When I Was Straight - Julie Marie Wade (A Midsummer Night's Press)

March 20, 2017, 7:42 am

≫ Next: The Art of the Lathe - B.H. Fairchild (Alice James Books)

≪ Previous: How to Draw a Rhinoceros - Kate Sutherland (Book Thug)

Today's book of poetry:
When I Was Straight. Julie Marie Wade. A Midsummer Night's Press. Body Language 11. New York, New York. 2014.

It's only every once in a while I get to read a book of poetry like Julie Marie Wade's When I Was Straight. They just don't come along all that often. Why? Because writing one fine poem is hard work -- writing a book full of them is almost impossible. Wade never misses a beat, if she were shooting arrows the bullseye would be full.

When I Was Straight is a teeter totter of excellence, a balancing act of humour and pathos. Wade marches right into the middle of all our misconceptions about what it is to be queer and comes out the other side in full pride stride.

When I Was Straight

Everything came to me vicariously -- a promise,

a post-script, a preview of coming attractions.

Desire a quiet rumour that rippled through the halls.

At the cinema, someone always paid for popcorn, a soda

with two straws, little licorice candies.

I loved to sit in the back row & watch

till all the credits rolled.

"You have a gift," the blond boy said, "for stalling."

Later, in a twin bed in a college dorm, I spoke without

thinking--

"I like you. Let's get this over with."

His pink mouth amazed, so wide & round.

"Did you hear what you just said?" he asked.

I hadn't been listening.

...

These confessional poems are as celebratory as they are sensational. Wade is so damned charming and at ease in the world that the big declarations she is tattooing into your senses don't hurt a bit.

Julie Marie Wade might have also considered a career as a stand-up comic because her timing is Rolex and her punch lines all George Foreman.

Today's book of poetry was entertained at every turn. Wade is wicked smart and it shows in every poem. She never employs the heavy hand but we are certain she has one when needed.

When My

Mother Learns

I Am A Lesbian

At first, silence, & then a thud of breath as if

her throat has slid through the chute of her lungs

& landed, heavy -- like a stone -- like a sword

lodged suddenly inside it.

"This explains why you don't wear make-up!" she wails.

A snap -- a pulsing panic pulled back & lightly

camouflaged as fear: "What will I tell my friends?

How can I tell my friends? I can never tell my friends!"

Finally, fatigued & determined: "No one must know."

I give her permission to lie -- privilege she takes

as right. I promise her nothing has changed except

the second chromosome of the body resting next to me.

She asks, not wanting the answer: "I suppose you have

to sleep in the same bed?"

- No, in sleeping bags, Mom, cocooned on separate couches

still wrapped in our swaddling clothes. -

I could have said it, but I didn't.

No tolerance for the Absurd.

My mother's voice, all tissue paper & cellophane,

turns tearful, liquid in its pain: "Where did we go wrong?"

I want to tell her not to forgive me, plead through

the twisted wires that she will not waste her prayers.

"We raised you with God's laws," she says.

"We told you to be pure."

"You raised me to love," I say.

"You told me to be happy."

- But she didn't mean this way, didn't mean this way.

Dear God, she didn't mean this way. -

I watch out the window, sigh.

Already prayers are streaming up the sky.

...

We had a splendid read in the Today's book of poetry offices this morning. It almost feels like spring in Ottawa today and our winter crazy staff are now willing to suspend their disbelief. Everyone intoning a brief incantation of "please, no more snow!"

So, it was high stepping optimism ruling the floor this morning with Julie Marie Wade's When I Was Straight providing the fire and gender works.

Wade didn't get to her gracious heights without some other blazers cutting a path and setting a trail. Wade doffs her respectful hat to Maureen Seaton and her poem "When I Was Straight" and to Denise Duhamel and her poem "When I Was A Lesbian." Wade tells us in her notes that When I Was Straight would simply not exist without the influence of Seaton and Duhamel.

When An Old

Classmate Learns

I Am A Lesbian

"Oh my God! I knew it! I always knew it. I was

like Julie is so gay, & people were like oh,

whatever, you just think everybody's gay because

it's an all-girls school, but I knew I wasn't gay, &

I knew most of those girls weren't gay, so I was

like fuck you, Jasmine, go suck on one of your

Jolly Rancher rings! Do you remember those?

So, how's it going? Do you have a girlfriend or

something? I have to tell you in college I had a

gay roommate, & she got lucky like every single

night. Seriously. I'd come back to the room &

there'd be some ribbon tied around the door,

so I'd have to hang out by the vending

machines in the lobby looking like a total loser.

I never saw the girls go, through, I guess they

must have gone out the fire escape or

something. Nobody thinks there would be that

many gay girls in Iowa, you know, but I guess

they're kind of everywhere now. Do you still

live on the West Coast or what? If I were gay

I would be like San Francisco, here I come, but

truth be told, it's kind of dirty. My boyfriend took

me there once -- we're actually engaged so

technically he's my fiance now, but you know,

he wasn't then, so -- we just walked around a lot &

got some of that good chocolate & saw the seals.

& I was like hey, isn't there some really cool old prison

that you can see if you take a ferry from here, & then

he was like San Francisco is full of fairies, ha, ha!

I hope that doesn't offend you. I mean, I thought

it was funny, but my boyfriend is like totally down

with gay people. He would really like you because

you're smart & it's kind of hot when a girl isn't

into you at all, you know? Well, I guess you would

want a girl to be into you, huh? So scratch that.

But I mean most girls are always trying to get with

him & then I have to be like whoa, hands off, that's

my man. Sometimes I think it would be so much

easier to be gay. It would just take all the pressure

off. I wouldn't have to get my hair done or worry

how my boobs looked, & if somebody called me

fat, I could just be like I'm a lesbian, douchebag.

I mean, seriously, do you even have to wax?

...

Wade has no qualms about using humour/sarcasm to get us where we need to go. When I Was Straight is one of those books you need to get into the hands of every queer person you know because it will make them feel better about the world. Then we need to get When I Was Straight into the hands of every straight person because it will make them smarter.

Julie Marie Wade kills it.

Julie Marie Wade

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Marie Wade (Seattle, 1979) completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012.

She is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010), selected for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series; Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011), selected for the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize.

Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University and a regular reviewer for Florida Book Review, Lambda Literary Review, and The Rumpus.

She lives with her partner, Angie Griffin, and their two cats in Dania Beach.

BLURB

“Julie Marie Wade’s lush post-confessional poems are unabashed in their desire, tentative then bold in their knowledge. They’re sparkly talismans to transform and transport us, delicacies with creamy insides to fill us up. WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT is a profound ‘before and after’ examination of the self, complete with cultural and family commentary—delightful, heartbreaking, magic and real stories with a multitude of prepositions to guide us: a gifted young poet’s coming to, coming out, coming jubilantly back into self. ”

- Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

amidsummernightspress.com

563

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.

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"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies. Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

↧

The Art of the Lathe - B.H. Fairchild (Alice James Books)

March 22, 2017, 11:07 am

≫ Next: Star Journal - Selected Poems - Christopher Buckley (Pitt Poetry Series/University of Pittsburgh Press)

≪ Previous: When I Was Straight - Julie Marie Wade (A Midsummer Night's Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Art of the Lathe. B.H. Fairchild. Alice James Books. University of Maine at Farmington. Farmington, Maine. 1998.

1999 Pen Center USA West Poetry Award
1999 William Carlos Williams Award
1999 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
1998 National Book Award Finalist
1997 Beatrice Hawley Award

For many knowledgeable poetry fans it will be old news that B.H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe is a contemporary classic. Today's book of poetry got Fairchild's gem in the mail yesterday and as a result we are sailing slightly off course today.

With our vast resources Today's book of poetry has started to gather foreign correspondents. We currently have Otis wandering through the poetry cellars of Sicily searching for treasure, he will be returning soon. Our latest addition to the staff is a trumpet playing be-bop artist from St. Louis, Mark Twang.

Mark grew up in reasonably normal environs but somewhere early on someone dropped a Pork Pie hat on his noggin' and he hasn't been quite right since. Twang has been raiding his own vast library to send pieces of gold north. Twang sent David Lee to our door and you will be hearing much more about Mr. Lee in the near future because he is a monster. We had a thing, instantly, for David Lee. So we put him in the system.

The system wouldn't wait for B.H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe. Today's book of poetry apologizes for not having read it before but you simply can't read everything, or find it. Twang had sent us individual poems by B.H. Fairchild in his letters, along with quotes from Sonny Rollins and a couple of Crying Charlies. Today's book of poetry was instantly convinced by those poems. When The Art of the Lathe arrived we knew no one would object if Fairchild skipped his place in line.

The Art of the Lathe is an eye-opening deal breaker of extraordinary beauty. Fairchild uses some deep sonar of the human spirit to get inside of the reader and then sets off bombs of reason. The Art of the Lathe is the real deal. When Twang sent it to us he included a note where he suggested that The Art of the Lathe may be the best, pound for pound, book of poetry he has ever read. I happen to know for a fact that Mark Twang has read, and understood, more poetry than I have so I take his opinion to heart. That and he's been right about everything else he has told us.

So when The Art of the Lathe arrived I dug in.

Dear reader please believe me when I tell you that Mark Twang was right as rain. The Art of the Lathe may be the finest book of poetry I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Body and Soul

Half-numb, guzzling bourbon and Coke from coffee mugs,

our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling

the facts but mauling the truth, and my friend's father begins

to lay out with the slow ease of a blues ballad a story

about sandlot baseball in Commerce, Oklahoma decades ago.

These were men's teams, grown men, some in their thirties

and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs,

sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music

whanging in their ear, little white rent houses to return to

where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores

and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul

in the bathtub stroking their husband's wrist tattoo and smoking

Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K.

Well, you get the idea. Life goes on, the next day is Sunday,

another ball game, and the other team shows up one man short.

They say, we're one man short, but can we use this boy,

he's only fifteen years old, and at least he'll make a game.

They take a look at the kid, muscular and kind of knowing

the way he holds his glove, with the shoulders loose,

the thick neck, but then with that boy's face under

a clump of angelic blonde hair, and say, oh, hell, sure,

let's play ball. So it all begins, the men loosening up,

joking about the fat catcher's sex life, it's so bad

last night he had to hump his wife, that sort of thing,

pairing off into little games of catch that heat up into

throwing matches, the smack of the fungo bat, lazy jogging

into right field, big smiles and arcs of tobacco juice,

and the talk that gives a cool, easy feeling to the air,

talk among men normally silent, normally brittle and a little

angry with the empty promise of their lives. But they chatter

and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead

and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs

right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two

but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure

that they pause a moment before turning around to watch

the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond

the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit.

They're pretty quiet watching him round the bases,

but then, what the hell, the kids knows how to hit a ball,

so what, let's play some goddamned baseball here.

And so it goes. The next time up, the boy gets a look

at a very nifty low curve, then a slider, and the next one

is the curve again, and he sends it over the Allis Chambers,

high and big and sweet. The left fielder just stands there, frozen.

As if this isn't enough, the next time up he bats left-handed.

They can't believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced

man from Okarche who just doesn't give a shit anyway

because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with

three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block,

leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch

who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something

out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something

that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards

the kid's elbow. He swings exactly the way he did right-handed,

and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field

where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt

dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see.

But why make a long story long: runs pile up on both sides,

the boy comes around five times, and five times the pitcher

is cursing both God and His mother as his chew of tobacco sours

into something resembling horse piss, and a ragged and bruised

Spalding baseball disappears into the far horizon. Goodnight,

Irene. They have lost the game and some painful side bets

and they have been suckered. And it means nothing to them

though it should to you when they are told the boy's name is

Mickey Mantle. And that's the story, and those are the facts.

But the facts are not the truth. I think, though, as I scan

the faces of these old men now lost in the innings of their youth,

I think I know what the truth of this story is, and I imagine

it lying there in the weeds behind that Allis Chalmers

just waiting for the obvious question to be asked: why, oh

why in hell didn't they just throw around the kid, walk him,

after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have,

especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks

and diminishing expectations for who winning at anything

meant everything. Men who knew how to play the game,

who had talent when the other team had nothing except this ringer

who without a pitch to hit was meaningless, and they could

go home

with their little two-dollar side bets and stride into the house

singing If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time

with a bottle of Southern Comfort under their arms and grab

Dixie or May Ella up and dance across the gray linoleum

as if it were V-Day all over again. But they did not.

And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy.

And they did not because sometimes after making love,

after smoking their Chesterfields in the cool silence and

listening to the big bands on the radio that sounded so glamorous,

so distant, they glanced over at their wives and noticed the lines

growing heavier around the eyes and the mouth, felt what their wives

felt: that Les Brown and Glenn Miller and all those dancing

couples

and in fact all possibility of human gaiety and light-heartedness

were as far away and unreachable as Times Square or the Avalon

ballroom. They did not because of the gray linoleum lying there

in the half-dark, the free calendar from the local mortuary

that said one day was pretty much like another, the work gloves

looped over the doorknob like dead squirrels. And they did not

because they had gone through a depression and a war that

had left

them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers

and everyone else had cost them just too goddamned much to lay it

at the feet of a fifteen year-old boy. And so they did not walk him,

and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves

to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not

a fact. When I see my friend's father staring hard into the

bottomless

well of home plate as Mantle's fifth homer heads towards Arkansas,

I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and

worthless Dodge has also encountered for his first and possibly

only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen

as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde

and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgiven.

...

Today's book of poetry isn't much of a baseball fan and suspect that many of you aren't big ball fans either but we do know how difficult it is to dream the real thoughts of men and women and make them more than real on the page. When Fairchild gets through with you it is almost possible to believe that the stories in his poems are your own experience.

As a recent convert to the House of Fairchild I have assigned Milo, our head tech, the task of filling all the missing Fairchild spaces on our racks. He was able to find a copy of Fairchild's Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (W.W. Norton Books, 2003) on the shelves but that won't ever be enough.

Keats

I knew him. He ran the lathe next to mine.

Perfectionist, a madman, even on overtime

Saturday night. Hum of the crowd floating

from the ball park, shouts, slamming doors

from the bar down the street, he would lean

into the lathe and make a little song

with the honing cloth, rubbing the edges,

smiling like a man asleep, dreaming.

A short guy, but fearless. At Margie's

he would take no lip, put the mechanic big

as a Buick through a stack of crates out back

and walked away with a broken thumb

but never said a word. Marge was a loud

dirty girl with booze breath and bad manners.

He loved her. One night late I saw them in

the kitchen dancing something like a rhumba

to the radio, dishtowels wrapped around

their heads like swamis. Their laughter chimed

rich as brass rivets rolling down a tin roof.

But it was the work that kept him out of fights,

and I remember the red hair flaming

beneath the lamp, calipers measuring out

the last cut, his hands flicking iron burrs

like shooting stars through the shadows.

It was the iron, cut to a perfect fit, smooth

as bone chine and gleaming under lamplight

that made him stand back, take out a smoke,

and sing. It was the dust that got him, his lungs

collapsed from breathing in a life of work.

Lying there, his hands are what I can't forget.

...

B.H. Fairchild had some very rapt ears on his work this morning. It is bitterly cold here in Ottawa today but our reading helped to heat up the office. Milo, our head tech, was very dignified, Kathleen, our Jr. Editor, gushed. Max, our Sr. Editor, harrumphed as he marched out into the cold but he was smiling when he marched back in. Max gave us a world-class reading of "Body and Soul", Odin grinned from the corner.

Our foreign correspondent Otis is still in Sicily checking out wine cellars but he's scheduled to return later this week. Otis also sent a note making sure I included him when the staff here at Today's book of poetry welcomed our newest member, Mark Twang.

After reading B.H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe I am now considering making all of our future staff take an oath of office by swearing on Fairchild.

The Art of the Lathe

Leonardo imagined the first one.

The next was a pole lathe with a drive cord,

illustrated in Plumier's L'art de tourner en perfection.

Then Ramsden, Vauconson, the great Maudslay,

his students Roberts, Fox, Clement, Whitworth.

The long line of machinists to my left

lean into their work, ungloved hands adjusting the calipers,

tapping the big lightly with their fingertips.

Each man withdraws into his house of work:

the rough cut, shearing of iron by tempered steel,

blue-black threads lifting like locks of hair,

then breaking over bevel and ridge.

Oil and water splash over the whitening bit, hissing.

The lathe on night-shift, moonlight silvering the bed-ways.

The old man I apprenticed with, Roy Garcia,

in silk shirt, khakis, and Florsheims. Cautious,

almost delicate explanations and slow,

shapely hand movements. Craft by repetition.

Haig and Haig behind the tool chest.

In Diderot's Encyclopaedia, an engraving

of a small machine shop: forge and bellows in back,

in the foreground a mandrel lathe turned by a boy.

It is late afternoon, and the copper light leaking in

from the street side of the shop just catches

his elbow, calf, shoe. Taverns begin to crowd

with workmen curling over their tankards,

still hearing in the rattle of carriages over cobblestone

the steady tap of the treadle,

the gasp and heave of the bellows.

The boy leaves the shop, cringing into the light,

and digs the grime from his fingernails, blue

from bruises. Walking home, he hears a clavier--

Couperin, maybe, a Bach toccata--from a window overhead.

Music, he thinks, the beautiful.

Tavern doors open. Voices. Grab and hustle of the street.

Cart wheels. The small room of his life. The darkening sky.

I listen to the clunk-and-slide of the milling machine,

Maudsley's art of clarity and precision: sculpture of poppet,

saddle, jack screw, pawl, cone-pulley,

the fit and mesh of gears, tooth in groove like interlaced fingers.

I think of Mozart folding and unfolding his napkin

as the notes sound in his head. The new machinist sings

Patsy Cline,

I Fall To Pieces. Sparrows bicker overhead.

Screed of the grinder, the bandsaw's groan and wail.

In his boredom the boy in Diderot

studies again through the shop's open door

the buttresses of Suger's cathedral

and imagines the young Leonardo in his apprenticeship

staring through the window at Brunelleschi's dome,

solid yet miraculous, a resurrected body, floating above the city.

Outside, a cowbird cries, flapping up from the pipe rack,

the ruffling of wings like a quilt flung over a bed.

Snow settles on the tops of cans, black rings in a white field.

The stock, cut clean, gleams under lamplight.

After work, I wade back through the silence of the shop:

the lathes shut down, inert, like enormous animals in hibernation,

red oil rags lying limp on the shoulders

of machines, dust motes still climbing shafts

of dawn light, hook and hoist chains lying desultory

as an old drunk collapsed outside a bar,

barn swallows pecking on the shores of oil puddles--

emptiness, wholeness; a cave, a cathedral.

As morning light washes the walls of Florence,

the boy Leonardo mixes paints in Verrocchio's shop

and watches the new apprentice muddle

the simple task of the Madonna's shawl.

Leonardo whistles a canzone and imagines

a lathe: the spindle, bit, and treadle, the gleam of brass.

...

Today's book of poetry is thrilled to travel back to 1998 to bring you this masterwork. Make no mistake, B.H. Fairchild's The Art of the Lathe is as good as it gets.

B.H. Fairchild

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B. H. Fairchild, the author of several acclaimed poetry collections and a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, has been a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the William Carlos Williams Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Bobbitt National Prize. He teaches in the creative writing PhD program at the University of North Texas.

