tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49894622154494976142024-03-18T07:03:48.051-07:00Better View of the MoonBeauty and order are two different things.Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.comBlogger301125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-49221647901678367352020-02-01T18:53:00.001-08:002020-02-01T18:53:44.586-08:00Poem366: “The People’s Field” by Haesong Kwon
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7-_aqvzjylQ/XjY5kczrzgI/AAAAAAAASgY/69v8AE5fn-EJCVmUN4VllIJNoype9cMqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/kwon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1198" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7-_aqvzjylQ/XjY5kczrzgI/AAAAAAAASgY/69v8AE5fn-EJCVmUN4VllIJNoype9cMqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/kwon.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The People’s Field</i> by Haesong Kwon</span></div>
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<i>The People’s Field</i> by Haesong Kwon, Cape Girardeau,
Missouri: Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2019</div>
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It is a pleasure to feature a title from a Show-Me State
press on today’s Poem366. <i>The People’s Field</i> by Haesong Kwon is the
winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University
Press in the historic Mississippi River town of Cape Girardeau.</div>
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While the press is local to Missouri, poetry itself is
transcendent of time and place, and Kwon lives in Shiprock, New Mexico. He
teaches at Diné College, which serves the Navajo Nation, and many of these
poems are about war-era Korea. Here’s a moving example, included in full
because of its brevity:</div>
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<b>Beret</b></div>
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A nest of sun rays</div>
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rattles about the grassed</div>
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tombstone of Hamchunk.</div>
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He wept so dearly</div>
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for the U.S. soldier</div>
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creamed in a booby trap.</div>
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There were fence</div>
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doves and leaves</div>
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to see his passage</div>
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to the next.</div>
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I have had a hard time finding any information about the
poet, though one review by a writer who knows him acknowledges that he is
elusive. A bio I found identifies him as being of Korean descent, having been
born in Incheon, Korea, and moved to the United States when he was eight. A
scene like that in “Beret” feels as immediate as if from personal observation, but
I’m fairly certain the timeline doesn’t synch for that to be the case. This
suggests that Kwon is writing about cultural, rather than personal, memory, and
that’s a project that interests me very much.</div>
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More clues to his connection to Japan-
and U.S.-occupied Korea are found in the long poem “The Kuomintang Had Been
Duped,” where Kwon describes his grandfather:</div>
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Early, slow</div>
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to impose,
resembling</div>
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his boy, my</div>
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father, watching</div>
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the sidewalk
glow.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A mass of garish</div>
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phoenix birds</div>
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burned</div>
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on backs</div>
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and arms</div>
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of U.S.
soldiers.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This sort of imaginative DNA puts
me in mind of recent research establishing how trauma can be passed down
through generations via chemical tags on our genes. Storytelling gets us there
more directly, I suppose, and in a Navajo community, Kwon spends his days steeped
in a storytelling tradition. It’s no wonder he writes so evocatively about
memory older than self.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I lost myself today in this beautiful
collection. Connective tissue within and between poems is sheer; sometimes it’s
a leap from one line or even one word to the next. But it’s rewarding to
contemplate or invent the connection, and the effect is to involve the reader
in meaning-making.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com269tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-44953484389693874482020-01-31T22:41:00.000-08:002020-01-31T22:41:11.554-08:00Poem366: “Our Lady of the Flood” by Alison Pelegrin
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bQwy7XHCJZU/XjUdQ6ap4DI/AAAAAAAASeQ/nWXX6vk2O8IgpufZzwLw-Taa6WJsIIvzACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-02-01%2Bat%2B12.39.31%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="389" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bQwy7XHCJZU/XjUdQ6ap4DI/AAAAAAAASeQ/nWXX6vk2O8IgpufZzwLw-Taa6WJsIIvzACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-02-01%2Bat%2B12.39.31%2BAM.png" width="301" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Our Lady of the Flood</i> by Alison Pelegrin</span></div>
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<i>Our Lady of the Flood</i> by Alison Pelegrin, Richmond,
Virginia: Diode Editions, 2018</div>
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I’m still haunted by mental images of the devastation of
Hurricane Katrina, and I think I always will be — this despite the fact that I
know the Gulf region only as a tourist. But Alison Pelegrin’s <i>Our Lady of
the Flood</i> offers an inside view of life afterwards, in poems that bring the
waters inside of us so that we can feel them:</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>This
water</div>
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is no silvered mirage. It clings
like tar.</div>
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It swallows everything we are.</div>
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So says “Quicksilver,” the final poem in the small
collection, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent
Publishing.</div>
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In her endorsement of the book, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil
notes, “This collection vibrates with candor and concern—forging a kinetic
blaze into an emotional and physical terrain newly devastated by hurricane.”
