, the rising floor.

...

Today's book of poetry was reading Knight's poem "Vessel" which ends with this great line,

"the boat drifting, the birds continuing their indifferent song."

and I couldn't help but think of Auden and his beautiful "Musee des beaux Arts" and how it conveys such wonder, dread, despair and the on-going dilemma that despite our individual dramas and heartbreaks we remain mere specks of things.

The Persistence of Longing is a catalogue of love and the transgressions that ensue in its name. Knight offers both a tender embrace and a healthy dose of fiery scorn. Knight isn't playing around, she's ready for love or she's ready to kick the crap out of love, whatever needs must.

Strategy

Wild turkeys swarm the neighbor's bank,

pecking at all the new ivy shoots, Bark!

I tell the dog, who stands statue-mute

staring through the fence. Bark! Even my voice

fails to alarm them. Stupid birds, sauntering

down the road like people, waiting until a car

is almost upon them before straying from danger.

They've probably eaten all the impatiens

by the front gate and mangled the azaleas.

Anything bright, they're on it. The neighbor

left his rhododendrons to die because they take

so much water, and we're in a serious drought,

but one rhodie managed a sole blossom.

I dare one of the turkeys to fly up to it.

They peck and saunter, saunter and peck.

The dog loses interest. I check the time.

Eight minutes, and I haven't thought of you.

...

Today's book of poetry has nothing but admiration for these poems because we can see that Knight is fully committed. If love requires flames then Knight is all about adding gasoline to the blaze. She'll fight for love or burn down the house around it to bury it if necessary. These are survivor poems, hand-and-heart-held-to-the-flame-of-love survivor poems.

Knight's poems are both elegant and sad but she is always right on the beat. You can feel the heart of these poems as they navigate the dark streets of love.

The Unintended Lecture on Desire

Hard labor was good for you, he said,

and by now sweat splotched his shirt,

his face had runnels of sweat, like the four

of us, two couples ripped rotted shingles

from the house, mid-July, humid, windless,

already my arms ached and the sweat stung

my eyes, but it would be good for me, I knew,

not just in the way he said but because I wanted

to rid my body of desire for him, forbidden

desire, since he was my best friend's husband,

so I slid my hammer to get purchase and pulled

until a shingle loosened, again, again, he said

maybe we should stop for a beer but I wanted

to keep going, I wiped my eyes with the bandana

my own husband handed me, and my best friend

said she didn't want a beer, she wanted a long

hot soak, so I saw the two of them making love

in the hot tub, and I wished we were shingling

the house instead of unshingling it, so I could

hammer, hammer, hammer desire away,

and then he said he'd been reading a book

about perspective, it got a little too technical

in parts but was worth the slog because of

the reminder that no one could see what someone

else saw, think about it, ever this, he said,

even the four of us out here in this bloody heat

ripping shingles I should've ripped five years ago,

not one of us can see what the others see.

I'm here, you're there, he said, and that's all

there is to it: we're alone, we're in this alone.

...

Our morning read has become my favourite part of the day. Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, led the charge this morning. Lynne Knight's The Persistence of Longing filled up our office, her emotionally charged yet available voice rang out with piercing poignancy, love-jagged dreams and tales of resiliency, even hope.

Lynne Knight has visited the pages of Today's book of poetry before. Back in September of 2015 we posted a blog about Ito Naga's I Know (Je Sais) that was translated by Knight. You can check that out here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2015/09/i-know-je-sais-ito-naga-sixteen-rivers.html

Lynne Knight

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynne Knight, a former fellow in poetry at Syracuse University, taught high school English in Upstate New York, then moved to California where she taught part-time at San Francisco Bay Area community colleges and began writing poetry again. She now devotes herself full-time to writing. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections, three of them prize winners, and four chapbooks, three of them also prize winners. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review. Her other awards and honors include publication in Best American Poetry, the Prix de l’Alliance Française 2006, a PSA Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize, and an NEA grant. Please visit her website.