BLURBS

“The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild has become a contemporary classic—a passionate example of the plain style, so finely crafted and perfectly pitched. . . . Workhorse narratives suffused with tenderness and elegiac music. . .”
— Los Angeles Times

“With elegance and restrained subtlety, Mr. Fairchild interweaves topics that become something like musical themes, including the central theme of machine work. . . . Anyone who can lay claim to the authorship of this much excellent poetry wins my unqualified and grateful admiration.”
— Anthony Hecht

B. H. Fairchild

at VCP Poetry Series

video: Wayne Linberg

alicejamesbooks.org

564

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"

↧

Star Journal - Selected Poems - Christopher Buckley (Pitt Poetry Series/University of Pittsburgh Press)

March 26, 2017, 9:35 am

≫ Next: The Earth Gods Are Coming - Gabe Foreman (Baseline Press)

≪ Previous: The Art of the Lathe - B.H. Fairchild (Alice James Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Star Journal - Selected Poems. Christopher Buckley. Pitt Poetry Series. University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2016.

Star Journal - Selected Poems by Christopher Buckley is as straightforward as a yardstick, measuring by star-light, the weight of a butterfly heart. In fact Star Journal is a book of poet magic, a proverbial pot of gold. Today's book of poetry defies you to open any page of this book and not be entertained and enlightened.

I don't hear 'em but I certainly feel the ghosts of Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers in the elusive space in the English language where intellect and emotion get to tango it out in an invisible swirl of yin and yang. Here is a poet with a giant poet clock time machine, metronomes of logic, tiny unseen hammers of reason, all of ticking away in balance inside the Buckley noggin'.

Today's book of poetry couldn't help but think cinematic when reading these expansive certainties. There were moments of complete satisfaction, just like watching a Francis Ford Coppola movie where all the details are exact, all the details make it true. Buckley does the same thing, makes sure you are hearing the right sound, fills the mirror in the corner with the proper reflection, colours in the edges of the image until you are there breathing it in.

Why I'm in Favor of a Nuclear Freeze

Because we were 18 and still wonderful in our bodies,

because Harry's father owned a ranch and we had

nothing better to do one Saturday, we went hunting

doves among the high oaks and almost wholly quiet air....

Traipsing the hills and deer paths for an hour,

we were ready when the first ones swooped

and we took them down in smoke much like the planes

in the war films of our regimented youth.

Some were dead

and some knocked cold, and because he knew how

and I just couldn't, Harry went to each of them and,

with thumb and forefinger, almost tenderly, squeezed

the last air out of their slight necks.

Our jackets grew

heavy with birds and for a while we sat in the shade

thinking we were someone, talking a bit of girls--

who would "go," who wouldn't, how love would probably

always be beyond our reach...We even talked of the nuns

who terrified us with God and damnation. We both recalled

that first prize in art, the one pinned to the cork board

in front of class, was a sweet blond girl's drawing

of the fires and coals, the tortured souls of Purgatory.

Harry said he feared eternity until he was 17, and,

if he ever had kids, the last place they would go would be a

parochial school.

On our way to the car, having forgotten

which way the safety was off or on, I accidentally discharged

my borrowed 12 gauge, twice actually -- one would have been Harry's

head if he were behind me, the other my foot, inches to the right.

We were almost back when something moved in the raw, dry grass,

and without thinking, and on the first twitch of two tall ears,

we together blew the ever-loving-Jesus out of a jack rabbit

until we couldn't tell fur from dust from blood....

Harry has

a family, two children as lovely as any will ever be--

he hasn't hunted in years... and that once was enough for me.

Anymore, a good day offers a moment's praise for the lizards

daring the road I run along, or if offers a dusk in which

yellow meadowlarks scrounge fields in the grey autumn light.

Harry and I are friends now almost 30 years, and the last time

we had dinner, I thought about that rabbit, not the doves

which we swore we would cook and eat, but that rabbit--

why the hell had we killed it so cold-heartedly? And I saw

that it was simply because we had the guns, because we could.

...

Christopher Buckley's poems are small stories that spin out so large you can't help but get caught up in the vortex, they becomes proclamations without ever being proselytizing. We can almost believe that Christopher Buckley has our planet sussed out, or at least our meagre scrabbling over its surface.

But in truth Buckley is asking as many questions as your average skeptic.

Range. Good poets have range and Buckley covers it. We are subject to musings on Mao Tse-Tung, a beautiful blue evening in Santorini, Bertrand Russell's musings on astronomy, reading/not reading Einstein, dancing "the Stroll," and so on. These poems swell with the lovely interconnectivity of a man full of ideas, Buckley encompasses a big universe and he does it in big, big poems of staggering beauty and subtle intellect. When you're reading these poems you are taking in a lot of new information but it is coming through the Buckley filter.

Watchful--Es Castell, Menorca

But the truth is what we are always

watchful, lying in wait for ourselves.

-Neruda

I remember the idiot in the town square

of Es Castell, trying each day to entice

the resident pigeons to eat the orange peels

he threw blissfully, and with hope,

on to the grass and walks.

But, after so much time,
they were on to him, and the worthless peels,
and waddled away in a mumbling cloud
of feathers....And each day he'd finally tire
of their truculence and unzip the jacket
of his purple warm-up suit, spread it wide
as a red kite's wings, and run
into their grey midst, scattering them
a few feet beyond the fountains, but never out
above the sky-colored water,
or into the water-colored sky....

Like the old men already sitting there
in the wet shadows on the benches,
we soon tolerated him--like the pigeons
who came back in a minute or two
and who seemed to forget,
as he did, such purposeless and
momentary confrontations--days
like lost clouds.
I soon realized
that I was blessed simply
to walk out each morning
around the square and hear
the clock tower above the post office
strike the hour two times,
a few minutes apart, and not care
which could be correct; blessed
to sit next to the public phones,
which occasionally rang for no one,
and watch the bees dissolve into the sun,
knowing someone else had done the math of light--
the stars never showing any sign
of distress.
Yet, if there is some truth
about us, it's not in the stars,
or in the cluster of orange peels
almost as brilliant on the mid-morning walk--
but perhaps in the fact that we can tolerate
one among us to whom they are of equal
consequence.
I no longer need to look
to stars, the poorly punctuated dark,
for no matter what I tap out on the Olivetti,
the earth still looks inescapable from here.
But if some innocence remains,
a little of it might be here
on this small island
deserted in winter by tourists,
foreign commerce, and even the attention
of the more fashionable birds.
The green finch and the swifts are
content and have their say.
The boats are in each afternoon,
gulls climbing the air after them,
praising the fruits of the sea.

And if now we are not sure
what is of value--looking out
at the fig trees thin as refugees
along the cliff--we at least understand
what is worthless before our eyes
morning after morning, as the steam
and fog of industry lift off
beyond the port and to the west
without us.
I sit above the harbor,
happily on the benches provided
by the ayuntamiento for just this purpose,
beneath the orderly palms,
freighters and cruise ships slipping
in and out, going somewhere...
and make do with the intuition of wind,
the pines with their impromptu rhythms,
my hands and feet free
to defeat the intricate purposes of air,
to do nothing more than claim
the prosperity of light.
Late afternoon,
I like the white tables fronting
the bars in the square, relaxing
with a small Estrella--a beer
named for a star--knowing that,
soon enough, around the corner,
I'll be on my way back
from the market and bakery
with a heart as full as the summer
5:00 sun, with a yellow grocery bag
in each hand as I ascend the steps
to our flat over the cove, where
I'll look out, and see in the reflection
of the glass doors, a happy man
arranging oranges in a bowl.

...

Buckley's Star Journal made for a great morning read in the office today. His poems read like tidy little novels so the reader has time to sink their teeth in.

Christopher Buckley keeps a narrative line strong enough to climb up the side of a mountain with, or pull shipwrecked survivors from the sea. He keeps it taut. Buckley's narrative line is strong enough to be a lifeline, you could hang your hat on it.

Poverty

for Phil

la colera de pobre
tiene dos rios contra muchos mares.

--Cesar Vallejo

Vallejo wrote that with God we are all orphans.
I send $22 a month to a kid in Ecuador
so starvation keeps moving on its bony burro
past his door--no cars, computers,
basketball shoes--not a bottle cap
of hope for the life ahead...just enough
to keep hunger shuffling by in a low cloud
of flies. It's the least I can do,
and so I do it.
I have followed the dry length
of Mission Creek to the sea and forgotten to pray
for the creosote, the blue saliva, let alone
for pork bellies, soy bean futures.
Listen.
There are 900 thousand Avon Ladies in Brazil.
Billions are spent each year on beauty products
world-wide--28 billion on hair care, 14 on skin
conditioners, despite children digging on the dumps,
selling their kidneys, anything that is briefly theirs.
9 billion a month for war in Iraq, a chicken bone
for foreign aid.
I am the prince of small potatoes,
I deny them nothing who come to me beseeching
the crusts I have to give. I have no ground for complaint,
though deep down, where it's anyone's guess,
I covet everything that goes along with the illustrious--
creased pants as I stroll down the glittering boulevard,
a little aperitif beneath Italian pines. But who cares
what I wear, or drink? The rain? No, the rain is something
we share--it devours the beginning and the end.

The old stars tumble out of their bleak rooms like dice--
Box Cars, Snake Eyes, And-The-Horse-You-Rode-In-On...
not one metaphorical bread crumb in tow.
Not a single Saludo! from the patronizers
of the working class--Pharaoh Oil, Congress,
or The Commissioner of Baseball--all who will eventually
take the same trolley car to hell, or a slag heap
on the outskirts of Cleveland.
I have an ATM card,
AAA Plus card. I can get cash from machines, be towed
20 miles to a service station. Where do I get off penciling in
disillusionment? My bones are as worthless as the next guy's
against the stars, against the time it takes light to expend
its currency across the cosmic vault. I have what everyone has--
the over-drawn statement of the air, my blood newly rich
with oxygen before the inescapable proscenium of the dark,
my breath going out equally with any atom of weariness
or joy, each one of which is closer to God than I.

...

Star Journal - Selected Poems is a big book full of big ideas and Today's book of poetry loved it. The personal and political merge as Buckley storms over the horizon. Today's book of poetry will be down for anything Christopher Buckley wants to cook from now till the end. Buckley burns with the best.

Christopher Buckley

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Buckley has published twenty books of poetry, several chapbooks and limited editions, and three memoirs. He is the editor of six poetry anthologies as well as critical books on the poets Philip Levine, Larry Levis, and Luis Omar Salinas. Buckley is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts Grants, a Fulbright Award, four Pushcart prizes, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America, among other awards. Buckley has taught writing and creative writing at several universities, and is emeritus professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

BLURBS

“The poems are modest, straight forward, intensely lyrical and totally accessible. . . . This is a humble poetry of great truths and profound emotions that never overstates its concerns for the events both in and above the world. It rewards countless readings and never betrays itself.”
—Philip Levine on Sky in Ploughshares

“Time and the shifts of time are the burden: not simply time as recollection or loss, but also and everywhere the persistent loneliness of star time, mastodon time, so that finally these are poems in which reflection takes on uncommon amplitude and presence. And all this would be nothing, of course, without the language, which is the glory of these poems.”
—Peter Everwine on Dark Matter

“Christopher Buckley’s gift for wide-ranging thinking meshes so gracefully with lovingly tender details, he feels like a companion voice for all time—a Hikmet, a Neruda, yes.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye on Back Room at the Philosopher’s Club

“There is a deep nostalgia here, but also wisdom and common sense, and beautiful writing. I welcome him at his maturist, poet of stardust.”
—Gerald Stern on And the Sea

“The poems are verbally so rich, generous, out-loud (I can't not intone the rhetorical flourishes), inclusive, wry. I like especially the orientation to the large-picture physics/cosmology at the same time that (Buckley) relates his own past. . . . I like the tone—how else to address one's mortality & mixed luck except with irony & affection stirred with gratitude?”
—Dennis Schmitz

“Some poets like only celestial music, other the grit of the streets, but Buckley engages winningly with both.”
—David Kirby in San Francisco Chronicle

“Prize-winning poet Buckley has a unique poetic voice, a sort of breathless, long-sentenced style that is gripping and captivating . . . . These are poems of immortality and extinction that can still make you smile. He has an exquisite ear for language and a gutsy way of blending bravado with humility.”
—Judy Clarence in Library Journal

"There is a quietness to these poems and breakouts of lyrical intensity that define Buckley as a master of the art."
—North of Oxford

upress.pitt.edu

565

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"

↧

The Earth Gods Are Coming - Gabe Foreman (Baseline Press)

March 28, 2017, 8:10 am

≫ Next: In Praise of Defeat - Abdellatif Laâbi (Archipelago Books)

≪ Previous: Star Journal - Selected Poems - Christopher Buckley (Pitt Poetry Series/University of Pittsburgh Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Earth Gods Are Coming. Gabe Foreman. Baseline Press. London, Ontario. 2016.

"Grace is electricity, science has found,

it is not like electricity, it is electricity...."

- Donald Barthelme,

"At the End of the Mechanical Age"

Today's book of poetry was terribly fond of Gabe Foreman's A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House Press, 2011), so when we saw The Earth Gods Are Coming come through our poetry door we knew what we were getting into.

Foreman continues to write with one foot firmly planted on terra firma and the other in a variety of parallel and non-parallel worlds. The Earth Gods Are Coming has an entirely disproportionate serving of intelligent whimsy. Gabe Foreman is all about the "what if" universe.

The poems in this volume don't have titles.

~~~

You called music

the nicotine-patch

of the masses.

Some songs were in the key of Lord Byron.

As though we found an orange on the floor

and held it to our faces.

Poke rivals with those keen little stars.

Now kick that charging security guard

in half, with your naked foot.

A cough, spread-eagling through the cove at low tide.

Charlotte, various breeds of unicorn prance in predawn meadows,

preying on incantations of your face expelled by the tiny lungs of songbirds.

You were not real.

At least not mentally real.

You were a gymnast, and I,

a musician hired by NASA

to sing about the moon.

"The moon beams are rafters branching over," etc.

"The moon's iambic diameter is at its maximum

when you come over," etc.

A ghost tugs a panel of ocean fear

across a dumpster's busted radio.

It pelts your grubby backpack with caddis flies,

and pelts as well the faded jackets

of the men who stoop after cigarettes

while another Saturday fills with cars

who crash into motels already on fire.

...

According to Foreman we might find some light in the Dead Sea scrolls, Ninja campers and corn-dogs. Talking oxen will relax our minds and ancient Mayans await pilgrims arriving in taxi cabs.

His random and encyclopedic flashes of brain lightning all point in the same direction, to grace, to electricity.

~~~

At the lamp store shopping for a lamp,

do you have any lamps

that don't work?

I need to replace a light which never worked

that I smashed when I was dying.

I have but one lamp

that doesn't work

but it comes with a curse.

Are you willing to purchase it

before I ramble on about the curse,

a hex both banal and morose?

Of course.

I paid an exorbitant price

for when I took my new lamp home

and set it in the old light's nook,

before I stooped to plug it in,

it worked.

...

Our morning read was big fun. Even though no one has seen the sun for a couple of days there is an unmistakable optimism that only arrives with the smell of spring.