This is an accurate assessment, beginning with the first and title poem (one of
five “Our Lady” poems in the chapbook):</div>
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Some saints are untouchable behind
glass,</div>
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but you ride in open boats</div>
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with mildew on the edges of your
gown,</div>
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a calm commander of the Cajun Navy’s
fleet.</div>
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Your devotees worship outside</div>
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in a circle of ruined pews,</div>
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no incense but bug spray, their
voices</div>
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a cappella because the music of
the drowned piano</div>
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is too sad to sing to. …</div>
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Pelegrin recreates the ruined landscape and its vespers in moments
like these.</div>
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The poems are also celebratory, like “Rituals for Serving
Ambrosia.” I’m guessing a lot of sophisticated readers have never heard of this
chilled salad dish, containing pineapple, Jell-O, marshmallows, coconut, and
nuts, but I love it, and it’s a surprising pleasure to see a tribute to it, set
up on a card table in the garage with the rest of the picnic feast.</div>
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In the fascinating “Excising a Memorial to the Confederate
General Robert E. Lee,” Pelegrin contemplates the legacy of the South as
captured in statuary, and makes no bones about it: “Of course he’s got to go,”
she writes. Yet there are memories attached to these old artifacts:</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>So
why the scrap</div>
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of rebel in me clinging to this piss-soaked
ground</div>
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<br /></div>
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where his pillar stands, Mardi
Gras memory lane, where</div>
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I puked through my nose, observed
rats untie shoes</div>
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<br /></div>
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and tunnel up some guy’s pants
empty where the leg </div>
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should be? I never paid attention
to Lee himself ….</div>
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In a place like New Orleans, there are layers of history
that are visible in everything.</div>
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I really love how this collection lets the light shine in,
along with the water. “Anything We Want” is a poem that highlights the goodness
of people, with its subtitle “Katrina, 2005.” The poem begins, “When they
figure out where we are from / everyone wants to give us something.” She recounts
servers bringing dessert and singing “Happy Birthday,” strangers plugging
quarters into her dryer, people following her through stores to pay for her items:
“They won’t quit asking, <i>What do you want?</i>” And as Pelegrin describes so
movingly, what she wants is her home with her books, her solitary seat on a
street car, and for her mother to speak to her in the Walmart where they are exiled:</div>
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I want her to look at me</div>
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but her gaze is a storm cloud</div>
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threatening from far away,</div>
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or else focused up close</div>
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as she studies the label on a can</div>
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of a strange food we don’t eat.</div>
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Where is their ambrosia in their land of refuge? The way
Pelegrin has written her home helps me to feel this mother’s loss.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com75tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-11933065821755747092020-01-30T20:39:00.000-08:002020-01-30T20:39:05.911-08:00Poem366: “A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky” by Melissa Fite Johnson
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dTY6PY4_TXo/XjOvP5E5PuI/AAAAAAAASaw/Al5GoQPD-yckIBccab05hyPepQRuOrH6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-30%2Bat%2B10.37.49%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="313" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dTY6PY4_TXo/XjOvP5E5PuI/AAAAAAAASaw/Al5GoQPD-yckIBccab05hyPepQRuOrH6gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-30%2Bat%2B10.37.49%2BPM.png" width="263" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky</i> by Melissa Fite
Johnson</span></div>
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<i>A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky</i> by Melissa Fite
Johnson, Providence, Rhode Island: Paper Nautilus Books, 2018.</div>
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Melissa Fite Johnson dedicates <i>A Crooked Door Cut into
the Sky</i> to her father, and with this, she begins a difficult dive into memories
of childhood and her adult decisions about not having children. In the set of
poems that make up this chapbook, the defining characteristic is tenderness —
even toward the self.</div>
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“Visiting My Sixteen-Year-Old Self” offers a beautiful
example of this tenderness. She begins, “I want to smooth your hair / like a
big sister as you sit on your bed / raw.” We meet her young self on the day of
her dad’s funeral, pondering how she squandered the last days of her father’s
life with a boy, “making you less than you were.”</div>
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The adult version of the self seems worried, though she
knows how things will turn out. She writes,</div>
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<br /></div>
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I follow you, class to class,</div>
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a few steps behind, never quite
able</div>
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to catch up, to touch the backpack</div>