BLURB
I love these poems, love how they sweep me along, sweep me up into the arms of the kind of longing that seems unsayable, untranslatable, impossible to describe in any language, with any words—the words turning back into breath, as this poet says, as she creates the sense of that longing, itself, in words, in these sometimes-breathless lines, sometimes against the restraint of form, the sweet ache of rhyme, creating that sense of urgency that’s so like desire, itself, and the sense of danger that infuses even the deepest pleasure, especially the deepest pleasure. I’ve never read poems that seem to me more accurate about love and desire and sexual relationships and their almost-inevitable shattering—darkly gorgeous and expertly-crafted poems, with a white-hot lyric intensity and a narrative pull that becomes cumulative, an erotic veering toward doom. And yet, the persistence of longing is the life force, too, refusing to exhaust itself: How could anything in the universe be undying / when everything rushed forward, trailing light?

- Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia

terrapinbooks.com

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Even Now. Hugo Claus. Selected and Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer. Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, New York. 2004/2013.

Today's book of poetry often listens to a random selection of jazz recordings from our own collection when we are in the office and as I sat down to type this Toots Thielemans was playing "Bluesette". Now that I'm a little familiar with Hugo Claus it strikes me as marvelous serendipity.

Today's book of poetry is embarrassed to tell you that until Archipelago Books sent us Even Now by Hugo Claus we had never heard of him. Hugo Maurice Julien Claus (1929-2008) was Belgian, wrote prose and poetry, he was a celebrated painter, directed films, was a celebrated playwright and a translator.

I'm quoting from the cover when I tell you that Claus won every Dutch literary award on offer and that in 2002 Hugo Claus won the prestigious Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his body of work.

You are reading about Hugo Claus here because Today's book of poetry fell hard for Mr. Claus while reading Even Now. These startling poems begin with a stunner from his 1948 book Registration, and it just doesn't feel dated. Claus was so far ahead of the curve that his early poems still feel fresh, vibrant and contemporary.

We've known it now for centuries,

that the moon is dangling by a thread

attached to heaven, hell or nothing at all.

That the thick blue paint of night

is drooping down into the streets

to wrap around you like a deep blue robe

this evening when you head for home,

dawdling ne'er-do-wells, theatre and recital-goers,

nighthawks, people who are alive,

and that the night will soon be washed away

like cheap blue ink from years ago

and afterwards the pale, pink skin

of heaven, hell or nothing at all

will shine through and no longer pale,

especially not the pink nothing like a girl's

soft and salty sex,

and afterwards heaven and hell and nothing at all

will dry out, go mouldy and decay,

just as old loves and bad habits,

doses of the clap, faithful pieces of furniture

and bunker from pre-1914 must die,

with no one's help, in a corner, on a sandstone slab,

like cunning old crabs must die.

...

It is hard to believe how modern the poetry of Hugo Claus feels as it rattles around inside of your head. David Colmer's translations feel seamless, as though he were simply channeling, and the resulting poems timeless.

Just look at this little masterpiece from 1963's An Eye for an Eye and try not to think of Charles Bukowski.

I Him

My soul says, Run,

even if it costs you money and love

So says my soul

But I don't move an inch, I can't

Because my soul, the snake, is still mad about that little

black-haired bitch!

...

Claus can be as frank, hardcore and beautiful as Buk, but his range is unlimited. Claus tackled Shakespeare and wrestled him to the ground, dukes it out with the Sanskrit poem "Chaurapanchasika" and comes out on top with a series of short sharp poems that are as intoxicating as liquor.

This morning's read was a real barn-burner. We wanted to call in our "all things Dutch" expert Brian "Pistol" Peet to give these poems a whirl but he couldn't get our of his snowed-in lane way. Nature and the city plow have built an ice dyke just for him. We settled for the regular staff read and hit it out of the park anyway. The poems of Hugo Claus as translated by David Colmer roll of the tongue like they were buttered.

Hugo Claus was a busy guy and we here at Today's book of poetry have a new poetry hero to add to our pantheon of Gods. Make no mistake about Claus, he caught us hook, line and sinker. Hugo Claus can burn with the best of them.

Envoi

My poems stand around yawning.

I'll never get used to it. They've lived here

long enough.

Enough, I'm kicking them out, I don't want to wait

until their toes get cold.

I want to hear the throb of the sun

or my heart, that treacherous hardening sponge,

unhindered by their clamour and confusion.