Hard to know for sure if Gabe Foreman is an optimist but when my staff had finished reading The Earth Gods Are Coming aloud to each other they were all smiling.

~~~

What thoughts I have of you tonight, transformers, as the power fails in

a swelter, and the subway falters between stations. The charm of the

failing transformers is that they deliver peace to neighbourhoods that

might deserve a meal by candlelight. I remember a week of statewide

black out. This was years ago, decades past, in a similar heat wave. On

the second night, my wife (1) and I invited an old timer we spotted on the

street for supper. I placed a candle on the table. The man was bearded,

sweaty and grubby. Over cold soup and raspberry wine, he spoke of

desperate nautical voyages he had experienced, of near starvation at sea,

often in superb detail. I felt his story contained alien circuitry, but my

wife absorbed the hardship of the man's cannibalistic past and wept

openly. We never told him, but she and I had dabbled at people-eating

in college. In those days, our dorm had been a slow-cooker of untenable

grief. Those who grabbed hold of the burning filament and climbed

inside our fading bulb had made no promises, just as we had made no

plans. We had been different people. Over barbequed steak, our guest

half-forgot a joke whose punch-line was: you are what you eat. My wife

laughed. we were like one person then, the flickering meat, the dark

hallway behind where my wife was sitting, and the parts of the joke that

the old man had forgotten. When respectable Americans bid goodnight

to old timers, they seldom make chivalrous vows in Latin, or promise

never to forget, but my wife and I did both, first over fortified sherry

and blueberry pie, and a second time, on the porch, before the old man

finally staggered off into the darkness and was consumed. Before he had

left, our guest asked if he could borrow a flashlight. He asked again, as if

we had not heard his words. When he was finally gone, my wife and I

knew that we had done the right thing. We sat on the porch swing, and

counted all the flashlights in the house. There were six. One for each of

the babies that we had planned to have once the power came back on.

Look, a shooting star, I said. Amanda turned to me then, smiled, and

became an older man for the rest of her life.

(1) My wife's unusual superpower was that she would spontaneously change age

and sex, on average every few months or so. These transformations occurred

randomly, and were beyond her control. They presented a terrific challenge to our

marriage. More a curse than a gift really.

...

Gabe Foreman's considerable charms are almost too grand for a chapbook but Saint Karen of Schindler seems to be able to carry any weight with her marvelous Baseline Press. Schindler continues to produce chapbooks of subtle and exacting beauty and fills them with poetry worthy of the splendor.

Today's book of poetry is a sucker for certain things and the Japanese Uzumaki tissue used to make the flyleaves for The Earth Gods Are Coming is beautiful enough to make you cry.

Gabe Foreman's The Earth Gods Are Coming reads like a much larger book, good poems do that.

Gabe Foreman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gabe Foreman's first collection, A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House, 2011), was awarded the A.M. Klein Prize for poetry and was shortlisted for the Concordia First Book Prize. Gabe lives in Montreal where he works at a soup kitchen.

TPV Spring 2012: Gabe Foreman "Should I listen to this ox?"

Video:TorontoPoetryVendors

baselinepress.ca

566

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"

↧

In Praise of Defeat - Abdellatif Laâbi (Archipelago Books)

March 31, 2017, 9:47 am

≫ Next: Burning In This Midnight Dream - Louise Bernice Halfe (Coteau Books)

≪ Previous: The Earth Gods Are Coming - Gabe Foreman (Baseline Press)

Today's book of poetry:
In Praise of Defeat. Abellatif Laâbi. Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, New York. 2016.

There are many joys associated with doing Today's book of poetry but there is also a little pain, we are constantly rediscovering and confirming our vast ignorance. Until Abdellatif Laâbi's In Praise of Defeat landed on our desk we had never heard of the major francophone voice of Moroccan poetry.

In Praise of Defeat brings together work from fifteen or more of Abdellatif Laâbi's books of poetry. Was it T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound who wrote about "perfecting the language of the tribe?" I think it was Pound. Well he wasn't alone. Moroccan exile Laâbi has perfected a certain sort of precision in bringing us from his childhood in Fez to his forced exile in modern Paris.

Talisman's Eye

everything dies

patched-up brain down in crypts

dies

logos of cities

dies

reason dies

crushed by wrinkles

with no help from hands

brain with its gray cells

dies

night approaches with so much telling

of rosaries

for the break of a new day

as the sphinxes say

when none is possible

they themselves having grown old

wearing of their alliance

with the wind

now

I seek a language

for my tribe

that is not a hybrid

let cyclones of argan trees

come join my fingers

collar of wasps

around my throat of clay

my awful lucidity

like a mirror

rusty with memories

that are the butt of History

now I know what power inhabits me

peoples run through my language

while flaming night

constructs silence

with hammer blows

I compose lullabies

my awful lucidity

that ruffles my voice

to the caravans' cadence

my awful lucidity

that carves me out an ear

as wide as the desert

now

I need to vomit up

layers of narcotics

and steaming manure

words of reason pale as herb tea

and throw away books that taught me pride

here I am

present

night-hairy

bristling with wasps

with that perfume of the muscles

that camel's boniness

ready to bound down the road

yelping

look and see if my breasts

are not bursting with maledictions

but leave me a few blood vessels

just a few nerves

nothing but a finger

and I shall outline on my parchment

a new cosmogony

its elements in perfect harmony

hear the clash of languages

in my mouth

the thirst for new births

hear the swish of sweat

at my underarms

the ripple of my biceps

driven by my inner fauna

springing from caves

pen bloodied

my head against every wall

my breath at the gallop

spewing planets

in its eruptions

here I am

torrential in full flood

working my crannies

craters overlooked in my incandescence

I Atlas

striped by the sun

of diurnal tribes

gathering up in my descents and ravines

the impatient foam of a future

ask the vultures what my venom tastes like

ruggedness of my grip

iron grid of my maledictions

accuser I am

building a kingdom

of insubordination

do not seek me in your archives

fearful of my censure

writing is not in my nature

look for me rather in your innards

when a host of worms

distorts your gut

look for me in the urine of fever

in the malaria of the backstreets

and there

in the mud of cataracts

erase my forbidden names

stamp out the spells that I cast

but at my call

break jars of honey

slit the throats of black bulls at mosque doors

feed beggars by the thousands

then I shall come

to spit in your mouth

destroy your tumors

rid you of your ancient ills

I still prefer you

in the straightness of your plowshares

my brothers with your rough hands

my brothers who sleep like roots

come

tossed down

overboard

stranger to the course of planets

between sky and void

sprung forth

in the blink of an eye

at the birth of speech

I know nothing of weightiness

or the mathematics of revolutions

Arab

Berber

above all human

but with this indestructible voice

this mark

come from your tomorrows

gravediggers of ruins

not to take upon myself

the errors of the night

but unrestrainedly

to hammer with doorknockers

until every doorway

offers up its logarithms

yes

I slumber

in mountain salt mines

an ear hearkening to the wheel of time

I let new arms grow

to enhance an awakening

I laugh yes I laugh in my dream

look at my eyelids

seeded by caravaneers

and my terrifying eye

accurate

as a sandglass

...

In Praise of Defeat includes poems that encompass the period from 1965 right up to 2014 and it is an enormous tome coming in at over 800 pages plus. Laâbi gives us his mandate coming right out of the gate in his long poem "Chronicle of the Citadel of Exile" where he tells us to "Write, write, never stop." "Chronicle of the Citadel of Exile" is a true monster list poem and you all know how much we love those here, but at a whopping thirteen pages we just couldn't reproduce it.

Most contemporary poets have never had to face the challenges like those that have faced Abdellatif Laâbi. None of my contemporaries have ever gone to prison for the political action of being a poet. Although a few of them have been behind bars. Laâbi spent several years in prison and then was exiled. Through it his poetry has remained distinctly humane, reachable, direct and impassioned. Somehow Laâbi has been able to find light in a world determined to regale the force of darkness.

To My Son Yacine

My darling son

I have received your letter

You already talk to me like a grown-up

you say how hard you try at school

and I feel your passion to understand

to chase away the shadows, the ugliness

to pierce the secrets of the great book of life

You are sure of yourself

And though not deliberately

you list your riches for me

you reassure me on your strengths

as if you were saying "don't worry about me

see me walk

see where my steps lead

the horizon, the vast horizon over there

has no secrets for me"

And I picture you

your fine brow

so high and straight

I picture your great pride

My darling son

I have received your letter

You say

"I think of you

and I give my life to you?"

without an inkling

of what you do to me in saying that

my crazy heart

my eyes on the stars

and through this word from you

it is no longer hard for me to believe

that the great Feast will come

when children like you

now men

will walk with giant steps

far from the poverty of the shantytowns

far from hunger, ignorance and sadness

My darling son

I have received your letter

You wrote the address yourself

wrote it with confidence

you thought to yourself, if I put this

Papa will get my letter

and perhaps I'll have a reply

and you started to imagine the prison

a big house where people are locked up

how many and why?

but they they can't see the sea

the forest

they can't work

to get their children enough to eat

You imagine something mean

something ugly

something that makes no sense

and makes you feel sad

or very angry

You think too

that those who made prisons

are certainly mad

and so very many other things

Yes my darling son

that is how one begins to think

to understand humans

to love life

to detest tyrants

and that is how

I love you

how I love to think of you

from the depths of my prison

...

Today's book of poetry is thrilled to share another Archipelago Books treasure, this Brooklyn publisher consistently pumps out classics from around the world of poetry and exposes them to North American readers. In Praise of Defeat was translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith and the translation is seamless, invisible mending so to speak. Laâbi's poems read and sound like they were written in English, all these uncompromising and tender love letters to his readers sound as natural as daybreak.

Sensation

The moment they open

the eyes

create light

So many eyes

so much light

The moment it blooms

consciousness

creates the world

then the universe

So much consciousness

so many worlds

then so many universes

If the eyes close

if consciousness is extinguished

the Whole disappears

This

is just a sensation

Nothing that deserves

to be graven in stone

or "written in a book"

But it is my sensation

I am here

eyes half-open

clinging to the thread

that sews day to night

the veils within

to those without

and swaddling clothes to shrouds

I am no longer here

The cavalcade of words

paws the ground

fails to get moving

between fingers and page

Welcome

dear

so dear stranger!

...

Abdellatif Laâbi's long poems are giant quilts of both comfort and instruction, bitter blankets of bitter defeats and regret. Laâbi is a narrative monster and we were happy to hang on for the ride.

Today's book of poetry might have mentioned this before, perhaps not, but many years ago I had the honour of meeting George Faludy and hearing him read. Well I haven't met Abdellatif Laâbi but I get the same gracious, intelligent and humble vibe from In Praise of Defeat as I did all those years ago sitting at Faludy's feet. Prince's of peace, gentle scribes, fierce poets.

In Praise of Defeat is going to improve every poetry collection it joins.

Abdellatif Laâbi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and political activist, Abdellatif Laâbi was born in Fez, Morocco in 1942. He was also the founder of Souffles, an important literary review that was banned in Morocco in 1972. Laâbi received the Prix Robert Ganzo de Poésie in 2008, the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie for his Oeuvres complètes in 2009, and the Académie Française's Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 2011. Also available in English are his debut collection of poetry The Rule of Barbarism, the memoir Rue de Retour, and The World's Embrace: Selected Poems.

BLURBS

Keeping pace with the long poems that are Abdellatif Laâbi's distinctive achievement – the poems of torture and imprisonment in Morocco, or 'People of Madrid, Pardon' written in response to the train bombings of 2004 – an English-speaking reader like me inevitably keeps waiting for the public voice, the high style of anger and compassion, to falter or overreach. But Laâbi's voice does neither. Donald Nicholson-Smith's translations hold fast to this poetry's unnerving eloquence and simplicity, and its hell-for-leather speed.
— T.J. Clark

As the new collection In Praise of Defeat, deftly translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, shows, Laâbi’s early poems are poems of protest and of incarceration. They powerfully evoke the need for poetry to bear witness...In Praise of Defeat presents a poet-activist who was born in the direst possible circumstances, survived them, and has continued on a trajectory of art and activism. He shows any poet how the artistic space created by “poet, activist, former prisoner, exile” is the space where the most crucial acts of art happen.
— Emily Wolahan, The Quarterly Conversation

archipelagobooks.org

567

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"

↧

Burning In This Midnight Dream - Louise Bernice Halfe (Coteau Books)

April 2, 2017, 7:23 am

≫ Next: Outdoor Voices - Leigh Nash (Proper Tales Press)

≪ Previous: In Praise of Defeat - Abdellatif Laâbi (Archipelago Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Burning In This Midnight Dream. Louise Bernice Halfe. Coteau Books. Regina, Saskatchewan. 2016.

Louise Bernice Halfe Sky Dancer has published a third volume of poetry, Burning In This Midnight Dream, and it is a burning indictment, a hushed prayer, an angry account. Burning In This Midnight Dream articulates some of Canada's worst history from the inside looking out. These poems are an insider's nightmare memories of Canada's residential schools.

Halfe/Sky Dancer is a quiet poet of considerable reserve yet these poems rumble with thunderous revelations that reverberate off of the page, run up your arms and attack your guilty heart.

nipin nikamowin - summer song

I listened to outrageous laughter

there by the stone-carving shelter

where children painted and listened

to Alex Janvier.

Year after year

on the grounds of Blue Quills

I shared a tent with a friend and we told stories

of those lonely nights and how we preserved

our broken Cree.

I walked, ran, skipped

swore and sang the fourteen miles

from that school all the way to Saddle Lake.

We were told by our guide to meditate, be silent

in our walk. How could we after our voices

where lost in the classrooms of that school?

When I reached my home reserve

the Old Ones received me

and danced me on my blistered feet.

Water, tea, fruit, bannock and deer stew.

What food would heal this wound

bundled against my back?

A child still crying in those long school nights.

I know of a man who still carries his suitcase,

began at six, now sixty years, carrying

those little treasures of home

that was forever gone.

...

Burning In This Midnight Dream is a peat fire of poetry. You don't see any flames on the surface but you know for certain that you are on hot footing and that all is ablaze underneath, smoldering and determined.

Halfe/Sky Dancer has included several family photos along with the text and this case is the exception that proves the rule about photos and poetry. These photos are necessary. The poems work just fine on their own, they are all strong, exude the strength of a brave survivor, but these photos make the stories blood, flesh and bone. We see the young children in a new and different context, we see them as clearly as the "boy in the striped pajamas," the red-coated lost girl in the opening frames of Steven Spielberg's Shindler's List. The fine and perfect faces in these photos are calling out through these poems.

Residential School Alumni

An uncle shot his wife

left her lying behind the house

with the rifle at her side.

Their four children peered

behind the curtains.

He was never able to look at anyone.

A lake held him as he froze, standing,

clutching his traps.

One son joined the marines

a mosquito killed him in Vietnam.

In a police chase another son

hit a slough and drowned in his grave.

Their little brother slept in a flaming

house with needles, spoons, heroin and cocaine.

My cousin was left alone.

I remember them.

...

Our morning read here in the Today's book of poetry offices was a little more sombre than usual but that's not to say we didn't enjoy the poems. We certainly respected them.

Louise Bernice Halfe Sky Dancer wants the Truth and Reconciliation process to succeed. Burning In This Midnight Dream is an honourable attempt to plow as much truth into the open as the open can bear.

Today's book of poetry is interested in the poetry of things before the politics and Halfe/Sky Dancer covers all those bases with verse that creates drama and tension while still being able to cradle quiet moments of tenderness and hope.

April 30, 2014

Weeds are flattened beneath last year's tire tracks

others lay burden by the winter's heavy snow.

The crocuses labor through this thick blanket.

I am sun drained from the bleakness

of the weeks before. Now a tick

I've carried in my hair runs up my neck,

festers on my chin.

I show it no mercy.

the lake-ice is rotting diamonds

where water seeps hungrily through its cracks.

Beneath the birdfeeders

goldfinches and juncos scratch.

Two mallards strut

crane their necks for the roving dogs and cats.

Sharp tail grouse lay low in the thicket believing

they cannot be seen, their rust-colored wings

match the frost-bitten ground.

This morning we were woken by a knocking

on our skylight, the yellow feathers

of a flicker splayed against the window.

I cradle a striped gopher, it heaves so slightly

against my palm, a leg broken

and one eye bloodied shut.

I lay it against the mountain ash and beg

it not to suffer.

This afternoon I have my hearing

for Truth and Reconciliation.

I must confess my years of sleeping

in those sterile, cold rooms where the hiss

of water heaters were devils

in the dark.

I want to walk these thickets

to that far horizon and not look back.

...

The damages inflicted upon Canada's First Nations community by the Residential School program will never be over. Generations have been ham-strung by endemic racist policies and implementation of said policies. Louise Bernice Halfe Sky Dancer illuminates some of that dark night with Burning In This Midnight Dream. This is the sort of poetry that does move us all one step closer to understanding and true reconciliation.

There is still a long, long way to go but underneath Halfe/Sky Dancer's laments there is hope, astonishing hope.

Louise Bernice Halfe Sky Dancer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louise Bernice Halfe was born in Two Hills, Alberta, and was raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve. Her Cree name is Sky Dancer.

With the publication of Burning in this Midnight Dream in April 2016, Louise has four book publications to her credit. Bear Bones & Feathers was published in 1994. It received the Canadian People’s Poet Award, and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award. Blue Marrow was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award, the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award, and the Saskatchewan Poetry Award. The Crooked Good was published in 2007. She was awarded third prize in the League of Canadian Poets' national poetry contest and was Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate for 2005-2006.

Louise has a Bachelor of Social Work, and received an Honorary Degree of Letters (Ph. D) from Wilfred Laurier University. She currently works with Elders in an organization called Opikinawasowin (“raising our children”). She lives outside of Saskatoon with her husband.

Louise Bernice Halfe

Returning, Words Aloud 2007, Canada

Video: Words Aloud

coteaubooks.com

568

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"

↧

Outdoor Voices - Leigh Nash (Proper Tales Press)

April 4, 2017, 7:31 am

≫ Next: Strange Labyrinth - Kat Cameron (Oolichan Books)

≪ Previous: Burning In This Midnight Dream - Louise Bernice Halfe (Coteau Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Outdoor Voices. Leigh Nash. Proper Tales Press. Cobourg, Ontario. 2016.

Our apologies to Clint Burnham and Sarah Moses - This was the only photo we could find with of Leigh Nash's Outdoor Voices

Sent Milo, our head tech, to the stacks this morning to see what he could dig up on Leigh Nash. Milo didn't come back empty-handed. 2010 was a good year for Nash, Milo was able to find Landforms (Apt. 9 Press, 2010) and Goodbye Ukulele (Mansfield Press, 2010), both breached the surface and landed on the poetry beach.

Goodbye Ukulele predates the beginning of Today's book of poetry by a few years otherwise we'd have been on it like white on rice.

Proper Tales Press reminds us of what we've been missing with Outdoor Voices, an all too short Nash blitz of her particular twist on the human tug of war. In Nash world the particulars all eventually add up to vision/mood/images that provide ample satisfaction to the reader even if the answers remain slightly beyond reach.

Pay Attention

Half-empty crystal tumblers litter the table, wet hearts
shimmying in candlelight. The ceiling fan yawns with each
pirouette. Leftover beers shift in the cooler like melting
icebergs, slip below the watery surface like widowed seahorses.
There are not enough mouths. This party is a shared dream and
I'm waiting for the tide to rise. Out the window, hooves clop to
a stop. I lean forehead to pane: a lonesome mare lists like tinsel
against the inky sky. I rub my eyes.

...

Nash belongs to several possible schools of poetic charm but Today's book of poetry couldn't nail down her directives any more than pull a rabbit out of one of my hats. But Today's book of poetry is always in, Nash starts up her engine and we are in, we are curious, foot forward followers. People, myself included, often confuse the ride and the destination but Nash seems to know that they are one.

Today's book of poetry is taking liberties but we're going to nab a poem from Nash's Goodbye. Ukulele for today's post. Our Jr. Editor, Kathryn, was rifling through Goodbye, Ukulele during our morning read and insisted we include "A Real Thorn In My Side" in today's blog. Kathryn was adamant, her threat included her repeating how much she could be "a real thorn in my side." Kathryn also made a couple of somewhat threatening hand hand gestures that implied physical harm.

A Real Thorn In My Side

I wolfed down three hearts.
They were salty as olives,
delicious. This was supposed to be
conductive to great work. Instead,
the gas bill arrived twice this
week, and the cat ate my chequebook
and vomited incorrect addition
on the rug. I'm tired of cleaning up
someone else's mess. What
would it take to come home
to windows glowing
like gift boxes, a smoky fire,
a dinner party where all the guests
wore fancy hats and screamed,
where I didn't have to lift a finger.

...

Today's book of poetry will admit that I am a Leigh Nash fanlet. We've met in passing but with my aging eyesight and bad Badorties memory I'm afraid I wouldn't recognize her if we met again -- unless of course she was holding up one of her poems. Today's book of poetry is confident we'd recognize a Nash poem for its particular lion claw on globe grasp of humour.

In Outdoor Voices all the poems are almost post-card sized, uniform in size and wit and ready to be sent air mail. Leigh Nash can burn, burn, burn. Outdoor Voices is a very tasty appetizer, Today's book of poetry is looking forward to the next full collection from Nash. Everyone should.