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strapped to your shoulders,</div>
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a defective parachute.</div>
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There’s nothing the older consciousness can do for the teen,
and the poem ends with the narrator of the poem saying words of comfort that
the sixteen-year-old can’t hear. It’s a painful way to reflect on loss, and I’m
probably not the only reader who goes down that dark well with Johnson through
this haunting poem.</div>
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This one is followed by a heartbreaking moment of connection
between the teenage speaker of a poem and her father, whom she must drive
around following a stroke, and another that shows her experiencing a glimpse of
what her father went through with immobility as she, at seventeen, deals with a
broken leg. The love for this father is palpable, and the book is such a moving
tribute to him.</div>
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The collection moves into reflections on family with “Apologia
for Not Wanting Children,” in which the speaker seems both wistful and
triumphant about a decision not to reproduce. If it seems that those moods are
incompatible, I guess you have to read it:</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nothing is missing.</div>
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No baby cries from a blanket</div>
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spread on the floor as if for a
picnic.</div>
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No chubby arms reach for me.</div>
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No hands open and close</div>
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like lips desperate for words.</div>
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But nothing is missing. You have</div>
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my full attention. I have yours.</div>
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Obviously, that’s a lot of clear, specific description of
the nothing that is missing, though the idea of the two being fully available
to one of the other at the end is enviable in its own right. I’d call this a
pretty powerful love poem, and more a celebration of being part of a couple than
a wistful expression of what could have been.</div>
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My favorite poem in the collection is the brief one from
which the title is taken, “Visiting the Dead.” Here, the poet imagines a “crooked
door / cut into the sky” and how she can use go through it to visit her father.
Their interactions are tender:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>I’d
touch his Adam’s apple—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
new, plugging the hole cancer
made—</div>
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and hear his gravelly voice for
the first time.</div>
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After visiting, though, the speaker is happy to leave — to
return to the husband who waits to join her.</div>
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The poems here don’t shy away from big topics; most of it is
thanatopsis, a deep reflection on death — but they never fail to be original as
they probe what must be our oldest obsession. I was moved and inspired by this
complex study.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-61537507539321129912020-01-29T21:58:00.000-08:002020-01-29T22:02:36.010-08:00Poem366: "autumn, presencing" by Liang Huichun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9taUoY0AeGs/XjJwBnddkXI/AAAAAAAASWc/bAqKS9yksI4LaamERZ1ze8W3cdcjx2KBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_20200129_234445277.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9taUoY0AeGs/XjJwBnddkXI/AAAAAAAASWc/bAqKS9yksI4LaamERZ1ze8W3cdcjx2KBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_20200129_234445277.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>autumn, presencing</i> by Liang Huichun</span></div>
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<i>autumn, presencing</i> by Liang Huichun, Strawberry Hedgehog, 2020</div>
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Welcome to Poem366 Central, our base of operations. The
whole crew is here, test-driving poems and kicking some wheels. (Hi, I’m the whole
crew — Karen, poet, lover of poetry.)</div>
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Maybe you don’t picture a Poem366 factory, but you probably
envision an orderly process for a yearlong poetry appreciation project. One
doesn’t jump into such a thing without a plan, right?<br />
<br />
Wrong. My husband, the incredible Michael Czyzniejewski, has a Story366 blog
that he likes to do on leap years — visit here: <a href="https://story366blog.wordpress.com/">https://story366blog.wordpress.com/</a>.
My two sons and I fully support his daily book review project, but I should
note that it’s not easy. His commitment to his project is one he takes
seriously, and so family things have to wait, occasionally, while he reads a
book or finishes up a review.</div>
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I was inspired by his dedication in 2016, and I saw
firsthand the benefits of such a project — staying absolutely current with the
newest writers, building discipline in reading and considering what he’s read. Less
than a week before the re-start of Mike’s Story366 blog, I decided I’d like to
give it a try, too — but with poems, which are a thousand times cooler,
obviously. (And shorter, I should add — not a small consideration when reading
a book a day.)</div>
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A few days before Jan. 1, 2020, I posted a request for books
to review to the four winds, and friends and fellow members of writing groups
were generous in responding. I like paper copies, but some kind souls were able
to zoom some electronic copies my way rather quickly so that I would have a
library to draw on right away. I also contacted some presses and requested
review copies from 2018 or later. (I must have worded my email in a weird way,
because a lot have just sent me 2018 books, thinking that was what I was
after.)</div>
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But I also have my mailing address on the right side of my blog
(over there---<span style="font-family: "wingdings"; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à</span></span>),
and sometimes people send me a book or two without my asking, just because.