My poems aren't a classic fuck,

they're vulgar babble or all too noble bluster.

In winter their lips crack,

in spring they go flat on their back of the first hot day,

they ruin my summer

and in autumn they smell of women.

Enough. For twelve more lines on this page,

I'll keep them under my wing

then give them a kick up the arse.

Go somewhere else to beat your drum and rhyme on the cheap,

somewhere else to tremble in fear of twelve readers

and a critic who's asleep.

Go now, poems, on your light feet

you haven't stamped hard on the old earth,

where the graves grin at the sight of their guests,

one body piled on the other.

Go now and stagger off to her

who I don't know.

...

Today's book of poetry is slack-jawed with awe. Even Now is a towering book of poetry and a remarkable achievement. Poems this ready to read don't come along often enough.

Our new job will be to search for whatever other Hugo Claus titles we can find and that is the biggest compliment we know how to give.

Hugo Claus

(1929-2002)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The prose, poetry, and paintings of Hugo Claus (1929-2008) were as influential as they were groundbreaking. His novels include The Sorrow of Belgium, his magnum opus of postwar Europe, as well as Wonder, Desire, The Swordfish, Mild Destruction, Rumors, and The Duck Hunt. His corpus of poetry is immense and stunningly diverse. In addition to receiving every major Dutch-language literary prize, Claus received the 2002 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his body of work.

BLURBS

"Astonishing. There is a richness of feeling, exactness of imagery, tender skepticism of the body and its wants - I found myself thinking of Donne, Sterne, Cendrars, Bukowski and Celine all at once. Colmer's translation is uncanny, feels as if every word is the one the poet intended. Yes, here it is! Hugo Claus a permanent part of poetic landscape, opened at last."

- Robert Kelly

"Nobody could write so rampantly about the wild veracity of sensual love for women and life than Hugo Claus. To read him is to be shot into verbal ecstasy. Fortunately these translations do justice to much of this."

- Antjie Krog

"Claus's work has been called a cosmos in its own right... Yet this Promethean artist with his Burgundian exuberance and prolixity... is, like W.B. Yeats, capable of stunning simplicity."

- The Independent

"Claus rages against the decay of the physical self while desire remains untamed. From the beginning, his poetry has been marked by an uncommon mix of intelligence and passion. He has such light-fingered control that art becomes invisible."

- J.M. Coetzee

David Colmer

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

David Colmer is an Australian writer and translator who lives in Amsterdam. He is the author of a novel and a collection of short stories, both published in Dutch translation in the Netherlands, and the translator of more than twenty books: novels, children's literature, and poetry. He is a four-time winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize and won the 2009 Biennial NSW Premier and PEN Translation Prize for his body of work. In 2010 his translation of Gerbrand Bakker’s Boven is het stil (The Twin) won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

archipelagobooks.org

540

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
Nineteen Fifty-Seven. Jim McLean. Coteau Books. Regina, Saskatchewan. 2016.

Jim McLean isn't about to concede an inch to fashion. Nineteen Fifty-Seven reads like someone stepped on a very articulate cat's tail. This is tough-guy caterwauling of the highest order. McLean isn't in a bad mood in every poem but there is a Joe Btfsplk at the corner of every page and a devil on his shoulder.

These poems are train yard secrets, hobo's taunts and Moose Jaw lullabies. McLean has some serious narrative gifts and these poems let him show it. McLean's Nineteen Fifty-Seven is packed to the rafters with salty wisdom.

Heartbreak Hotel

R. Smith & Sons contracted for the railway,

feeding the gangs of men who came each spring

from the unemployment lines and the jails

and the reserves and the soup kitchens and River Street

to lay steel in the raw early mornings with their pitiable

shabby suit coats and soft, mushy shoes,

a few with caps.

The foremen were tough and seasoned and had to be,

it was still, back then, a long journey

from Moose Jaw to Chaplin, Old Jim,

the cook, was ex-army, 77 years old, his muscle

turned soft, turned to fat, he used to say with regret.

Up at five every morning, first thing he taught me

was not to lean my elbows on the wash stand

when I scrubbed my face in the early dawn.