And That's the Way It Is

There's the moon again, slitting open the night like a cutlass.
And then I'm driving a Cutlass down the California coast,
switchbacking from cliff to cliff like a hummingbird. Like a tired
horse I lay my head down every few days, slip into dreamless
sleep. When I wake, my body is covered by the sun's blanket,
limbs buzzing drunk. I squeeze back into the driver's seat, ready
to test my luck.

...

Leigh Nash opens Outdoor Voices with this little epigraph from Joshua Clover:

"The crows hate her for her beauty, she is ugly as a poet."

Nash has a major league sense of humour, right up there with her fine poems. The crows adore her as much as we do.

Leigh Nash

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leight Nash makes books for a living with Invisible Publishing and The Emergency Response Unit, and in her spare time teaches yoga and reads tarot cards. Her first book of poetry, Goodbye, Ukulele, was published by Mansfield Press in 2010. Leigh lives in Picton, Ontario.

Leigh Nash

Reads from Goodbye, Ukulele

Video: Mansfield Revue

propertalespress@gmail.com

569

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"

↧

Strange Labyrinth - Kat Cameron (Oolichan Books)

April 10, 2017, 8:44 am

≫ Next: Reflections on the Dark Water - M. P. Jones (Solomon & George Publishers)

≪ Previous: Outdoor Voices - Leigh Nash (Proper Tales Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Strange Labyrinth. Kat Cameron. Oolichan Books. Fergie, British Columbia. 2014.

Kat Cameron reads twice her age, how else to explain the kaleidoscopic range of her cultural, historical and literary references where she tips her hat, says "how do you do?" to a myriad of misfits and heroes, markers. Today's book of poetry was on side from the start. Strange Labyrinth is as advertised, we enter some strange territory and the exit isn't always certain but Cameron's curiosity and interests have a large span.

And the reader never feels lost.

Cameron creates poems that have emotional certainty at the heart of them as though they arrived fully formed and knowing which way to lean into the wind.

The Palliser Slide

This rock slide destroyed one side of Mount indefatigable.

The largest rock slide in North America, it was four times larger

than the Frank slide.

Frozen waves, aeons buried in the cresting line.

In a basin, mountain-rimmed, slate-grey ramparts cross and gird, hold

back the inverted sea of sky. Far off, wavering in the foreshortened air,

snow-ghosts climb, flint heels striking fire from shale.

Ammonites spiral time in twisted coils.

Below, the darkness of the firs. A tortured path pulls and climbs

its way past clinging meadows, spots of sun. Frail jellyfish,

Queen Anne's lace, float by bristling blots of red paintbrush.

The air is thin, three thousand feet above the far earth's floor.

Marmots whistle warnings on the wind.

...

Today's book of poetry hears echoes of Saint Earle of Birney and his beautiful "David" in "The Palliser Slide," if only a frisson. Cameron's nature capture has the same reverent awe, she makes the panorama present right there on the page.

Cameron works a whole magical lode of tenderness into her Strange Labyrinth. Today's book of poetry doesn't want to give away any secrets but Kat the C has a thing for Mary Shelley's monster. e.e. cummings, Byron, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Eliot, Pound and Vincent the Goth Van Gogh all show up, Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations sharpen Cameron's tools. Strange Labyrinth brims with smart lyric animations and host of glamorous accomplices.

Today's book of poetry doesn't want to give the wrong impression, Kat Cameron's earthy poems aren't inhabited by or about the above mentioned iconic figures. They are all just along for the ride. Cameron is writing about this world and our place in it, the space women inhabit that men don't know about.

Digging out the Twitch

The first sunny day in weeks and I'm in the garden,

digging out thick twitch grass, the heavy dirt clotted deep

with spidering white roots. When we bought this house,

I had plans, even though my uncalloused hands, smooth with

dishwater and lotion, spent the day tapping staccato keys.

All summer, I neglected this bed. Faded vines hang

from the fence, like shreds of forgotten sunsets.

I'm sowing the colours of spring; wanton tulips,

narcissi, and clusters of purple crocuses.

But past failures slow me down. I feel the strain

in my back, my aging knees, the shovel loads of

heavy doubt. All I can do is go on. Now

the gloves are off. I push tiny bulbs into shallow graves

feeling the soft dirt crumble with promises.

...

Our regular early morning read here at Today's book of poetry was a bit dishevelled today. I have recently spent a few days working out in the real world with real people. Once in a while I get work at the Art Bank and it is one of my favourite places on earth. Picture a large warehouse carefully packed with around 20,000 works of the best contemporary Canadian art. It's a dreamland. I worked as an Art Technician for many years, transporting and installing art work. In recent years I've worked mostly in the Frame Shop. It is work I thoroughly enjoy. So my brain and tired old posterior has been toiling hard at the Art Bank.

When I haven't been at the Art Bank I've been in David Lee world. David Lee is a poet from Texas who now lives in Utah. Our St. Louis correspondent, Mark Twang, sent us a couple of David Lee's books along with a Copper Canyon Press CD with David Lee Reading from A Legacy of Shadows and News from Down to the Cafe. Today's book of poetry will be dealing with Mr. Lee in the near future but I've been making the staff listen to his CD non-stop for the last couple of days. Now everyone around here is running around with a David Lee accent. Beer bottle on their hip.

The other good, but distracting, news is that the sun is out. It really does feel like spring and when that happens most of us here in Ottawa get a little sun drunk. Everyone in town will be out on patios and in shorts by noon. For all I know it could snow again tonight.

So our morning read was slightly distracted, we opened all the doors and windows for the first time since October. Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, made sure that we all cottoned onto the strong feminist voice that inhabits these poems. Cameron isn't burning down the house with strident polemics, she's informing the house because they need to know. Once Kathryn laid down the law Kat Cameron's poems worked their way around the room, humour popped out when we least expected it, along with Frankenstein, Cameron kept us well entertained.

from Camille

II. Le Baiser

Two bodies.

I long to stroke his back

the soft deep groove from neck

to ass.

His hand holds the hollow

of my hip.

I pull him towards me,

me leg angles

my body closer.

Fused marble.

One kiss banished the lovers to the

second circle of hell.

I wish I could banish Rodin

as easily.

...

Kat Cameron's Strange Labyrinth isn't really so strange at all. These intelligent poems "examine the choices women make," flirt joyously with strange dancers, summon memory. Strange Labyrinth is a powerful debut.

Today's book of poetry will be anxious to see more from Kat Cameron.

Kat Cameron

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kat Cameron was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick and has worked as an ESL teacher in Japan, a substitute teacher, and an editorial assistant. Her poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals across Canada, including CV2, Descant, The Fiddlehead, FreeFall, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, Room, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, and subTerrain. She teaches English and writing at Concordia University College in Edmonton and is currently working on a poetry manuscript, "Lighting over Wyoming," with the assistance of an Alberta Foundation for the Arts Grant.

BLURBS

“Strange Labyrinth moves across subtle moods and ideas, as if these were keys on a piano under the deft fingering of a virtuoso. Kat Cameron’s poems disturb our sense of time and distance, as figures in family history are simultaneously standing beside us and vanishing in the uncertain world of memory.”

~Ross Leckie

“An accomplished debut. This is a collection of sweeping breadth with respect to subject matter, locale, and literary influence. Cameron writes poems of quiet elegance, and strategic feminism. Strange Labyrinth is imbued with the ghostly, yet grounded, idiosyncratic spirits of ancestors. Cameron is a poet to watch.”
~Jeanette Lynes, Author of The Factory Voice

oolichan.com

570

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"

↧

Reflections on the Dark Water - M. P. Jones (Solomon & George Publishers)

April 14, 2017, 10:18 am

≫ Next: My Favorite Tyrant - Joanne Diaz (The University of Wisconsin Press)

≪ Previous: Strange Labyrinth - Kat Cameron (Oolichan Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Reflections on the Dark Water. M.P. Jones. Solomon & George Publishers. Opelika, Alabama. 2016.

M. P. Jones is sitting on the side of my desk all Reflections on the Dark Water and quiet, a genteel version of Ashokan Farewell is sounding quiet from the box and for a moment Today's book of poetry is back in the American South. All we need now is the ghost of Shelby Foote to amble forth from the next room and regale us with his melodious wisdom.

M. P. (Madison) Jones sets a big table with Reflections on the Dark Water. Jim Morrison, Emily Dickinson and several other break bread in these lyric narratives bursting at the seams with quietly sustained power. Jones is no muscle laden singe punch heavyweight, these poems are all footwork and lightning jabs.

A Genealogy of Silence

1917: An American boy and a German boy stare

at one another in a French trench for a full minute

behind a Colt New Service and a Luger.

Each marvels at how close a likeness the other

bears to his own visage, like a mirror image. One shoots.

1925: She watches the shadows swim under the door

as her impatient husband paces the hospital corridor.

1936: A man films the last known Tasmanian tiger

walking back and forth between the cage walls

just before it disappears.

1952: A soldier's hat falls as he bends to avoid seeing

his superior. Polished boots sound like hoof-clatter

on cobblestones as he slams the brothel door.

1970: In a soybean field in middle Georgia, the crowd roars.

Not far away, a pregnant girl at a roadside peach stand

says to a Strychnine-panicked boy, "I cannot help you;

the lines are down," as he stumbles into the darkness.

1976: A red telephone is ringing in the early light. She cannot

hear it. She studies the light on the countertop, not wondering

who waits at the other end of the line, for whom it rings.

1987: A girl waits in a hotel room purchased on her father's

credit card for a boy who said, "I ache for you."

1993: A man holds his first-born by the legs out the window-

frame of an incomplete second-story addition.

1997: A young man drives through the night, perhaps in

Arizona, perhaps nowhere at all, until he comes upon

a waterless sea of solid glass. Nobody believes him.

2000: The neighbor boy soaks toads in gasoline to watch

them move through the dark like shooting stars.

2004: Christmas eve, the tire of an overturned car spins

in a ditch where two boys sit staring at a patch

of morning sun shining through the pines.

2005: Midnight in the mother's day darkness:

the telephone rings.

2012: A young man cuts his own right hand off

with a chainsaw. After, he cannot explain.

2013: Forgotten candles in the bathroom resemble

green moonlight where two lay naked in the dark.

Five A boy and a girl watch the last Tasmanian tiger

(A.M.): pace back and forth on a bright screen. No sound.

...

"A Genealogy of Silence" is a list poem of sorts and you readers keeping score know that list poems frequently hit a Today's book of poetry soft spot.

In a book of poems with such monster title marvels as "To The Liquor Store With Hayden Carruth" and "Emily Dickinson Sewed Her Poems Shut" or how about this dandy "Throughout the Dismal Glade Our Bodies Shall Be Hung, Each on the Wild Thorn of His Wretched Shade." I can't help but hear the footsteps of some of the Gothic southern Gods like McCullers and O'Connor.

Jones shapes his memory with myth, prays for appropriate weather, dazzles with a steady velocity and tells his tall tales. Today's book of poetry read Reflections on the Dark Water an extra time or two, poems like these only get better with each new reading.

Fish Tale

My brother died with a truck full of fish

and beer bottles crashing together--

in the Mother's Day darkness--

I am endlessly returning

as if to a worn photograph,

a lure drifting along the lake's rim

in Vermont,

a place I've never seen, and so

can only imagine some dim shore growing certain

in torn threads of afternoon light.

I go back to those improbable stories

he would tell, eyes alight with the consuming

fire of beer and bourbon,

like the one where he is driving through the desert

all night,

just driving through the sand, until finally he stops

at noon--perhaps in Arizona,

perhaps nowhere at all--

on a waterless sea of solid glass,

supposedly the wake of some explosives test.

Walking over the burnt sand-lake's surface, breaking apart

frozen waves and currents

beneath his boots,

crumbling like some hopeless metaphor for certainty.

I listen as he wavers--wanting only to fix some narrative

over the near end--

recounting as his slurring sways,

circling to the moment just before the hooks are set,

before the surface quivers,

the bottles break,

and everything is finished.

And everything is finished;

the bottles break

before the surface quivers,

circling to the moment just before the hooks are set,

recounting as his slurring sways

over the near end,

I listen as he wavers, wanting only to fix some narrative.

Crumbling. Like some hopeless metaphor for certainty

beneath his boots,

frozen waves and currents.

Walking over the burnt sand-lake's surface, breaking apart--

supposedly the wake of some explosives test--

on a waterless sea of solid glass.

Perhaps nowhere at all

at noon, perhaps in Arizona,

just driving through the sand, until finally he stops

all night.

Like the one where he is driving through the desert

fire of beer and bourbon.

He would tell, eyes alight with the consuming.

I go back to those improbable stories

in torn threads of afternoon light,

can only imagine some dim shore growing certain--

a place I've never seen--and so,

in Vermont,

a lure drifting along the lake's rim

as if to a worn photograph--

I am endlessly returning

in the Mother's day darkness

and beer bottles crashing together,

My brother died with a trunk full of fish.

...

Today's morning read at the Today's book of poetry offices took place on the front porch with bright sunshine and guest readers. M. P. Jones got aired out proper. When I took the staff outside it was to find Mrs. Today's book of poetry on the front porch arguing in French with Dr. Alexandre. The doctor stuck around along with Mrs. TBOP and they both joined in the fray.

Jim Morrison Believed that the Right Words in the Right

Order Could Kill You

Lying in the dark waters of that tub,

velvet drapes trimming the night

inside the golden facade

of the rue Beautreillis,

listening to the voices

drifting up from the Seine,

with the light already going

out of his dull eyes,

and another cigarette, perched

like the last link

of a short, broken circle

on his swollen belly, burning

like a candle lit at both ends, lies

the beardless shaman, with that deep,

death-rattle cough ringing

in his ear. Who knows

what he mumbled to himself?

...

Today's book of poetry was lizard king struck with the poetry of M. P. Jones. Reflections on the Dark Water reads solid from front cover to back. This is no narcissist looking into his dark reflection but M. P. Jones clearing up all that brackish water to let the it run clear and clean, pushing his way to the truth.

M. P. Jones

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Madison Jones is a Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Florida—where he works with the TRACE journal and innovation initiative. He is editor-in-chief of Kudzu House Quarterly. Reflections on the Dark Water (Solomon & George) is his second poetry collection. Recent publications include co-editing Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature; an article forthcoming in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment; poetry forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Journal, ISLE, and The Goose, and recently appearing in Canary, Tampa Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere; book reviews in ISLE, Kenyon Review Online, The Journal, and elsewhere. Visit his website: ecopoiesis.com.

BLURB

Reflections on the Dark Water concerns itself with memory and myth, how the bridge between the two--how the line where they intersect--is the irrevocable location of history. M.P. Jones crosses that bridge, that line over and again in poems that view the past in order to make sense of the present. This is a book that wants to separate "truth from chaff."
- Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament

https://www.solomonandgeorge.org/books

571

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"

↧

My Favorite Tyrant - Joanne Diaz (The University of Wisconsin Press)

April 17, 2017, 9:54 am

≫ Next: Article 0

≪ Previous: Reflections on the Dark Water - M. P. Jones (Solomon & George Publishers)

Today's book of poetry:
My Favorite Tyrant. Joanne Diaz. The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisconsin. 2014.

Winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry

American poet Joanne Diaz is as solid as a rock. My Favorite Tyrant is a second book of poetry from Diaz, following The Lessons. The Lessons is now at the top of Milo's, our head tech, search list. My Favorite Tyrant has made a deep impression here.

In the past few weeks Today's book of poetry has been in narrative poetry hog heaven. You'll remember that we recently wrote about B.H. Fairchild and his The Art of the Lathe and were seriously gob-smacked. I've already warned you readers that a David Lee feature was in the offing, as well as a double-header from the indefatigable David Clewell. And now Joanne Diaz.

Diaz is no drop in veracity or tenacity from these monsters. My Favorite Tyrant is outstanding. Diaz spends no time on false drama or proselytizing, instead she spins such exacting and true sounding tales we are forced to remember how good poetry can be.

Barbershop

To get there, drive past Hajjar Elemenatry School,

named after the child of Lebanese immigrants

who lived here his whole life and died as the much-loved war hero

and town physician. Coast past the ditch where the now-filled

Middlesex Canal once transversed the town lines of Billerica,

Burlington, Winchester, Cambridge, and Boston, transporting

raw cotton in one direction and colorful textiles

in the other. Take a left at the corner of Call and Pollard,

there at the house of Asa Pollard, the first man to give his life

in the Battle of Bunker Hill, twenty miles southeast of here.

Follow the necklace of shabby little ranches on Pollard

until you get to the town center, then drive around the rotary,

built around the tree beneath which George Washington

allegedly sat -- is there any town in the former colonies

that doesn't have such a tree? -- and keep turning

past the old town hall, which is the new library, then

the old library, which is now the senior center

where she got her flu shot the day before, then past

Sweeney's funeral home where she is now, in the basement,

beneath the hands of the mortician who injects her veins

with the formaldehyde that will preserve her until the next day,

when the hearse will drive her coffin to a plot that is being dug,

past Taylor Florist, where they will charge four hundred dollars

for a spray of lavender wrapped with cheap ribbons that say

Mother and Wife, to Jim's where you can see my father

getting his first barbershop haircut in forty-eight years.

The sideburns, already, are not to his liking, and the razor's edge

feels a size off from her Oster home barbershop razor,

and the plastic sheet that covers him now is so uncomfortable

compared with the flowered bed sheet that she used, stained

purple-brown as it was from years of her own home coloring treatments.

If you listen, you'll hear him tell the barber that he hasn't been

to a barbershop since 1961, but now that she is gone, he guesses

that this is what he'll have to do. In these first days, he's relieved

to be with strangers. With them it is almost easy to say,

My wife has died in this, his new language.

...

Joanne Diaz digests this bitter earth and then voices, in songs we recognize, songs we'll remember, the necessary journeys we take to make a family. My Favorite Tyrant is much bigger than just family, Diaz also manages to work in some geo-political fanning of the flames.

Death is a big Diaz theme but she looks beyond the simple dark mystery and talks to us with reasoned empathy, tearful sympathy and breathless curiosity. Diaz does all that without ever raising any maudlin excess.

The poems where Diaz talks about the death of her mother resonate with a clean and vibrant hum. Remorse, respect, loss, wonder. Diaz works all of them into narratives that play out so true you might think you already know the story. You don't, but the real truth always sounds familiar.

Demeter's Last Stand

Last night, I alluded to my years as a Camp Fire Girl

and Averill revealed that she had been one, too,

and after she made the sign of a fire rising from her hand,

we chanted the promise that every Camp Fire Girl knows:

WoHeLo means work; I light the candle of work. WoHeLo means

health; I light the candle of health. WoHeLo means love;

I light the candle of love. How many times

did Lori Dembkoski and I giggle

during those camping expeditions in the backyard

of Mrs. D'Angelo, a kind woman who seemed to have invented

recycling when she filled her old knee-highs with soap chips

and knotted the ends to tree branches; when she poked

holes in gallon jugs and forced twigs into them

so that we could start and stop the water

as the jugs swung, unwieldy, from low branches;

when she told ghost stories that originated in her own house.

After a few years, Mrs. D'Angelo left us for a job

in Pennsylvania, and our new troop had to meet

in the low-ceilinged cafeteria at the middle school

where we resigned ourselves to cutting ochre-colored felt

amidst the stench of Tatter Tots. I don't know how long

it took for a janitor named Connie Rock to find us,

but our encounters with him in the hallway

did offer surprises. One week he'd kneel down

to compliment our felt handiwork and knee-socks;

another time he'd ask us to sit on his lap just for a little while;

and eventually we kissed him on his sallow cheeks

that were soured and lined with decades of hard drink

and smoke. One night, when all the parents

came to the cafeteria for an event

not worth the remembering, Connie found me

and called my name, and I went to him as I had

in the weeks before, I imagine now that my mother

saw then: the red sash full of badges that she had hand-sewn,

the blue hat that featured a small bright bird;

my smile at an old janitor as he cradled me on his lap

and smiled back, as if I were Persephone and he were Hades,

just after he had pushed through a cleft in the soil to steal me.

It took only a moment for my mother to seize my wrist

and hurry to the car. Mother, if I thanked you too little,

know that tonight I remember your besting of Demeter's speed,

and that you saved me from a lifetime of winters.

...

Our morning read was a stunner. Earlier this morning Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, made every one of us listen to/watch the P.J. Harvey/Bjork video of the old Rolling Stones tune "Satisfaction." Everyone in the room was on the edge of their seat. Kathryn was convinced the video would be the perfect opener to a reading of My Favorite Tyrant and she was right. Diaz brought down the house.

Diaz has a fascination for the American producer/actor/writer Larry David. Larry David was the head writer for Seinfeld and then was the primary attention getter in Curb Your Enthusiasm. I expect you readers are like me and reside in the love/hate faction for Larry David sentiment. Diaz doesn't skip a beat as she culturally appropriates his skinny ass for a meeting with Antonin Artaud. In the real world I would pay anything to see that meeting.

On the Meeting of Larry David and Antonin Artaud

after Philip Levine

In my dream, Antonin Artaud is a patient

at Bellevue, receiving electroshock treatments

for the schizophrenia that shattered him

for all of his adult life, and Larry David

has come to see him during visiting hours.

Antonin's eyes reveal a man who on most days

is frantic beyond reason, but today, Larry's

the one who's at the end of his rope.

He's just starred in his first feature-length film

and it's a flop. He knows he should never

have taken a role written thirty-five years ago