That happened today, and what a delightful surprise it was to open my mail and
find two books from a press I was unfamiliar with, Strawberry Hedgehog, by two
writers who are from Missouri, which, of course, makes my heart sing.</div>
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For today, my focus will be one of these two books: “autumn,
presencing” by Liang Huichun (with paintings by Steven Schroeder). Both are gorgeous,
and I’m looking forward to reading the other, by Schroeder, soon.</div>
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The first thing I love about “autumn, presencing” is that it’s
square. I’m a fool for square poetry books (by which I mean that they are exactly
as tall as they are wide). Maybe this is a weird preference, but I think they
look elegant, and they often signal shorter poems, which I tend to enjoy more
than longer work.</div>
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I also love that second word, “presencing.” That’s certainly
a focus in my life now — I have a daily meditation practice in addition to my
daily reading and blogging practices (and momming and working and poeming,
etc.) And when I factor in a third factor, the gorgeous cover, featuring a
Schroeder watercolor, I am instantly hooked.</div>
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The book contains Chinese versions of poems alongside their
English translations, and the first piece in the book is the title poem,
presented with capital letters here: “Autumn, Presencing.” I am always
interested in writers who join me in my effort to recognize the lyricism in
everyday life, and Liang delivers:</div>
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My verse, still</div>
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waiting for winnowing</div>
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like wet rice, unharvested, still,</div>
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is a story behing told. But autumn</div>
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water is crystal clear, flowing</div>
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clouds and my mortgage</div>
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vanishing together.</div>
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She reifies the mortgage reference in the next set of lines:
“Everything is in order, / only the four walls of my house standing.” The house
is (is this a pun?) foundational to ideas of security, stability, and order, so
I found this image very satisfying.</div>
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Another poem I enjoyed was “Loneliness,” which stair-stepped
from familiar depictions of loneliness to a lovely, unexpected image: “Loneliness
is a lane in evening / that can never forget sandals’ echoing.” The truth of
that assessment was undeniable.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vrkOL_RhtbE/XjJwSlXWyII/AAAAAAAASWk/afHlQESuK6Mvt2hNfSVvlvOw-0rGtYrNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_20200129_234530397.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vrkOL_RhtbE/XjJwSlXWyII/AAAAAAAASWk/afHlQESuK6Mvt2hNfSVvlvOw-0rGtYrNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_20200129_234530397.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-7571451862529361792020-01-28T20:03:00.000-08:002020-01-28T20:03:00.255-08:00Poem366: “Almost Famous” by Trish Hopkinson
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mv_zzRC_gLY/XjEDudRJrAI/AAAAAAAASVc/DvkQiWxXE-sEio99EEkg9Hh14KoH63-3wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-28%2Bat%2B9.12.26%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="459" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mv_zzRC_gLY/XjEDudRJrAI/AAAAAAAASVc/DvkQiWxXE-sEio99EEkg9Hh14KoH63-3wCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-28%2Bat%2B9.12.26%2BPM.png" width="306" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span>Almost Famous</span></i><span> by Trish Hopkinson<i> </i></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Almost Famous</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> by Trish Hopkinson, Bangalore, India: Yavanika
Press, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In <i>Almost Famous</i>, the fourth chapbook by the consummate
literary citizen, Trish Hopkinson, we find powerful and painful coming-of-age
stories crafted as poems. The book starts with a vivid depiction of her own
birth, written from her perspective, and it carries forward into the childhood
and teen years, and every poem packs a potent gut-punch. While there were parts
of my own life that diverged widely from the childhood Hopkinson describes,
there was enough here that was familiar and shared.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For me, the strongest parts of the book were the first and last
poems. The first, “Third Day, Third Month, 1972,” describes Hopkinson’s birth,
which included the use of forceps:</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>A
doctor,</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">or a man rather, pressed</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">a tool inside her, like the back</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">of a soup spoon reaching in</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">to a bowl of cold grits,</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">fished around for my tender</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">skull, and excised me for comfort.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The image here — forceps in a birth canal as a spoon in cold grits