It was a military thing, I guess, and he would grunt

with satisfaction to see me bend at the waist,

elbows up, over the enameled basin.

It was easy for me to give him that.

He was a pretty good old guy, Polish,

he said he was. He watched, let you show him

what you were made of.

Bill was just about as old as the cook,

skinny as a rail, with a wife at home.

No business being there,
except he needed the money, I guess.

We'd peel potatoes together every morning
for the noon meal and again in the afternoon

to get ready for supper, and talk a bit.
We'd eat our meal after the men

had gone back to the track
or to their bunks at the end of the working day

and Bill would always eat too much,
as if he was trying to store it up,

yet he never put on any weight, he'd just
get sick and then be sorry.

Bill treated me all right
and I liked him but I never wanted

to get that old and be that poor. It was 1956
and I was a kid and on my own out there.

The cook liked the way I could carry whole sides
of beef, his own strength gone,

and he gave me lots of other things to do
but my main job was to wash dishes

I washed those dishes from the meals of those hundred
or more men three times a day

with water hauled from the tender and heated
boiling hot on the stove and I sang

alone, away from everybody, at the top of my lungs
with my hands in the soapy water up to my elbows

every song I knew, Hank Snow and Williams
The Platters and Webb Pierce and I can't remember them all

and, of course, Heartbreak Hotel, by that new guy,
that I played every day on the juke-box

in the Chaplin Cafe beside the tracks when I bought a Coke
and sat on a stool like teen-agers you would see

on television and learned all the words for singing later
away from everybody

...

Any poet who hearkens the spirits of William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren and Charles Bukowski is going to get a piece of my time. Throw in an entirely sweet 80th birthday ode to the King, Elvis Aaron Presley and Today's book of poetry is a your new fan.

Jim McLean travels back and forth in time with these poems, we see him as a young man and earning the regrets he'll carry later and then full circle we hear the mature older man's wisdom. McLean's hero carries some heavy water in these poems but there are no "woe is me" moments. McLean is old school all the way.

My Brother, Who I Looked Out for
When We Were Kids

it was the tenth or the fiftieth
or the hundredth time
we brought him to the house
and called his sponsor who didn't even want
to bother with him any more he said
he just want to kill himself, there's nothing
you can do

and it was true, he looked like death, his skin
translucent, waxy I said
you've got to get straight, get a job
and he laid there on the couch and said
I can't work out in the cold
I need an office job, an executive job
and that was bad, because I knew then
how hopeless things were

and he promised, for the hundredth time
to stop drinking and to go to the meetings
and we piled groceries into bags
and I drove him to the place where he lived
Wong said he owed last month's rent
and I paid that and the next month in advance
and I made him give me a receipt

he sold the groceries
because somebody saw him an hour later on the street
with his woman and said
by the way they were falling down
they must have got hold of something
it was a thing to crush you
we couldn't do anything and we couldn't stop trying

finally, my father came down from the Coast
he ended up drinking with him, told us
we didn't do anything to help him
when he said that he was lucky he was my father
he bought two tickets, took him back
to Vancouver on the train
afterward he wrote a letter, saying things
hadn't worked out saying he'd been
wrong, saying he'd left and he didn't
know where he was

a long time later he wrote again telling us
about how he'd come across
a newspaper item, just a few lines
buried in a back page that said he died
alone in some flophouse and that the city
had buried him as having
no known next of kin

I wrote my father a letter, he needed something
was looking for something
from me and told him we all had tried
I said he had taken that wrong turn
and but for the grace of God
it could have been me
it was nobody's fault

...

Today's book of poetry had a good time rooting through Nineteen Fifty-Seven because Mclean doesn't really ever take his foot off of the gas. These poems pound through the gears and when you come out the other side you know you've been taken for ride. This is a robust read filled with characters you've already met, people you already know. McLean's tales are writ large and aren't afraid to stomp their feet as they march across the page.

McLean's Nineteen Fifty-Seven both convinces and reminds Today's book of poetry of just how beautifully horrible we humans can be to each other and how redemption is only a poem away.