and intended for Zero Mostel, that great

heaving sweat machine who died too soon

to play the part. Larry's a writer, a comedian,

but no actor, and now he's stinking up

an already terrible movie. Even worse,

Larry's wife has left him -- not just

in the TV show, but in real life too, and all

because he probably complained too much

about the environmentally sound toilet paper.

At first, it might seem unlikely that Larry

should meet this great French surrealist.

But Antonin had a soul that could find the meaning

and fulfillment of its perfection only in its own disaster,

and in this regard, he and Larry are twins

born of the same seed. So when Antonin

sees Larry insult a nurse, trip on the foot

of a demented patient, and swear out loud

three times as he crosses the floor of the ward,

Antonin feels delight, perhaps for the first time

in years. Finally, a man who might slice

the veneer of bourgeois reality in two!

Larry is also having a good time. Blind

to socioeconomic distinctions, oblivious

to mental illness or wellness, Larry is pleased

with Antonin's frenetically spun moustache

and pulls on it in the hope that it's a fake.

In a few minutes, visiting hours will end,

and Larry will return to the lonely world

outside, the one that Antonin abandoned

years ago. The men look out the window,

first to the East River and the barges floating

downstream, and then, beyond the water

to the length of Long Island City, the old

PepsiCo sign a halo of bright red curves.

To Antonin, the sign is an interminable Rorschach test,

the answers to which he will never know.

To Larry, it is a reminder that he is thirsty.

When he goes to the vending machine

he loses his change after he pushes the button.

He walks away in disgust, and just as he

is about to leave the ward, he hears

the rubbery footfall of the nurse

whom he had insulted only minutes earlier.

She pushes the same button and gets two Pepsis,

but will not give one to Larry, who takes out

his small notebook to resume his endless work.

...

Today's book of poetry cannot say that the Brittingham Prize in Poetry winning My Favorite Tyrant is the best book of poetry we've ever seen but it is excellent. We've been awfully lucky here at Today's book of poetry in recent months with the quality of the books we've received and Joanne Diaz can hold water with the very best of 'em.

My Favorite Tyrant is a pleasure to push. All you poetry junkies need this fix.

Joanne Diaz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanne Diaz is the author of My Favorite Tyrants (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014) and The Lessons (Silverfish Review Press, 2011). She teaches at Illinois Wesleyan University.

BLURB

Forged of equal parts brains and brass, these poems bleed and shine and all but blind us. How wild they are, how beautiful! I love the way Joanne Diaz uses light and noise to tell us more than any history book can of the tyrants who distort yet give meaning to our lives: Castro, Stalin, Our teachers, our parents, ourselves."

- David Kirby

uwpress.wisc.edu

572

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"

↧

Article 0

April 19, 2017, 8:07 am

≫ Next: Duet - Dorianne Laux | Joseph Millar (Jacar Press)

≪ Previous: My Favorite Tyrant - Joanne Diaz (The University of Wisconsin Press)

Today's book of poetry:

Heart in a Jar. Kathleen McGookey. White Pine Press. Buffalo, New York. 2017.

Reading Heart in a Jar is like stumbling onto a lost manuscript of Charlotte's Web if it had been written by a dark and hallucinating Hieronymus Bosch or perhaps a time travelling Pieter Bruegel reincarnated as a poet.

Kathleen McGookey's poems do an instant connect with a part of your brain you'd previously been unaware of. Your body jolts a little with new electricity running new circuits.

Today's book of poetry is genuinely unsure of how to tell you patient readers about Kathleen McGookey's particular genius. Today's book of poetry is convinced that McGookey has tapped into a deeper well than most and these short prose poems prove it time and again. These aren't fairy tales or folk stories but given time they may become those to another generation.

Like His Heart in a Jar

The dead cat, stolen from Biology, showed up in my locker. Black-

haired Joe, who wanted to be my boyfriend, who sometimes gave

me rides in his father's Cadillac, put it there. You'd think it would

have been terrible, skinny toad-colored thing dangling from my coat

hook, but it didn't stink or drip. After Calculus, it was gone.

...

Strange magic abounds in Heart in a Jar. Kathleen McGookey's poems inhabit a world where talismans teem and we are left to intuit their meaning. These poems occur in a macabre and splendid universe that feels familiar, as though it were a place we all visited in our dreams.

Death seems to be around every corner wearing a "ratty robe and slippers" but McGookey has her eyes wide open, she sees Death coming and calls his bluff.

Dear Death,

can't you see we're busy riding bikes in the sun? Later we'll cut out

paper hearts and sprinkle them with glitter. I have had enough of

you. I'd rather learn facts about penguins: what they eat, how much

they weigh, how they stay warm in the Antarctic. Some are called

Emperor. Some, Rockhopper. First-graders with gap-toothed smiles

hold out the class guinea pig for me to pet. Let's pretend you forget

all about us.

...

The poems in Heart in a Jar were perfect for a good morning read, short, sharp and savvy. Death is in there dancing up a shit-storm but McGookey isn't without hope, the characters that inhabit her poems are not without resources.

Gary Young, author of Even So, called Kathleen McGookey's Heart in a Jar "a rapturous Memento mori." Today's book of poetry had to look that up; a memento mori is "an object serving as a warning or reminder of death, such as a skull." The translation from Latin is "remember that you have to die." Mr. Young is right, McGookey is constant in reminding us that the Dark Angel is always nearby, that she does so with such charming intrigue and invention is why we are here.

Kathleen McGookey can burn in any kitchen.

Once

I'd like to talk about something else for a change, like that small blue

frog, which, if licked, kills whatever licked it. The frog might be an-

other color. You might have to eat it to die. But I know I've got the

killing part right. Once, I had patience. Once, I had my own room.

I didn't have sisters. I didn't have roosters. I'd like to know who said

I have wasted my life. And was it true? When I lay my head upon my

desk, something inside me--a shadow, a ghost?--tries to sit up. Its

outline washes through me, like certain medications. I like not dis-

cussing certain subjects. I like going to the orchard to pick fresh

peaches. I like the idea of a different life. But that's what I thought

years ago, imagining this one.

...

Kathleen McGookey says some harsh things in Heart in a Jar, some of them fearless, almost all instantly recognizable to the heart as true or true feeling. You get the impression that McGookey could pound out this particular type of perfection all day long.

Heart in a Jar is so much better than I've been able to express, you can trust that.

Kathleen McGookey

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen McGookey’s prose poems and translations have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry, and The House of Your Dream: An International Collection of Prose Poetry. The forthcoming anthology Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence includes her work, and her poetry collection, At the Zoo, will be published by White Pine Press in spring 2017. She has received grants from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Arts Fund of Kalamazoo County, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has taught creative writing at Hope College, Interlochen Arts Academy, and Western Michigan University. She lives in Middleville, Michigan, with her family.

Letters to Death

Letters to Death by Kathleen McGookey

Music by Josh Trentadue (speaker and piano)

Steven Murtonen, percussion

whitepine.org

573

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"

↧

Duet - Dorianne Laux | Joseph Millar (Jacar Press)

April 21, 2017, 7:44 am

≫ Next: The Emily Valentine Poems - Zoe Whittall (Invisible Publishing)

≪ Previous: Article 0

Today's book of poetry:
Duet. Dorianne Laux | Joseph Millar. Jacar Press. Durham, North Carolina. 2016.

Books of poetry that share two authors come in a variety of forms and styles. In Duet by Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar the poems are unattributed, written separately but presented as a unified front. This takes some seriously elastic tolerance and trust, one poet allowing herself/himself to be represented by the words of another, to speak with your name and approval.

This duet is made up entirely of solos but the reader never knows who is playing lead. It doesn't matter because Laux and Millar are in the same key throughout, they have found the same rhythm section, the bass is steady and the drumming is tight. Laux and Millar riff like scat singers on a legion of our musical heroes from Bo Diddley to Cher, Dolly Parton's breasts are balladized and Elvis, the King, has his mansion/mausoleum costed for affect.

Listening to Paul Simon

Such a brave generation.

We marched onto the streets

in our T-shirts and jeans, holding

the hand of the stranger next to us

with a trust I can't summon now,

our voices raised in song.

Our rooms were lit by candlelight,

wax dripping onto the table, then

onto the floor, leaving dusty

starbursts we'd pop off

with the edge of a butter knife

when it was time to move.

But before we packed and drove

into the middle of our lives

we watched the leaves outside

the window shift in the wind

and listened to Paul Simon,

his tindery voice, then fell back

into our solitude, leveled our eyes

on the American horizon

that promised us everything

and knew it was never true:

smoke and cinders, insubstantial

as fingerprints on glass.

It isn't easy to give up hope,

to escape a dream. We shed

our clothes and cut our hair,

our former beauty piled at our feet.

And still the music lived inside us,

whole worlds unmaking us in the dark,

so that sleeping and waking we heard

the train's distant whistle, steel

trestles shivering across the land

that was still our in our bones and hearts,

its lone headlamp searching the weedy

stockyards, the damp, gray rags of fog.

...

This morning our read was also a concert. Laux and Millar write such instantly approachable and easily digestible glee that the poems powered off the lips of the readers as though they were the rock stars of their dreams.

Because Laux and Millar were calling out the spirits of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Quicksilver, Willie Dixon, The Who, Paul Simon, Cher and Sonny too, Theolonious Monk, Julie London, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mick Jagger, Joe Williams, Mel Torme and his beautiful velvet fog, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, James Taylor, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Lil Wayne and more -- Today's book of poetry gave the challenge to Milo, our head tech. Not surprisingly he was able to fire up a dance card on the box with everyone present. Our morning read involved much music.

Who Do You Love

This is the night after Bo Diddley died

and we sit in the cafe drinking iced tea

reading his lyrics in the newspaper

along with the story of the hairline crack

in the left front hoof of Big Brown,

another American original.

Outside the long cars prowl the dusk

trailing their ribbons of smoke,

heat lightning flickers over the street

and the waitress Arlene

brings salsa and chips.

I want to say thanks

for the cavernous voice

and the black cowboy hat,

the triangle rhinestone Fender guitar

and the scratchy beat everyone stole--

Quicksilver, Willie Dixon, The Who,

easy to shuffle to,

easy to dance to:

"walk 47 miles of barb wire

with a cobra snake for a necktie"

Chonk-chicka-chicka-chonk-chonk.

...

Laux and Millar's Duet pays all of their guests the deepest respect they can offer up on the way to immortalizing them in poem. Of course this playlist covers a particular and time specific era that includes mostly older gray haired souls like myself, but Kathleen, our young Jr. Editor, corrected me once again when she said the word I was looking for was "timeless,"

Laux and Millar taste just a little bittersweet and caramel while lamenting Gene Vincent and others with the certain knowledge that beauty dies young while songs live forever.

Dolly's Breasts

are singing

from the rafters of her chest,

swaying beneath sheeny satin,

suspended in the choreography

of her bra: twin albino dolphins

breaching from her ball gown's

rhinestone cleavage. Her breasts

are sisters praying at twilight, a pair

of fat-cheeked Baptists dreaming

of peaches, her nipples the color

of autumn, two lonely amber eyes.

When she shakes her metallic bodice,

tinsel swimming up her pink fonts

of nourishment, the spotlight hums

and shimmies with them, the audience,

open-mouthed, stunned into silence

as she crosses her legs and bows, her hair

hanging down, a permed curl caught

in that soft, improbable seam.

...

Laux and Millar's Duet made the day here at Today's book of poetry, they hit just the right chord. For Today's book of poetry our only complaint was pages, we were ready for more.

Dorianne Laux | Joseph Millar

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dorianne Laux's most recent collections are The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, and Smoke from BOA Editions. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at North Carolina State University.

Joseph Millar is the author of Kingdom, Blue Rust, Fortune, and Overtime, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program.

Joseph Millar

International Poetry Library of San Francisco

Video: Evan Karp

Dorianne Laux

International Poetry Library of San Francisco

Video: Evan Karp

jacarpress.com

574

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"

↧

The Emily Valentine Poems - Zoe Whittall (Invisible Publishing)

April 25, 2017, 7:39 am

≫ Next: Short Takes on the Apocalypse - Patricia Young (Biblioasis)

≪ Previous: Duet - Dorianne Laux | Joseph Millar (Jacar Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Emily Valentine Poems. Zoe Whittall. Invisible Publishing. Halifax & Picton, Nova Scotia. 2006/2016.

- 10th Anniversary Edition

Zoe Whittall first published The Emily Valentine poems in 2006. Today's book of poetry somehow missed it back in the day but is delighted to have our muggy little paws on this 2016 reprint.

Whittall likes the prose poem and she likes lists, well, as it happens, Today's book of poetry is a big fan of both and Whittall does not disappoint. The Emily Valentine poems just cut right to it.

Gender and desire get thrown around with alacrity, Whittall never misses a beat.

Dirt Road Wedding

In Vancouver for a family wedding

I am foot sore lost

in the bridal shop,

lungs heavy.

Everyone asks me,

"Where's your boyfriend?"

and I say,

"In 1989."

...

In the third section of The Emily Valentine poems, Part III: Scraps Against the Screen Zoe Whittall writes letters to Judy Blume, Boy George, Axl Rose, Rayanne Graff, Molly Ringwald, Corey Haim and Emily Valentine. They are hilarious.

Whittall was a much younger woman when these poems were written so we can understand her obsessions with these cultural iconic cut-outs from her youth - but what we need to notice, AND WE DO, is how sharp Whittall keeps her tools. Zoe Whittall is best known as a novelist but then so is Michael Ondaatje, and they both burn poems with the best of 'em, highest order stuff.

Dear Boy George,

When I told my mother I was going to marry you as soon as I

was old enough to take the bus to Montreal by myself and go

see you at your concert, she said that probably would never

happen. And it didn't. Please explain.

My love forever,

Zoe

...

Today's book of poetry rolled through The Emily Valentine poems like an old Cure song, sad, but with so much intelligent energy that the poems are irresistible.

Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, led our morning read with much robust laughter. Whittall's big sense of humour is the under-coat on all these poems but it doesn't take much reminding that the serious side of Zoe Whittall is stone cold. Today's book of poetry could listen to these poems all day long.

On Discovering

1. On re-discovering my love of pot:

Did I just ! brush my teeth ! for an hour?

I remember this feeling from recess!

2. On discovering how to love myself again:

my red bra falls out of my purse and onto the counter at the

Portuguese bakery where I buy my coffee on the mornings after.

The bakery is between our houses exactly. The woman with the

stubby band-aid makes me a latte without flinching.

3. On re-discovering self-esteem on January 2 :

Having .23 in my chequing

.47 in my savings

and a two day old coke hangover

is no reason to feel as bad about myself

as I do right now

...

Today's book of poetry enjoys Whittall's fiction, who wouldn't? But we want more poetry. This Tenth Anniversary Edition of The Emily Valentine poems is a balm, a great teaser, but we certainly want more.

Today's book of poetry has the Zoe Whittall poetry blues.

Zoe Whittall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zoe Whittall is the author of four novels, most recently The Best Kind of People (House of Anansi, 2016) and Holding Still for as Long as Possible(Anansi, 2010). She published her third collection of poetry, Precordial Thump, in 2008 with Exile Editions. She works as a TV writer and novelist in Toronto.

BLURBS
“This reminds me that I would like to know everything about this person.”

— Eileen Myles

“Zoe Whittall’s poems are snake bite cures masquerading as candy.”

— RM Vaughan

“Zoe Whittall might just be the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler…”

— The Globe and Mail

invisiblepublishing.com

575

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"

↧

Short Takes on the Apocalypse - Patricia Young (Biblioasis)

April 28, 2017, 8:22 am

≫ Next: Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop - David Lee (Wings Press)

≪ Previous: The Emily Valentine Poems - Zoe Whittall (Invisible Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
Short Takes on the Apocalypse. Patricia Young. Biblioasis. Windsor, Ontario. 2016.

Patricia Young is the author of eleven previous books of poetry and Today's book of poetry has had our eye on her work for a long, long time. We had Milo, our head tech, check the stacks this morning and much to our disappointment he came back with a miserly three Patricia Young titles, Melancholy Ain't No Baby (Ragweed Press, 1985), What I remember from my time on earth (Anansi, 1997) and Night Eaters (Quatro Poetry, 2002). After reading her latest, Short Takes on the Apocalypse, Today's book of poetry is reminded how much we admired this poet's work.

Short Takes on the Apocalypse isn't a party trick but this book does have a catch; each poem begins with some sage epigraph from a resplendent group that ranges from George Bernard Shaw to Marilyn Manson to Kurt Vonnegut. It all works. Somehow Young is able to use these witticisms as a springboard and once she takes to the air all sorts of marvelous hell break loose.

Tornado In The Bible Belt

Never open... with the weather.

-Elmore Leonard

Strong southerly winds tore through the upper atmosphere. Hot air

clashed with cold. High-speed gusts rotated around a calm centre,

and then a funnel-shaped cloud was sucking up dust and debris and

a small child--my child. For twelve minutes his body spun like a

blob of butter inside nature's blender. I cursed God and the complex

interactions between updraft and surrounding winds, cursed the

third layer of dry air and His vortex howl. How dare the Almighty

sweep my boy up, then drop him like a cigarette butt far from the

house. All night I searched the fields. Searched and searched until a

voice rang out of the blackness--I am safe in Jesus' arms. And then

silence unlike anything I'd ever known.

...

Short Takes on the Apocalypse, Young's twelfth book of poems, is an exploration. Young is looking at it all; love, sex, death and her Hungarian grandmother. Young brings a masterful poise to her narratives, these stories resonate so true - and that would be good enough - but Young is so much more.

This is funny stuff, biting and instructive. Young has experience and wit and this book swells to bursting with both. We laughed, we cried.

Vanishing

I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect

to see my brother again.

- Maurice Sendak

It doesn't matter where I go, what clothes I'm wearing,

which way my head's turned, north or south, if my mouth's

open or shut, if I'm awake or dreaming, I'm always with

you, on a bus in an eastern European town. Same overcast

sky, same up-turned cart in the middle of the road, hay

spreading across pavement, a donkey and farmer, shoulders

slumped: stance of unspeakable resignation. Time's lost

or frozen, the traffic's blocked and the bus driver's cursing

in a language so luminous with rage we understand every

blue letter word. Late afternoon commute, men with wind-

lashed faces and women in bright scarves. Bored girls

flipping open cell phones or the make-up cases on their laps.

Wherever I go a dull wash is descending upon the same

mud-splattered scene. We're twenty-two, we're forty-five,

we're sixty-eight, but no matter, day will lurch into night

and then into another day, the seasons will shift, the planets

align, the spilled hay will be cleared for passage, the driver

will sat back down, his diesel engine will sputter and combust,

we'll look out the back window as farmer, donkey and cart

grow small, then smaller, the dead will chatter into

the vanishing point. The bus will continue down the road.

...

It occurs to us here at Today's book of poetry that Young must be some sort of serious reader of the highest order to have found the range of epigraphs that frame these poems like paintings. As it happens these poems are painterly, Short Takes on the Apocalypse is like a grand vernissage curated by Young. It's a life story and Young doesn't flinch for a second, her panorama covers the past, present and future.

Today's book of poetry has always, or at least since 1985, felt a kinship with Young's voice but perhaps that is only wishful thinking. She has the plain, clear, intelligent voice Today's book of poetry aspires to.

Father Suite

A father is always making his baby into a little woman.

And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

-Enid Bagnold

In his shirt pocket, a package of Gitanes. I loved that package.

Wanted to be the Spanish lady shaking a tambourine. In Canada

my father became the model immigrant. Worked hard. Built

chimneys for a living. The feather in the cap, he'd say, his accent

stubborn. He laid brick, stone, concrete blocks. Climbed ladders

to the sky. He was king of flues and updrafts. Threw his little girl

into the air. So proud of her English. How she pronounced spark

arrestor, wall thimble, directional cowl. I was polished and pretty. At

sixteen landed a bit part in Rossini's La Cenerentola. On closing

night, kissed my backstage hero inside the folds of the velvet

curtain (how did my father know? what did he see?). When the

applause stopped, I was shipped off to Eastern Europe to die like

the grasses, rot in the earth.

Squatting before the hearth, my Hungarian grandmother ate

meaty potatoes right out of their skins. Scrubbed the floors of her

cramped apartment with a vile-smelling soap. Squirted vinegar

on the windows. Wiped them down with crumpled newspaper

until the glass squeaked. Sometimes I'd catch her looking at me

as though she understood my fundamental flaw. Her words were

foreign and disjointed and pierced with disappointment. At night

she wept. The delicate sound of her sadness was hard as nails.

She still longed for her son, my father. All those years later she

still missed the man I now hated. And such hatred! Ferocious.

Operatic. It rattled my bones.

I returned home to find him asleep on the front porch, big grey

wolf guarding the door. An empty bottle of plum brandy tipped on

its side. I shook him. Nudged his leg. He was still handsome in an

aging playboy sort of way. The cab driver, watching from the street,

was waiting to see me safely inside. I wanted to run back, ask him

to take me away. Instead, I slid down beside my father and began

to talk about my years in Budapest. How I stopped eating. Took up

smoking. Grew to love my grandmother. I talked about my soul-

deep passion for the backstage boy who'd painted the backdrop of

Don Magnifico's rundown mansion. You almost killed me, I said,

and pulled a blue and white cigarette package from my purse. My

father roused. Opened an eye. Squinted. He looked at the faceless

gypsy woman with a clinical and tender curiosity.

...

Our morning read was excellent. How could it not be? Both Milo and Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, made lists of the names Young referenced. They are both determined to be good readers and are willing to jump off of any springboard they can find.

Young, a Governor General Award short list nominee, twice, is a true pro. Every poem in Short Takes on the Apocalypse stands on it's own, adds some light where there was dark.

Patricia Young

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patricia Young is the author of twelve books of poetry, and one book of short fiction, Airstream (Biblioasis, 2006). A two-time Governor General’s Award nominee, she has also won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the CBC Literary Competition, the British Columbia Book Prize for Poetry and the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Competition. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

BLURBS

“Young is a masterful technician. She masons each brick into place just so. …She thrives on ambiguity and twists while fostering a rapt interest in them in the reader.”

— Prairie Fire

“With her sure hand wielding the knife of understanding, Young cuts not just to the bone, but well beyond into realms that transcend the here, the now and the merely personal.”

— Monday Magazine

“Accute and quirky observation which cumulates at insight.”

— Freefall

biblioasis.com

576

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"

↧

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop - David Lee (Wings Press)

May 2, 2017, 10:35 am

≫ Next: Weathervane - Mark Sampson (Palimpsest Press)

≪ Previous: Short Takes on the Apocalypse - Patricia Young (Biblioasis)

Today's book of poetry:
Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop. David Lee. Wings Press. San Antonio, Texas. 2017.

Back on May 9th, 2016 this all started. It was almost one year ago today that Today's book of poetry wrote about the former Missouri Poet Laureate David Clewell's excellent book Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). The esteemed Mr. Clewell started corresponding with us here at Today's book of poetry, started sending us books we'd never heard of. Then he introduced us to the Twangster, Mark Twang.

That was when all hell broke loose. Twang, our correspondent from the south, thinks nothing of walking into my office unannounced and throwing down a book with a demanding "read this now!" Not sure where fear ends and respect begins but Twang has certainly opened some eyes around here. Today's book of poetry is ashamed to admit that we'd never really heard of B.H. Fairchild or Rodney Jones, and we certainly had never heard of David Lee.

Today's book of poetry doesn't know exactly how to say it but try this; David Lee is the poet Today's book of poetry has been waiting for. Reading Lee is like taking a ride in a jet fighter when previously you'd only been riding a wagon. David Lee is a whole new ball game.

The editor at Wings Press had this to say about Lee:

"Imagine Robert Frost simultaneously channeling Will Rogers

and Ezra Pound. Imagine Chaucer with a twang."

Today's book of poetry would add that you could throw that witty wordsmith Woody Guthrie and old Willie the Shake to that compendium.

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop is a stunning social history of rural Texas, mid twentieth century or earlier. Most of it from a woman's perspective, a woman's voice. This is astonishing magic.

Hooter

and down they forgot as up they grew

E.E. Cummings,

"anyone lived in a pretty how town"

Back in the once upon a time days

Hooter Hagins got to be famous

a lot longer than the rest of us

but until Maurine Huffman

told her story to her Bobby Jack

almost everybody

even those of us who knew her then

and were there had already forgotten

that we all thought

it was a miracle

or a terrible accident

She had only one breast

No one was really sure

if they had to take it off

when she was a baby

or if she was born that way

and nobody ever thought

to ask her or her mama

which was what

to resolve the dilemma

none of us seemed to notice it

until we were in junior high school

on a day like a bolt of thunder

Monroe Newberry who was so innocent

he didn't know any better

made the longest speech of his lifetime

when he said Jesust Hooter

you only got one tiddy

from then on as long

as we could remember to think

about it she was

as important to our self identity

as President Eisenhower or Sputnik

or Governor Shivers or Coach Darrell Royal

in high school it seemed

she'd managed to find a way

to get it centered so we could look

forward to sweater days

to see Hooter's point of view

then along came Ella Mae Blodgett

with snow cone brassieres

Hooter got one to work for her

so well the Mr. Bennett

in general science quit

trying to teach any at all

on those days and had work sheets

in his drawers

ready to pass out so he

could practice on his personal theory

of successful sight alignment

wore it to class next semester

on biology test day

after ten minutes Tommy Bouchier

who was a Baptist and refrained

from all lustful contemplation

until he went to college

got up and walked out

sweat running down both sideburns

took it in the library after school

on his own time and still

graduated class valedictorian

nobody could hold

any of it against him

years later at the Dew Drop Inn

across the tracks drinking

bootleg liquor Jimmie Ivie asked

Bus Pennell how he lost his eye

Was it a hunting accident?

which gave Bus the opportunity

for personal loquaciousness

he said Partially

it was on a Saturday night

in my pickup out in the bushes

with Hooter I goosed her

she jerked loose

her gazoobie was like a brick

with a carriage bolt

stuck in the end of it

tore it right out of its sockets

he should have laughed

at the end of his story

and reminded them of what

they'd misplaced in their remembrance

that Charolotte Paducah before

she married Bobby Joe Rushing

shot it out with a Chinaberry

in a slingshot

when he came into her yard

after she told him not to

but when he didn't

went as quiet in there as when

Jerry Banks puked in church

during communion service

after Charles Ivins told him

it was made out of dead

ground up body parts

he wouldn't put it in his mouth

and be a cannibal

Miss Lela's eyes all wide

because her mama was midwife

saw it at Hooter's birth

them people didn't know

if it was from the Lord or the Debbil

but she had surely been touched

way back before Bus Pennell

got to her in his pickup

rumor of it spread all the way

to Odessa we heard

we were in line

at the picture show on a Saturday night

somebody we later thought Wheelis House

brought his cousin

down from Tahoka to go to it

he'd forgotten to warn him

the potential consequences

of silliness in our town

he said too loud

Looks like a Chinese rhinoceros

yall ought to call her Ichiban

like that Jap wrestler in Lubbick

Harold Wayne Clayburn said

You want us to call you a doctor

or a vegetarian? he said What?

never saw a thing

she hit him holding a half drunk

R.C. Cola bottle with peanuts in it

on the point of his chin

went down in a squatch

like a jellyfish

that lost its bonnet at sea

one eye rolled up and the other one

looked straight out like it's

been painted on

knocked him right out

of one of his shoes

she said to Harold Wayne

It's a veteranarain dumbass

whoever it wases cousin

that brought him

probably Wheelis

tried to say He didn't really

mean nothing by it

but Glenda Hutto

who was her friend that night

beside her standing in line

said It's too late already

you don't call the roofman

when it's raining.

we heard all over town

that at the Rotary Club meeting

Pastor Brother Gene said

It was a stampede

of accumulated wisdom and grievance

that she chose to unleash

upon that poor foreign boy

at that very moment

in order to provide the incentive

and momentum for possible redemption

and on the other hand

he probably just should have stayed

at home in Tahoka that night

even though they all laughed

it was standing room only

at the Methodist Church

next Sunday in anticipation

that Hooter might show up

for admonishment or praise

she began to disappear

from our collective consciousness

when she married down horribly

to Paulie Joe Wheaton after

he came home from his two years

Army service in lieu of the penitentiary

then another divorce after him then

married Byron Hainey who drifted

on the lam from Arkansas

got him a job at Piggly Wiggly finally

sacking groceries and stocking shelves

by then time and gravity

had done its duty

along with cancer getting popular

and other women getting one

or both of theirs cut off

so it wasn't much unusual any more

we forgot about her mostly

until the new husband we never accepted

either for us or her

got the prostrate cancer

took him to Dr. Tubbs

who called in Hooter

the first time said Your husband

is a real sick man but

would be a whole lot better

if he had sex once a day

on weekdays and twicet on Saturdays

when she came out of the office

he asked her what the Dr. said

with everybody listening

she said Dr. Tubbs said

you're going to die

on the next visit

Dr. Tubbs told Hooter

he had to get serious with her

said We can operate on him

try to get it out but you need to know

that would probley make him

pure flat impotent

she said Well that's fine

but would there be

any negative side effects?

that piece of gossip

brought her right back

to her previous hero status.

he ran off home to Arkansas

where we heard he died

and the church ladies social club

decided it wasn't right

Hooter should be alone

took her out to the old Wheaton place

where her ex Paulie Joe

who it was thought

still pined for her

had put in a trailer house

over the foundation of the burned one

Wheaton Texas-house with a sitting porch

pulled up he was lounging

on the furniture outside all bigfat

with his shirt off grinning

needing a haircut

in the sunshine

she said Turn the car around

and get me out of here right now

they said What for?

he's wanting read bad

to get back together with you

she said He looks like

a Chester white hog sitting up

with two rows of titties

hanging down his front

I don't need the reminder

or the competition

wasn't anything they could do

but take her back

she turned to look at him one last time

standing up waving his arms

his whole front belly looked like

a little boy sloshing in the bathtub

spillwaves going up and down

she said Oh set down

you silly sonofabitch

you're embarrassing me

Sybil Cockrum almost run the car

off in the ditch

them church social club women

laughed all the way in to town

they all sworn a vow

not to ever tell anybody

Ruth Lee laughed so hard

she peed herself on the carseat

then Maurine Huffman told

her boy Bobby Jack after that

about Hooter back in high school

how she was world famous

all the way to Abilene

put a boy in the hospital

for making fun of her

and then why

pretty soon the whole town

was all over it again

she was once more our celebrity

but when the new Cambellite

preacher's wife Sister Parker

without understanding the true essence

of the matter said

as part of her conversational duty

checking out at her register

at Piggly Wiggly I heard

somebody say you was

really something way back when

that you was maybe

the most famous person in this part of Texas

Hooter said Yes ma'am

we all were

legends in our own minds

but that was then

and today is now

and that's exactly why

most stories start Once upon a time

and then go straight

backwards from there

but at least mine

had a point to it

and the right two words

for a conclusion

so we don't have to think

about any of it any more

and that's just about

all they are to it

I hope you have

a real nice rest of the day

and we all decided with her

it was time to let it go

...

Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop weighs in at well over two-hundred pages and when you are reading it you might feel like you're caught between memories of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and the whispered words of wisdom from every woman in rural Texas. Bluebonnets... is the anecdotal history of a time most of you are too young to remember, Lee's women remind us.

David Lee and his Texan women broker no hypocrisy and they do it in chicken-fried, glowshimmer style.

Veal, 1948

All afternoon grandmother

dressed the meat

divided the cuts

steaks and chops

a small roast

for the ice box

and sliced the round

into thin pieces which

for the first time

she didn't pound

with a saucer's edge

and for the meal

a private portion

chicken fried

for everyone at the table

including kids

so tender adults weren't requited

to do cutting

the savor of fresh beef

filling the air

on the tongue

lingering on the mind

"This is so good"

"So so good, mama"

"Never so tender"

"Where'd you get this meat?"

and grandmother

head down to her plate

as if in prayer

"Milk cow shed her calf"

"Shed her calf?"

"Still born"

...

One Reason Why You Didn't Want

Kristine Thornton To Talk During

Town Board Meeting

While Arguing Over Redistricting With Moe Bob Trammel

If the Lord wanted you

to have an empty head

and a cob up your ass

He'd of put popcorn seeds

in your daddy's spurem

From sidebar minutes of the

monthly Town Board Meetings

19 September 1950

...

Our southern correspondent, the Twangster, didn't stop with Bluebonnets..., no, he also sent along some other David Lee titles full of real life and wonder. Today's book of poetry recently read A Legacy of Shadows - Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1999), Driving & Drinking (Copper Canyon Press, 1979,1982 and 2004), The Porcine Canticles (Copper Canyon Press, 1984) and we listened to the CD David Lee: A Listener's Guide where Lee reads from A Legacy of Shadows and News from Down to the Cafe.

The Today's book of poetry staff have been taking turns taking home the David Lee CD. It is simply riveting poetry from a voice so authentic you have no choice but to believe every word uttered.

The fact of it for Today's book of poetry is that every poem David Lee writes seems to contain more truth than the last. Lee isn't mimicking voices, he is remembering them, pitch perfect.

David Lee's eloquence is humbling but it is an awful lot of fun. Bluebonnets, Firewheels and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop is a kind of local, oral history rendered universal. The stories and characters are new to us, they are new to everyone, but the moral playground they dance on is one we know, recognize from our own small part of the world.

One Reason Why You Didn't Want Kristine Thornton

To Talk During Town Board Meetings

on an unnamed citizen

running for town board

He's meteoaker

just trash not worth picking up;

a bucket with two holes

in the bottom

and a tore out pouring edge

From sidebar minutes of the monthly

Town Board Meetings

12 May 1953

...

The palette stacker

Let me tell you something, Travis

woman to man as your Assistant

Personnel Director this one time

Hoyt there is in charge

of this entire mill's palette stacking

being a one man team

and if I were you which I'm not

I'd be careful about how

you've been talking to him

he's an odd duck and just doesn't

take to teasing any

and here' the consideration

I'm thinking I might take

if I were you which I'm not

that skinny little man

lifts 10 boxes of sheets every minute

and stacks them on his palette

that's 600 boxes of sheets an hour

which means in a workday

he lifts and stacks just about exactly

4,800 boxes of sheets

each box weighing 44 pounds exactly

which if you do the sum

comes to just a tad over

211 thousand pounds of lifts and stacks

on his palettes every day

five days a week and six

once we get to the holiday sale season

Travis, to put this in plain linguitch

as the good old boys say

so you might understand it

that skinny little man

who is from Shakeslovaskia

which is why to you he seems

to talk funny but he doesn't agree

has muscles in his shit

and if you tick him off making fun of him

bad enough to have him come at you

I can tell you for a certainty

the next one to wipe your butt

will be the undertaker

if you catch my drift

...

At one point Today's book of poetry was all set to tackle ALL of the marvelous David Lee material we have in the stacks but then realized we simply wanted to copy out every poem and share them with you. This extraordinary poetry deserves to be celebrated, and loudly.

If it were possible Today's book of poetry would lead a David Lee march right into the ballroom of The Poetry Hall of Fame. How often do we get to call a living poet Great? Here's your chance.

David Lee

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Lee was raised in Post, Texas (southeast of Lubbock, northeast of Lamesa — think hot, dry and flat), a background he has never completely escaped, despite his varied experiences as a seminary student, a boxer and semi-pro baseball player (the only white player to ever play for the Negro League Post Texas Blue Stars) known for his knuckleball, a hog farmer, and a decorated Army veteran. Along the way he earned a Ph.D., taught at various universities, and recently retired as the Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University.

After 30 years in Utah, Lee and his wife Jan took to the road to become more-or-less full-time wanderers. Passing through Bandera, Texas, Lee says, "We just fell in love. We noticed nine bars and two churches and thought this is where God lives." They settled in Bandera for a few years, but spent half of the year traveling, mostly on the backroads of the western U.S. They now live somewhere in Nevada.

Lee was named Utah's first Poet Laureate in 1997, and has received both the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry and the Western States Book Award in Poetry. Lee received the Utah Governor's Award for lifetime achievement and was listed among Utah's top twelve writers of all time by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of over twenty books of poetry. In 2004, So Quietly the Earth was selected for the New York Public Library's annual "Books to Remember" list.

BLURBS

If we were a civilized nation, we would declare David Lee a national treasure.
— Sam Hamill, author of Habitation: Collected Poems

This one's a lucky pick: Rural Texas back when — memory filtered through the eloquent country vernacular and irreverent, bawdy imagination of David Lee, who can stretch the truth until delight shines straight through, unspool a nonstop sentence like a bad cat with a ball of yarn, see through the eyes of a woman just the same as a man, and hilariously take down hypocrisy and pretention, especially "preaching, zeal maintenance and overlording." (Full disclosure: love the guy, but then, read on and I bet you will too.)
— Eleanor Wilner, MacArthur Fellow, author of The Girl with Bees in Her Hair and Tourist in Hell

David Lee

Poet Laureate David Lee at Geneva Hills, Ohio

Video: danceshadowmoon1

wingspress.com

577

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"

↧

Weathervane - Mark Sampson (Palimpsest Press)

May 6, 2017, 9:53 am

≫ Next: Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems - Beth Everest (Frontenac House Poetry)

≪ Previous: Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans or Poems New and Used From the Bandera Rag and Bone Shop - David Lee (Wings Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Weathervane. Mark Sampson. Palimpsest Press. Windsor, Ontario. 2016.

Weathervane is a dipping of the proverbial toes into the cosmos. Mark Sampson writes from a contemplative and amused perch. These poems are trump cards from a honest poker player with a dead-pan draw.

Choosing A Mattress

is about more than just the selfishness of sleep,

that blessed oblivion

resting between today's

half-failure and tomorrow's vague promise

Consider your future lovers

Choose a mattress wide enough

to accommodate their desire for you

and one soft enough

for the afterplay of all your gentle words

You must also make your pick

with lovelessness in mind--

a mattress broad enough to give room to wars,

to withstand fifty years

of loneliness

When choosing a mattress

pick one worthy of the children

you will conceive on it

This will be their launching pad

This will be where they judge you

Pick one equal to your anxieties,

the unnamed worries

that loop around endlessly,

like a ceiling fan

A mattress must be able to hold

the regrets that keep you from sleep

the wrongs you have done to others

and yourself

These are your true weight

A mattress must be forgiving

but firm enough to bear it

...

Today's book of poetry's morning read was full of charm and humour ala Mark Sampson. Milo, our head tech, has taken on my proclivity for list poems and turned Mr. Sampson's "We Took The City"

into a considerable poetry monster. That poem took over our reckless insides as Milo marched it around the room and out into the universe.

We Took The City

We took the city

We took it like barbarians

We took its high-rise hammocked balconies

and Swing Slow Sleep Aid colonies

We took its slamming doors,

Its elevators' metronomic forages

We took its whores

We took its rules to heart

No gambling

No littering

No loud sex after 10. (Quiet sex is fine)

We took its pain clinics

and its chartered accountants

We took its dentists' chairs and its cynics

We took its citadel

We took its harbour islands

We took it dancing

We took it seriously

We took it straight

We took it on the rocks

We took a cheap shot

We took a glance over the cubicle wall

at the summer's badgering sun through the window

We took a life we didn't want

We took a cold, hard look at ourselves

We took a bus downtown

We took a mortgage uptown

We took a breath

We took another breath

We took a chance

We took a phone call

We took a date

We took a second date

We took a walk

We took a hike

We took a swim

We took a dinner on the quay

We took your mother to palliative care

We took what the city had to offer

and what it didn't

We took ourselves too lightly

We took a hit

We took a loss

We took a punch

We took it all in stride

We took each other where we needed to go.

...

Today's book of poetry apologizes to Mark Sampson for our truncated coverage of Weathervane. We wanted to get Weathervane out there because as much as we enjoyed reading it - and we did - we have a higher offering of praise. K, Today's book of poetry's almost perfect and long suffering better-half, made a point of telling us how much she liked Weathervane. K is a tough nut to crack and does not give poetry praise easily or often. She made a point of telling me in no uncertain terms how smart she thought Sampson's poems were.

There is no doubt about who is the sharpest tack in the Today's book of poetry household and when K likes poems we listen.

Blue Fog

The rain makes generous donations

in the scooter women's hats.

This neighbourhood has had sirens

every night for forty nights

and the gulls bob and weave above

the crimson fire trucks pooling

like blood in the grim cavities

of St. James Town. This April's

fog is thick, a lavender tongue lolling

in a strangled throat.

Last year, a prostitute offered

to sell me a shopping bag full of batteries.

This year, she threw herself off her Bleeker St. balcony

while her daughter practiced the cello.

...

Not sure if P.E.I. native Mark Sampson will want to know this curious detail about Today's book of poetry. We apprenticed at Wizard Business Products in Charlottetown. At the time our mailing address was ______ _______, Guarding the Stanhope/Grand Tracadie Border, P.E.I.

But everyone always thought of us as come from away.

Today's book of poetry loved living close to the ocean and loved the poetry. We felt right at home with this marvelous first collection of poetry. Like we feel at home listening to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds sing "Mermaids."

Mark Sampson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Sampson is the author of the novels Off Book and Sad Peninsula, as well as the short story collection The Secrets Men Keep. His fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared in many journals across Canada, including The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, PRISM international, This magazine, QWERTY and FreeFall. Palimpsest Press released Weathervane in 2016. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he now lives and writes in Toronto.

BLURBS

“A taut, confident debut from an already accomplished author.”

— Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

“Sampson has the ability…to wax profanely about things we would all take for granted or overlook. He notes thoughts we all consider yet we never speak aloud. And he points out what we consider mundane and makes us ask why we think that.”

— Steven Buechler, The Library of Pacific Tranquility

palimpsestpress.ca

578

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"

↧

Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems - Beth Everest (Frontenac House Poetry)

May 9, 2017, 8:31 am

≫ Next: May 13, 2017 Today's book of poetry - Update

≪ Previous: Weathervane - Mark Sampson (Palimpsest Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems. Beth Everest. Frontenac House Poetry. Calgary, Alberta. 2016.