My Father's Hat

I bought a hat, a fedora
and bent down the brim

on the front right side and trained it
with a binder clip

The first time my sister saw it she said
My God, you look just like Dad

and I looked in the mirror
and she was right

and I thought about all those
little pieces of paper he used to fill

with strange cryptic columns
of numbers and I thought about

how one day he threw everything away
his job, years of service

sold the house, moved us far away
from our school and our friends

like we were being punished for something
like he was punishing himself

It was hard at first
but we were young and resilient

and bounced back, some of us
and I learned not to blame him

or myself or the world and searched
until I found all the little pieces

and put them back together and never
threw away anything important

and I remembered, years later
stopping to visit him in Vancouver

sitting mostly silent until a decent interval
had passed, getting up, saying

I wanted to walk along English Bay
while I was here and he, surprising me

offered I'll go with you
and as we watched the tide he said

You've done all right for yourself
which is about as close as he ever came.

...

Jim McLean must be one tough old son of a B, there is some hard railroading in these poems, the toughest kind of love. It's clear McLean kissed the wrong gal once or twice and feels some sort of way about it. This is hearty, vibrant and compelling narrative poetry with a brylcreemed ducktail full of memory on the side.

Jim McLean

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim McLean had a long career with Canadian Pacific Railway and with Transport Canada, living and working in various Canadian locations. He is an original member of the Moose Jaw Movement poetry group, and his work has appeared in magazines and anthologies and on CBC Radio. He is the author of The Secret Life of Railroaders and co-author of Wildflowers Across the Prairies. His illustrations have appeared on book covers and in several literary and scientific publications.

Jim McLean

reading Elvis Agonistes

from Nineteen Fifty-Seven

video: Coteau Books

coteaubooks.com

541

DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

Today's book of poetry:
The Man Under My Skin. Juliana Gray. River City Poetry Series, Volume Five. River City Publishing. Montgomery, Alabama. 2005.

Today's book of poetry has never met Juliana Gray and knows next to nothing about her but we would bet serious money that Juliana Gray adores Carson McCullers almost as much as we do. It could be entirely fanciful thinking on our dimwitted behalf but The Man Under My Skin could easily be a book the grown up Mick Kelly might have written after she walked out of McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.

These poems are the keenest sort of observational poems you can get, they look right through to cold hard truth. Juliana Gray navigates a romance in the Mississippian wilderness, sad poverty, the internal dialogue of a child-killer, and so on, always with an air of knowing grace/gravitas.

Skin

Hard to think of it as organ, mass

of tissue like the liver, lungs or heart,

a bodily machine performing tasks

designed to keep the world and flesh apart.

Its beauty is an accident, its gloss

and dimpled softness, pallor and heated rose--

this silken radiance comes at the loss

of spikes or armored scales. We're all exposed.

Yet like those other human engines, the skin

betrays itself with ailments, tailor-made

diseases, blights that turn the porcelain

complexion to a withered masquerade.

And like the heart, it suffers from too much

of what it lives on, dying to be touched.

...

Today's book of poetry felt at home with the poems in The Man Under My Skin, these are poems with characters that are familiars, some of them have their eye on the ball, some are doomed to worse fates. Gray has a darkish sense of humour. Today's book of poetry is convinced all good writers from the American South have a big old Gothic Devil/Angel dyad firmly on their shoulder.

Gray can be playful but she's the cat and you're the mouse. These poems are intense and fully formed but they are never predictable.

To a Five-Cent Package of Writing Paper

All the children in my father's class

drew names, and all the kids but one -- the boy

who had drawn my father -- brought their gifts to the tree.

The teacher, realizing they were short,

rifled her desk for something a boy might like.

All she found was you. He fingered the band

that held you, the Christmas gift, together. Then

my third-grade father saw that he was poor.

My sister, and I were overcome with gifts

we could not name and which he loved to explain --

puzzles, boomerangs, a bamboo flute.

He told me his Christmas story one of those nights

when he felt he could trust me, a glass of scotch in his hand.

His gift to me: an inherited sense of shame,

history, the futility of wealth.

...

It was Grand Central Station in our offices this morning and it is continuing into the afternoon. As a result our morning read was a somewhat condensed affair but that didn't stop Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, from knocking several of Juliana Gray's fine poems out of the proverbial park.