~~~~~

is chemo as awful as

some people say it is?

you never ever want to know.

~~~~~

Beth Everest goes to hell and back and writes poems about the experience. They are as immediate as a slap to an unsuspecting face. Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems is a harrowing coming to terms with cancer and the fallout around that terrible disease.

Everest takes honesty to chemo-puking levels and shares the intimacies of emotional mountain climbing and the literal physical breaking point. Her illness is a cross she bears and a painful platform and from that stratified vantage point Everest muses on relationships, family, the concept of the/a future and the pain. There is almost always the pain.

~~~~~

sometimes

i lie in bed, hoping

morning comes.

other times, i lie in bed

hoping it doesn't

but it does

and maybe the sun comes

out, or doesn't

but my nurse

tells me rain

clears toxins

even if it feels like

burning,

burning

rain.

~~~~~

Today's book of poetry was very curious to find out that Beth Everest had the opportunity to study with both W.O. Mitchell (Who Has Seen The Wind) and Saint Alistair MacLeod (No Great Mischief), two of Canada's greatest story-tellers.

Today's book of poetry was lucky enough to study with W.O. Mitchell's son Orm Mitchell, as good an English professor as you'd ever want to find. The closest Today's book of poetry ever got to St. Alistair was to stand beside him at a small cocktail party while he and Margaret Laurence traded war stories. I made sure their glasses were full, listened, gobsmacked.

Today's book of poetry mentions Mitchell and MacLeod because in our story of the world they are a special kind of deserved royalty. That Everest studied with them shows serious intent, and it never hurts to rub elbows with the gods. But to my knowledge neither MacLeod or Mitchell dabbled in the dark art of poetry.

Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems works very effectively as a book of poems. The immediacy, intimacy and voracity of these extremely personal poems is electric. But it would be very easy for Today's book of poetry to imagine much of this text in a longer narrative work of fiction. We would stop short of saying we can see the particular influence of Mitchell or MacLeod but we certainly see the quality, the precision. Beth Everest writes poems singed with the fire and flame of having been to Hades.

~~~~~

docetaxel

smells like medicine we were given

when we were kids, one teaspoon each

year before the wormy winter of sucking

on frozen sweater sleeves, eating snow

for God's sake, a dog might have peed there,

the carmine suspension that tasted like

coins, thick on the tongue.

open your mouth, it's just one teaspoon,

my dad holds my hands back, mom pries

at my mouth and just the smell i am

spitting it into the next year.

and now i am 53, the oncology nurse with

the slow rubber gloves, funnels the bag of

red into the syringe, into my arm, it smells

like, it feels like, it tastes like

forever

will it be over, the slow 45 minute

squeeze,

does it burn? tell me if it burns and

i will slow down, hurry, please, too

toxic to drip, too toxic to touch, too toxic

to spit and when you get home you'll pee

red for up to four days, all your body

fluids are toxic, take precautions especially

around the toilet, wash your hands, be

careful, tell your family, and watch your pets, do you

have pets? a dog, maybe?

yes, yes, hurry, please yes,

and when we are done,

we'll start the slow

2 hour

drip.

~~~~~

There is much rough going on in Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems, so much pain shared that it's hard to rub it off when you are done. At the same time Everest has found her way to a voice that is measured with enough tenderness to get through to the end. She is not without hope.

In this very difficult time Everest and her poems find some solace in the consoling hands of caring friends.

~~~~~

i am at a local store,

flipping thru the racks of discount clothing

sort of hoping to find something to fit

my reshaped

body.

hey. i look up at the sound of a woman's voice,

soft and friendly, and realize she is speaking to me.

you in treatment? she says. i've been there.

twice. as in two sets.

i think i am afraid

to think about that possibility.

what stage? she asks.

2B comes surprisingly to my tongue.

can i hug you? she asks and moves to my

side of the rack.

and you? i say, what stage are you? i ask this

mid-hug. she steps back.

she smiles, they are making me comfortable

and she walks away.