The Man Under My Skin reads like the kind of confession a slight fever can elicit, passionate and warm to the touch.

Wanton Soup

Don't think of it as misprint, a menu slip

of a Chinese tongue. In fact, don't think at all.

The silken waitress watches, reads our lips

sounding out desire in whispered drawls.

She calls to the kitchen for number sixty-nine

and chooses serving bowls of scarlet lacquer,

enamel chopsticks, spoons, two cups of wine,

a dish of chiles bright as firecrackers.

The wait's an agony of subtle touch,

a glance, a brush, the work of seeming chaste.

We bite our lips, holding back so much

desire, aching, dying for a taste.

At last we drink our bowls of piping broth,

unzip and grope beneath the tablecloth.

...

The Man Under My Skin was published in 2005. More recently Juliana Gray has published a second book of poetry, Roleplay (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the 2010 Orphic Prize.

Today's book of poetry will continue to blog about "older" titles as well as the most recent releases as long as publishers will send them to us. We are still convinced that until you read a book the first time it is going to be new to you.

Julian Gray

Photograph by poet Catherine Staples

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Alabama, Juliana Gray teaches at Auburn University. During the summers, she works on the staff of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is the author of the chapbook History in Bones, published in 2001 by Kent State University Press as part of its Wick Poetry Series. Her poems have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Yalobusha Review, Sundog, Poetry East, The Formalist, The Louisville Review, Stories From the Blue Moon Café Volume III, and The Alumni Grill 2. Samples of her creative non-fiction can be found in River Teeth, and Cornbread Nation 2.

BLURBS

"The poems in The Man Under My Skin are fully imagined and keenly observant, funny and passionate, unpredictable and, in their formal poise, just right. Juliana Gray writes about fundamental issues of loving and being loved, of happiness or acceptance in the midst of loss, of community in the midst of isolation, or isolation in the midst of community. Her imagination is restless, big-hearted, mature, intense. Her wit is dry but never arid. A beautiful book in its own right, The Man Under My Skin marks the opening of a significant career."

- Alan Shapiro

"The sights, smells, tastes, and touches of the South, my South, are everywhere present in Juliana Gray's poems. But most poignant are the measured rhythms, tonal modulations, and considered words -- all familiar sounds that echo here. Reading Gray brings to mind a summer evening on a front porch, the steady creaking of a comfortable rocker, the clink of ice cubes in a glass, and a voice -- warm, witty, wicked, and wise -- speaking from neighborly dark."

- R.S. Gwynn

Juliana Gray

Roleplay Poetry Reading

Video: Alfred University Bergren Forum

rivercitypublishing.com

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DISCLAIMERS

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything. We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

New York, 1960 - Barry Gifford (Curbside Splendor)

Après Satie – For Two and Four Hands - Dean Steadman (Brick Books)

If I Were In A Cage I'd Reach Out For You - Adèle Barclay (Nightwood Editions)

Pacific Standard Time - Kevin Opstedal (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Disinheritance - John Sibley Williams (Apprentice House Press)

Homefront - Childhood Memories of WWII - Peggy Trojan (Evening Street Press)

Primary Source - Jason Schneiderman (Red Hen Press)

And the cat says... - Susan L. Helwig (Quattro Books)

All Of Us Reticent, Here, Together - Stephen Brockwell (Mansfield Press)

Tiller North - Rosa Lane (Sixteen Rivers Press)

ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация - Moez Surani (Book Thug)

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What Can I Ask - New and Selected Poems 1975 - 2014 - Elana Dykewomon (A Midsummer Night's Press & Sinister Wisdom)

Look At Her - Vanessa Shields (Black Moss Press)

Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes - Cheryl Dumesnil (Pitt Poetry Series/University of Pittsburgh Press)

TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY - 4th Annual Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize

The Kiss Of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips - Raymond Luczak (Squares & Rebels)

The Persistence of Longing - Lynne Knight (Terrapin Books)

Even Now - Hugo Claus (Archipelago Books)

Nineteen Fifty-Seven - Jim McLean (Coteau Books)

The Man Under My Skin - Juliana Gray (River City Publishing)

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