wait, i think, but not thinking loudly

enough for her to hear. wait, please

tell me your name, as if somehow

the naming would make all the difference.

~~~~~

Everyone here at Today's book of poetry has been touched by that rat bastard cancer at one point or another. Our Sr. Editor Max lost his youngest son to the scourge almost twenty years ago and we miss him so. One way or another cancer has thunder-fucked each and every one of us here at Today's book of poetry so this morning's reading was a highly charged affair.

Today's book of poetry's mother, Effie, had a breast removed when she was in her early 20's and then had the other breast removed when she was in her early 40's. For the first time in my life, thanks to Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems, I have had a small glimpse, a moment of perspective, into the horrors my mother braved. Four small children and a fifth on the way when the Big C first knocked on my mother's door.

Beth Everest is doing some very brave sharing with Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems. Many, many women will weep with understanding and empathy, any man who reads Silent Sister will come away with more understanding than previous and certainly more sympathy. That is an awfully big success for any book of poetry.

And Everest manages to throw in some hope, a trickle of optimism. An "I'm still here, dammit," smiling sneer.

This book of poems should be in every Dr.'s office and waiting room in the country.

Beth Everest

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Everest is a Calgary based writer whose poetry and fiction have been published in journals across the country. Her new book, silent sister: the mastectomy poems, forthcoming from Frontenac House (2016), is her second book of poetry.

Beth has won numerous awards for her work and her teaching. Most recently, her piece “this poem is about desire” was awarded the silver medal at the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Awards (2014), and “hanging clothes” won second place in the 2013 Freefall Fiction Contest (judged by Patrick Lane).

Beth holds a Doctorate in Education (University of Calgary), a Master of Arts Degree (University of Windsor, where she had the notable honour of studying with the great story-tellers W.O. Mitchell and Alistair MacLeod), a Bachelor of Education Teaching Certificate (University of Calgary), and Bachelor of Arts Degree (University of Alberta).

Currently, Beth is an Associate Professor in the Department of English,
Languages and Cultures at Mount Royal University, where she teaches Creative Writing (fiction).

BLURBS

Your writing makes me wake up and think and feel and remember.

- Judy O'Leary, cancer survivor

Telling the story of breast cancer is brave but not so important to helping others who often feel very alone. Even more effective when poetry brings alive the daily experience in such a graphic way.

- Jeremy Hughes, former CEO, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, UK

Dr. Everest has composed an honest, reflective collection of her art, sharing with us her hard-fought battle against breast cancer. She vividly captures the fragile moments of her journey; there is intense emotion in each verse.

- Dr. J. Kanashiro, surgeon

Powerful. Poignant. Heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful. Silent Sister is about more than breast cancer. It's about the loneliness of modern medicine, our seach for meaning, our dogged resilience in the face of a crow's nest of cancer. The flesh may be pierce, but the human heart never.

-Will Ferguson, Giller Book Prize Winner

frontenachouse.com

579

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"

↧

May 13, 2017 Today's book of poetry - Update

May 13, 2017, 7:53 pm

≫ Next: Bad Engine - Michael Dennis (Anvil Press)

≪ Previous: Silent Sister - the mastectomy poems - Beth Everest (Frontenac House Poetry)

Today's book of poetry:
Update.

Today's book of poetry just topped 300,000 readers from over 160 countries and we couldn't be more grateful to both our readers and to the generous publishers who send us books to consider.

Today's book of poetry will be taking a brief hiatus as we are redecorating our offices and our troops are all afield on various journeys of discovery.

We'll be back soon.

All the best,
Michael Dennis

↧

Bad Engine - Michael Dennis (Anvil Press)

June 5, 2017, 12:02 pm

≫ Next: Ken Stange 1946 - 2016 Chicago Days and the poetry of Ken Stange

≪ Previous: May 13, 2017 Today's book of poetry - Update

Today's book of poetry is back with a special guest. We have asked our Southern Correspondent to come out from behind his Twangster moniker and take a look at my most recent book. Today's edition of Today's book of poetry was written by David Clewell. Clewell, the former Poet Laureate of Missouri has been a great supporter of Today's book of poetry and we are honoured to have him look at Bad Engine.

Today's book of poetry has avoided discussing my own work on this blog because it was never intended as a personal promotional vehicle for my own poetry. This is a first and I am hoping you will indulge us. We will return to our regular broadcast frequency in two days.

Today's book of poetry:

Bad Engine. Michael Dennis. Edited and introduced by Stuart Ross. Anvil Press, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017.

In the interest of full disclosure: I know this writer, although I’ve never actually met him in person. Never sat on his porch, or helped him shovel his ungainly share of Ottawa snow, or ridden shotgun in his car while carrying on with my cockeyed chatter of flying saucers and Bigfoot and how I hope we’ll see some one of those any minute now, or bellied up to his favorite neighborhood bar, or loaded him down with obscure books from way too many used bookstores. I’ve never eaten his cooking, drunk his wine, helped him hang artwork or take any down, watched even five minutes of hockey on his television, spun records featuring our mutual jazzman heroes—Monk, Prez, Miles, Coltrane—into any kind of Canadian wee hours. Never shared a jail cell with the man, either (although I think we’ve both been in jail, albeit briefly).

Until just several weeks ago (and with that I’m getting ahead of myself), I knew Michael Dennis only through his remarkable blog, Today’s book of poetry—which even now I’m preparing to commandeer as I tap this out on the Demon Box that lives only in my office at work. (In the words that opened each episode of the 1960s sci-fi TV show The Outer Limits: “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission.”) That this was our meeting-place (and did that happen truly just one year ago?...it feels as if I’ve always known this guy who shares so many of my psychic-radio frequencies!) strikes me as more than a little surprising, seeing as how both of us undeniably hail from some Land of the Techno-Dinosaurs—those creatures still able to remember, no matter how dimly, former glory days of handwritten letters, along with poems, articles and reviews coming off the rollers of manual Smith-Coronas, Remingtons, and Olivettis . (Okay, we did manage finally to go electric at the typewriter. If it was good enough for Dylan and his guitar at Newport in ’65…) And on the receiving end of any of those efforts, that meant mail you were excited about holding in your hand, scrutinizing the return address, then opening it in your own idiosyncratic way. Still, for all that, though it seems like a fairly major concession to the times we live in, we each manage somehow to engage the other in our electro-stumbling peregrinations through e-mail.

Most of all, I’m grateful for his putting me in some kind of meaningful touch with what’s going on these days in contemporary Canadian poetry. Since starting up his blog in 2013, Dennis has written about more than 500 (gulp!) books and chapbooks of poems largely published by independent and university presses, making ample room for books from U.S. publishers as well. He’s called his pieces “appreciations” rather than reviews, and in that manner he’s a commentator after my own heart: better to use whatever finite amount of energy available to show a reader something amid the poetry welter that’s truly worth seeking out than to spend time and space on anything less (what he’s referred to, rather diplomatically, as “burnt toast”). And with that in mind, I promise: I really am creeping a little closer to telling you what happened “just several weeks ago.” And it will have nothing to do with either flying saucers or Bigfoot.

But first: let it be said that, for the long border shared by Canada and the U.S.—the close proximity of our two countries—it is not easy to find in the States books published by independent Canadian presses. It was really hard, almost impossible, to find Canadian-published poetry titles in the early ‘70s, when I first fell under the spell of poetry—difficult even to order them into the bookstore where I worked in New Brunswick (New Jersey’s version—not Canada’s!). From this distance it’s a little hazy, but orders directly from publishers were some kind of no-go, and very few U.S. book distributors were carrying them (maybe for the same, whatever-they-were, international-trade reasons). I remember finally coming across a distributor that had made some cracks in the embargo-wall, although whether or not they were doing it completely legally is something I can’t quite seem to recall.

And suddenly it wasn’t just Leonard Cohen and Margret Atwood and Irving Layton, fine poets though they were. But, hey: here came Michael (“Way-Before-The-English-Patient”) Ondaatje’s The Dainty Monsters, The Man with Seven Toes, and Rat Jelly in beautiful editions from Coach House Press, along with The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems from House of Anansi. Make way for Victor Coleman, Margaret Avison, George Bowering, Al Purdy, Fred Wah, and a clutch of significant others who came to matter to me as well. It was a kind of hit-or-miss serendipity, to be sure, but at last there were physical books I could browse through, deciding what to take home for keeps.

For a while, those were some exotic, heady days: some terrific books of poems, both beautifully produced and affordable. But as my life drifted away from that bookstore, I fell out of regular touch with what was going on in the poetry to my North. Between the difficulty of actually latching onto any of it and trying to keep up with the burgeoning small/independent press scene coming on strong in the’60s and ’70s U.S. poetry landscape, contemporary Canadian poetry with too few exceptions mostly disappeared from my radar.

Now, more than forty years later, that’s why I find Dennis’ blog to be a holy godsend. He spends copious amounts of time and human energy showcasing an impressive variety of books it just might be worth spending my time and energy with. He’s especially generous with excerpts (providing a veritable browsing simulation, if you will); his readers get substantial samples of the work he deems worthy of his public appreciation—including whole poems by poets who write in longer-than-lyric bursts and probably are not used to such kind, non-eviscerating treatment. This man’s eclectic good taste is always the order of the day. H.L. Mencken said something to the effect that we show our taste through our enthusiasms, and it pleases me to report that so many of Dennis’ enthusiasms have become my own as well.

Okay—it’s finally time for the surely-by-now-anticlimactic “just several weeks ago” reveal: that’s when I received in the mail Michael Dennis’ Bad Engine: New & Selected Poems. Never for a moment did I consider this happenstance any kind of potential friendship-breaker (what if I didn’t really like my book-correspondent’s own stuff?). Hadn’t I previously tried to inveigle from him some of the books and chapbooks already part of his lengthy bibliography? I’d certainly asked after so you think you might be judas, wayne gretzky in the house of the sleeping beauties, Coming Ashore on Fire, and Watching the Late Night Russian News in the Nude (what, you wouldn’t have asked?!), to name just a few of the most provocative of his more-than-two-dozen titles. And while working through my own overstuffed shelves during those initial weeks of our newfangled electro-correspondence, I discovered that in fact I owned an earlier book of “selected” Dennis poems, This Day Fullof Promise (Broken Jaw Press, 2002), which apparently I’d picked up on a whim years before—either for the poems therein or for the nude depicted on its cover. So, truth be told at last, I had at least a gratifying taste of what I might be in for—temporarily lost though it might have been amid a few thousand other slender volumes of poetry pleasure.

Bad Engine is one handsome beast all around, from its cover stock to its papers, from its visual design elements to its hard-to-describe-just-how-satisfying-it-is trim size. This classy presentation brings together some forty years of work from this heart-smart poet, assiduously and lovingly edited by Dennis’ friend and fellow writer, Stuart Ross, who provides an introduction that’s both informative and warm. With access to uncollected and unpublished work in addition to the productive Dennis’ many books, Ross has helped the poet assemble a collection that weighs in at exactly twice the size of the 2002 “selected”—and with nary an ounce of poetry fat. Ross writes: “The couple thousand poems I read to concoct this mixture drove home to me that Michael Dennis is the real thing when it comes to poetry without artifice.” I’m here to testify: you’d best prepare right now to say Amen, somebody. And while he’s been compared in that regard—aptly, favorably-- to Al Purdy and Charles Bukowski, I want to bring another one of my own poetry heroes under this “without artifice” umbrella too.

I’m thinking here of the good doctor of my home state, William Carlos Williams, who insists on no ideas / but in things (first in “A Sort of Song,” then later, several times in his epic book-length poem Paterson, where it finally turns into No ideas besides the facts). He aspired to a kind of writing “in which the world becomes what it is.”A world without abstractions, without superfluous explanations, where the facts are the local specifics—the physical and mental particulars encountered in walking through another day on the planet. He certainly didn’t mean that poems should be devoid of ideas. Rather, the poet’s selection of salientthings will more naturally reveal the poet’s heart and mind—along with a world that’s remade, for better or for worse, every time we head out into it.

It’s also about the diction and the palpable sounds that words make in the listening ear—because, no matter how intrinsically entertaining, anecdote alone does not a poem make. It’s about the cadences of the lines they become part of. It’s the music of starting and stopping and starting again—the lines themselves that show us how to listen to what’s being spoken. It’s about simple (but not simple-minded), plain-spoken (but never just plain drab) language that refuses to be gratuitously self-conscious or otherwise festooned; it’s speech without artifice or affectation. In a Paris Review interview near the end of his life, Williams says, “I wanted to say something in a certain tone of my voice… I couldn’t speak like the academy. It had to be modified by the conversation about me. As Marianne Moore used to say, a language dogs and cats could understand… Not the speech of English country people, which would have something artificial about it; not that, but language modified by our environment; an American environment.”

Michael Dennis is a member of the choir; poem after poem in this vibrant tome is eloquent testimony to that rewarding mode of operation. Taking up a rich variety of subject matters—a reticent ex-wrestler walking her dog, idyllic porch-sitting, watching his beloved hockey on TV (I am aCanadian boy and the artistry / of sticks and skates is something I understand), driving (whether truck, cab, or ’62 Falcon), the act of reading, the art of making love or making poems, reckoning with the end of the world or the more immediate end of another long night—Dennis allows the emotional content of the poem to grow out of the given situation’s most unabashedly human locus. And that kind of content—significantly different from what’s subject matter only—is surely the brightest “idea” worth having. These are the human facts as Williams intended, brought to light in language that sings as much as it says, that just might allow the world another chance to become what it is. The writer transmits that peculiar charge to the reader through the singular, unlikely conduit of the poem itself. And for as many times as that’s happened in my life, I am still no less astonished any time it happens again.

Along with variety, versatility is a hallmark of Bad Engine. In “because you’re fucked up and I’m perfectly sane,” the poet declares that he can listen to Mozart one minute / and Monk the next and can read Proust and Popeye in the same night. After spending so much good time with this book, I’m here to tell you that, yes, he absolutely can—and does. These poems explore a range of tones and pitches, from the lighthearted to the more serious (but never the solemn, where the wrong kind of poets take themselves, I’m afraid, the wrong-kind-of-seriously). Both an abiding grace and sense of humor inform Dennis’ ways of seeing the world—his unflagging witness and his testimony.

Many of his poems evidence a distinctive blend of lyric and narrative elements; the man likes a good story as much as he likes a good song. And because I am not a Canadian boy, I’m going to have to go, instead, all American football on him: he’s one of poetry’s wide receivers who can go short and go long with equal aplomb. For the short of it:

funeral for a fly

with a book of Richard Brautigan’s poetry

i killed an unsuspecting fly

(to be buried later in the envelope

of a letter from my lover’s mother)

i had no idea

that poems so short

could carry such weight

...

And for the long of it:

no savior and no special grace

what does it matter

i am sitting in my apartment

and looking out the window

at the people going by

it is summer and it is hot

the afternoon means nothing

the people on the street are dying

i am looking down and dying too

the mercury topped a hundred yesterday

and will do it again today

the rent is due

so is my bill at morries

the greasy spoon across the street

they know me there

i have a cheeseburger

a can or two or coke

say "hey, marg, put it on the bill"

if i have a reading and make a few bucks

i go in and cash my cheque

marg gives me the difference

we get along fine

i see people walking into morries

and coming out the same

hot and confused

i can see in the window

an electric fan rotates slowly

beside the bran muffins and butter tarts

it doesn't make any difference

just moves the hot air around the room

as cars drift by the window

they are doing nothing

just driving around the few blocks downtown

a clever plot by the mayor and his bandits

they've cut off the welfare

and are giving away gas to those with cars

to make it look like the city isn't dying

the only store doing any business

is the sally ann

it used to be only the broke

with holes in their shoes

wandered in the door

but not anymore

there is no pride left

if i had an egg

i could cook it on the danger high voltage sidewalk

and it i had some bacon

i wouldn't be sitting in the window

i'd be over at the king's

listening to the music

and watching one of the ladies

dancing and giving it away

she'd be wrapped in red

she'd be taking it off

but it doesn't matter because i hear them knocking

and they are coming for me

it doesn't even matter who they are

i've got the furniture piled against the door

if they want me

they come come in the windows

or through the roof

and until they do there is the street

with the cars drifting past

they come from somewhere

and go somewhere else

i watch the people go by

sometimes they'll be pretty women or a handsome man

doesn't matter

they are all doomed

they just have further to fall

when the boom comes down

the old women

with plastic bags full of their histories

they will survive if only from habit

but what of the beauty shop queens

who spend tuesdays at the club

when the club closes the doors

and they have nothing left

but to walk by my window

what will they do

they will scream in the streets

and pull their hair

their men will be weak things

crying and pulling at their teeth

there will be no saviour

and no special grace

the end will come

as quickly and surely

as the noon explosion

of the engine of a '63 pontiac

pushed to the limit just once too often

and i'll watch it

the engine blowing on the street below

marg will serve coffee to the bystanders

there will be blood and gasoline on the blacktop

the heat melting them to one

it will be a sign and

the stores will close their doors

...

When it comes to the mixing of lyric and narrative, consider the longer poem above: there’s almost no telling where one leaves off and the other picks up. A man looks out his window, and that’s pretty much the extent of the narrative, the “what happens” in this poem. So much of the rest is conjecture—hypothetical, and…well…felt (sort of like Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” lyric monologue, minus the annoying young-royalty angst). And yet it somehow manages to be, at the same time, the story of what that man sees (or not to be, if that’s how you’d rather have it).

I also can’t help but offer into evidence the entirety of another lyric narrative/narrative lyric operation—a bit of “let’s say” conjecture made of equal parts edginess and whimsy:

this day full of promise

let's say you're a deer

and as deer go

you're smarter than average

you're having a good year

whatever it is you like to eat

is plentiful

you've found an excellent source

of cool, clean water

your antlers are coming in

things are on target

the doe of your dreams

is doing the doe-eyed thing

it's a monday morning

although that means nothing

it is just past dawn

you don't know

that you are upwind

from the bear

this is the forest

these are the trees

the flowers are beautiful

and the air is sweet

in the city

you could be walking home

from dinner or work

you could be in your bed

under safe sheets

a man approaches

out of the darkness

neither malice nor mayhem

on his mind

he thinks no more evil

than the bear

quiet in the shadows

there is no thought

to the natural order

no safe place for the hunted

noon shines down directly

as flies skydive

the crimson puddles

the bear

having manifested its will

its reason for being

has wandered to a nearby meadow

providence has blown a beehive

from the crooked branches of an aspen

into the sweet-toothed path of the bear

there is another shaded pool

where dessert and a nap ensue

the bear dreams bear dreams

none better than reality

in the city

the closed windows of the home

you once lived in

keep in the sound of blue flies

and the answering machine's

unhappy drone

hours, days, weeks

one of them pass

you're found

by a partner, a friend

the mailman

your story is in the paper

the killer is found

or not

the sun comes up

the following day

with no regrets

and no remorse

this day

as full of promise

as every other

since the beginning of time

...

And while it might not be at all easy to render a fresh-seeming love poem in our time where the post-modern, ironic, faux-fedora-wearing, hip anti-love love poem threatens to drive out the honest-day’s-work of a bona fide love poem (no matter how unassuming), Dennis shows us that, thankfully, such a perfectly-pitched thing is still as possible as it is necessary:

breakfast in bed

i am somewhere between

sleep and conversation

my face buried

in pillows

i am lying face down

spread-eagled on the mattress

the sun on my back

it must be a beautiful day

i feel you sit down on the bed

and hear you talking to me

you are peeling an orange

i feel it in my nose

it is the freshest thing i know

it is strong

it wakes me up

it is pure

like the sun

i am awake

i turn over

see you looking at me

say good morning

kiss your knee

ask for a small piece of orange

...

Although Dennis occasionally features a houseboat, a lake, even a limitless starlit sky, his poems are characteristically rooted in a distinctly urban landscape and accompanying psyche, where thankfully his speakers have not a whiff of the faux-urbane about them; they are unapologetic denizens, not sophisticates, who never fail to appreciate that the hum of the city is underneath everything (“the wrestler”). I hesitate to call him a “street poet”: that moniker has gathered to itself too many knee-jerk connotations over the years. I much prefer the precision of “street-level poet,” as his Canadian writer-comrade Rob McLennan has referred to him. Dennis’ work is doggedly down-to-earth, and his version of that earth is more often solid pavement than any rich, loamy soil: I live in a big city / and do big-city things (“my lucky life”).

If some of his best poems are sparked into life by marked juxtapositions, it’s surely because this poet can’t help but note such things in the world outside of the poem. He doesn’t create them, superimpose them, or contrive them into being for the sake of a merely clever or poignant “well-made poem.” The woman who walks her three dogs one at a time

…used to be a wrestler

Mexican-style, with the mask and everything

but won’t tell me her story

which is too bad

truth usually kicks the crap out of fiction

(“the wrestler”)

Dennis doesn’t gin up a story to compensate for the story she won’t tell. Instead, she’s now a part of Dennis’ story, better than any fiction he could fabricate. And that’s a great move on his part (maybe not as flashy as, say, a Pile-Driver or an Atomic Drop—but just as effective).

And for lovers of not-nearly-as-odd-as-they-first seem juxtapositions, here’s a masterful poem that delivers almost too many smiles to count:

Wayne Gretzky in the House of the Sleeping Beauties

I am watching hockey on television

after all, I am a Canadian boy

but I am also reading, I am a poet too

it is a small novel by Kawabata

the story of a man who frequents a bordello of sorts

a bordello for old men only

men no longer able to have sex

they go to this house

sleep beside beautiful young women

who have been drugged and are naked

I am reading this, my eyes full of Japanese women

and lotus blossoms and then of course

that goddamned Gretzky scores, it is inevitable

he is always scoring -- but I do not mind

Gretzky is an artist

I feel honoured to watch him work

I do not imagine him writing delicate Japanese prose

or taking Cecil Beaton-type photographs

like those in the book I'm holding on my lap

to use as a desk as I write this

but I am a Canadian boy and the artistry

of sticks and skates is something I understand

tonight I dream many dreams

winter and skating on a rink that never ends

in another dream I am wearing a kimono

my eyes are closed and my lips are waiting

in this dream I am thinking nipples

and the endless variety, beauty

I imagine I am with all of the girls

in Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties

it is wonderful

and where does this all end

some incomprehensible metaphor

about hockey and Japanese women

the slash of skates into ice

like a knife into flesh

a strange version of hari-kari

and I think no, none of these things

I watch Gretzky score another goal

...

There’s the initial juxtaposition, suggested immediately in the title: hockey great Gretzky starring in the Japanese novel—and, further, Gretzky in the House of the Sleeping Beauties that’s a literal place in the novel of the same name. Then we meet a narrator who’s watching hockey on TV and reading Kawabata. The next juxtaposition is found in Kawabata’s novel itself: the old men lying next to the naked young women (and, gadzooks, our narrator will soon enough dream himselfnext to Kawabata’s women). And if that’s not enough, there’s a book of photographs the narrator’s using as a desk while writing the very poem we’re reading right now (the narrator as writer, reader, and hockey fan all at once, space-time collapsing and expanding all over the place)! Note especially the last eight lines, where the poet refuses to “make something” of all this; let’s not expect some incomprehensible metaphor / about hockey and Japanese women. Let’s instead enjoy, all over again, the nutty ride we’ve just been on.

If you want to see this “Canadian boy” at full, hockey-loving tilt, be sure to read Dennis’ much-celebrated “hockey night in canada,” an exhilarating fantasia of the poet’s imagined glory on the ice; you can watch him wield a stick more wicked than any of the greats’ in the history of the game. The poem concludes with the speaker wondering if it’s all been a dream; finally, he doesn’t think so:

i felt it

it was pure

and real

and it happened

just like i said

every word

as true as it gets

Throughout Bad Engine, real life happens just like this generous Michael Dennis guy says. He’s found some words for all of us—as true as it gets. For Dr. Williams: no ideas but in facts. For Marianne Moore: the language of dogs and cats. This is telltale speech born of the poet’s passion for digging into a life as he’s come to know it and his compassion for others trying their best to do the same.

The only bad in this book, this Bad Engine, is how bad-ass good it is—and how indicative of the writer’s heart that so assuredly drives it.

Michael Dennis

photo: John W. MacDonald

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Dennis is a poet from Ottawa, Ontario. He has published seven books of poetry and nearly twenty chapbooks, and has been widely published in Canadian literary magazines and journals. For the last three years Dennis has been the labour behind Today's Book of Poetry, a regular blog where Dennis talks about books of poetry he likes. Dennis has posted over 450 blogs/reviews of Canadian and American small press poetry. These days he can be found in Vanier, keeping his laneway clean.

David Clewell

ABOUT TODAY'S GUEST HOST - DAVID CLEWELL

David Clewell is the author of a dozen books of poetry, including Taken Somehow by Surprise, The Low End of Higher Things, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, Jack Ruby’s America, and Blessings in Disguise. He is a former poet laureate of Missouri and also formerly a circus laborer, professional weight-guesser, and professional wrestler. He currently labors as a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Webster University in Saint Louis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRsX-bduOW8&t=102s

Michael Dennis

reading at the inaugural Ottawa International Writer's Festival

video: Chris Mullington

The poem Hockey Night in Canada begins shortly after 1:50.

anvilpress.com

580

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"

↧

Ken Stange 1946 - 2016 Chicago Days and the poetry of Ken Stange

June 7, 2017, 7:58 am

≫ Next: Navy Blue - Steve Meagher (Guernica Editions)

≪ Previous: Bad Engine - Michael Dennis (Anvil Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Chicago Days - Growing Up Absurd on the South Side, and the poetry of Ken Stange.
Chicago Days - Growing Up Absurd on the South Side. Ken Stange. Two Cultures Press. North Bay, Ontario. 2016.

Several weeks ago Today's book of poetry received the late Ken Stange's autobiography Chicago Days - Growing Up Absurd on the South Side in the mail from Ken's widow Ursula. Published posthumously Chicago Days tells us everything we need to know about the early years of Stange's life.

Today's book of poetry is proud to give Chicago Days some space and attention on our blog simply because Ken was our friend but it is poetry we are interested in and the very productive Ken Stange left us nineteen volumes of published work during his all too short visit to our planet.

Today's book of poetry first met Ken Stange when I was installing a project titled Wired in the White Water Gallery for the late artist Chris MacGhee. Ken, if I remember correctly, was on the board of directors for White Water and was there to help smooth the waters. After the installation he showed us where the beer was at. Then the books started to arrive wherever it was I was living. I had Milo, our head tech, check out the stacks and he came back with nine books of Stange's poetry.

They will have to do as a tasting menu.

Here are my nine:

Poems (Fiddlehead Poetry books, 1976)

Nocturnal Rhythms (Penumbra Press, 1979)

Bushed (York Publishing, 1979)

Cold Pigging Poetics (York Publishing, 1981)

Bourgeois Pleasures (Quarry Press, 1984)

Advice to Travellers (Penumbra Press, 1994)

A Smoother Pebble, A Prettier Shell (1996)

Colonization of a Cold Planet (Two Cultures Press, 1980/2008)

The Sad Science of Love (Two Cultures Press, 2010)

When going through this beautiful pile I found a letter from October, 1980 that Ken had sent me stuffed between the pages of Nocturnal Rhythms and it contained an unpublished poem. I'd like to share it with the Today's book of poetry audience.

Looking At A Photo Of A Lady I Once Knew (Camera Work 2)

for Michael

Your body's landscape is brightly lit by fluorescent

floods. Your regional forests are partly cleared, freshly

groomed. Your irregular contours-recently airbrushed

smooth. And your silicone topography reshaped

by old men's lust.

When I look at you

my mind's eye

Blinks.

...

Ken Stange was an important friend for me and a great supporter. Over the years I invited Ken to read at every poetry series I had a hand in. Audiences loved him. Ken commanded a room with such a gently assured manner so full of confidence that you knew right away that he was "one of the good guys" as our Southern correspondent the Twangster might say.

K is For Koans

1. Where is the smoke in your cigarette before it is lit?

(Man could just as easily not have evolved.)

2. Where does your wife go after she leaves you?

(Only false disagreements are ever resolved.)

3. Where is the life in a fire that's been doused?

(A scar is one kind of memory.)

Or alternatively:

1. Where is the poem before it is written?

(The unicorn was a definite possibility.)

2. Where is the poet once the poem is written?

(At the harvest feast you don't thank the hoe.)

3. Where does the poem go after being erased?

(True education is forgetting what you know.)

(from Cold Pigging Poetics)

...

Ken Stange often floated in the world between poetry and science, for his autobiography, Chicago Days he offered this up:

"I believe that literature, like science, is a way of

exploring different perspectives; and I believe that the

results of these literary explorations, like the results of

science, are always inherently tentative. It is for this

reason that I choose to call my major works hypotheses.

Chicago Days: Growing Up Absurd on the South Side,

completed 10 November 2015, is Hypothesis 20."

Today's book of poetry was always quite willing to trundle off and down whatever road Ken Stange wanted to venture because it was always a learning process I enjoyed. The surreal connections Ken made between poetry/art and science were always invigorating but we were always most moved by his very human heart.

My Uncle Speaks of Middle Age

I waited like a drunk philosopher

for the clarity of the morning-

after...

I traveled such a very long way

before meeting my personal limits

halfway...

I prepared like a vestal virgin

for the great sacrifice of my hopes

to time...

so thus

it is

this quiet disillusionment comes a surprise:

I'd expected so very much more

pain.

...a bad place to live, It is good to be close enough to see over the edge

into the abyss, but it is not wise to try to spend one's whole life dancing

along the precarious line.

Oh, I've been as close to insanity as you, but I've backed off now. After

Diane's abortion I learned to maintain a balance between order and

disorder. (What I needed to learn was order; disorder came naturally.)

Every time in my life when order and rationality and the bourgeois vir-

tures begin to predominate, I naturally inject some disruptive element. It

may be a woman. It may be an illness. It may be a dangerous game.

Because, like you, I've always subconsciously feared contentment, I have

repeatedly disrupted my own happiness.

I guess this is a way of attempting to regain youth, for what're the salient

characteristics of youth? Turmoil and disorder. One's senses are sharpen-

ed, one's reflexes quickened, by stress and anxiety. The struggle to im-

pose order in a tumultuous world sharpens one's wits; too great a success

in this struggle dulls them.

Some men take up dangerous sports, such as white-water canoeing or

sky-diving, for the above reason. Some men have love...

(from Bourgeois Pleasures)

...

Today's book of poetry has always enjoyed Ken Stange's books and are dismayed by those we have yet to find. Here is a list of Ken's other titles:

Embracing The Moon: Twenty-Five Little Worlds (Two Cultures Press)

Explaining Canada: A Primer For Yanks (Two Cultures Press)

God When He's Drunk (Two Cultures Press)

Going Home: Cycling Through The Heart of America (Two Cultures Press)

Love Is A Grave (Nebula Press)

More Than Ample (Two Cultures Press)

Secret Agents Past: The Parting Of The Waters (Two Cultures Press)

Secret Agents Future: Going Where There Be Dragons (Two Cultures Press)

Secret Agents Present: Through A Glass Darkly
These Proses A Problem Or Two (Two Cultures Press)

Ken Stange was an American who chose to be Canadian, a teacher, a poet, a husband, a father and he was my friend. Not that many of us get to leave such a fine and compelling history of our time on this hurtling orb.

Good-bye Sir Ken of Stange, See you anon.

Ken Stange

1946-2016

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Stange is the author of twenty books of poetry and fiction, hundreds of publications in literary and scientific journals, and the winner of the 2011 Exile/Vanderbilt prize for short fiction. He is also a visual artist and Professor Emeritus at Nipissing University. His special interest is the relationship of art and science and creativity. He has learned to appreciate absurdity.

twoculturespress.com

581

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"

↧