— casts the birth scene into an otherworldly sphere, I think mainly because the
grits are cold. What kind of birth is this? It’s such a small touch, but a
smart poetic decision because of its perfect not-quite-rightness.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">At the end of “Third Day,” the poet looks down at her mother, “lying
there / — as if dead. Her eyes still to the day, // anesthetized.” This was a
startling notion as well, and it set up some questions at the start of the book:
Are these biographical poems? Was the mother permanently damaged by the
birthing incident? The mother performs ordinary acts, like conversations,
through the rest of the chapbook, but the idea that there is no coming back
from the birthing room seems to hold.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The dominate voice in the poem seems to cover a lot of ground —
Missouri, the western mountains — but in “Kansas Flat,” Hopkinson writes
evocatively of mobile home life in tornado country. She writes, “We drag this
mobile home / from one town to another trying / to find a job my father can
keep.” She offers perfect description of the trailer, with its “rows of science
fiction paperbacks / double-parked to fit them all” (a telling detail of
escapism), but she ends with the most stunning image of</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>mid-west
trailer parks</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">where timid homes lie down like a dog</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">being scolded at the foot of a tornado
—</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">sometimes, broken down in its wake,</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">collapsed like an empty cardboard box.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If any childhood scene is more fraught with danger than a Kansas trailer
park, I don’t know what it is.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I mentioned that the first poem was one of my two favorites, but
my very favorite — the place where Hopkinson comes into her full-throated own —
is “Mixed Tape.” This poem is composed partly of lines from other poems in the
collection and partly with new material, and the snippets are numbered and
discrete, à la Wallace Stevens. Each section stands alone as its own perfect
gem. I offer two favorites, just to give Hopkinson a chance to really strut her
stuff here:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">IV. I remember the fertile mud smell of the lake in Missouri where
I learned to swim. If sense of smell worked underwater, it would smell of
catfish and silt and long afternoons of treading water in the sun with the
bluegills.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">V. Should I ever grow a tail, my
sacrum will connect it to my spine and wiggle when I walk or wag. For now, it
holds my pelvis in place, gives each side a wall to lean on, like beatniks
against a lamppost. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I am enchanted, body and soul, by those beatniks. It’s a perfect,
and perfectly surprising, image from a rare talent.</span></div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-51165840262567400742020-01-27T20:28:00.003-08:002020-01-27T20:28:51.742-08:00Poem366: “Typing with e.e. cummings” by Lori Desrosiers
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OLyuAcs-gCE/Xi-4QuX6uaI/AAAAAAAASUY/XCV4xzyd3AsQjbl5JmYR89NvTkWX4f6YwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-27%2Bat%2B10.24.13%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="443" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OLyuAcs-gCE/Xi-4QuX6uaI/AAAAAAAASUY/XCV4xzyd3AsQjbl5JmYR89NvTkWX4f6YwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-27%2Bat%2B10.24.13%2BPM.png" width="266" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Typing with e.e. cummings</i> by Lori Desrosiers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Typing with e.e. cummings</i> by Lori Desrosiers,
Glenview, Illinois: Glass Lyre Press, 2019</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a genuine pleasure to turn my attention to the
whimsical <i>Typing with e.e. cummings </i>by one of my favorite Facebook friends,
Lori Desrosiers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Desrosiers channels e.e. cummings in these poems, and I
would note that there is a strange nostalgia in revisiting the poet, who provided
most of us with our first taste of the possibility of radical experimentation
with punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure. As edgy as cummings was
during his time, we know him more from poems like “maggie and milly and molly
and may” or “I sing of Olaf glad and big,” or, the greatest of his greatest
hits, “in Just-,” where “the // goat-footed // ballonMan<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>whistles / far / and / wee.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In her stellar collection, Desrosiers begins with a touching
poem titled “my sweet old typist,” an appreciation of her mother’s 100 word per
minute typing, which she used, twice, to type up her husband’s doctoral
dissertation, once unsuccessfully and once successfully. Writes Desrosiers,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
ding</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
at 73</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
blanch</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
retired</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
wrote and typed</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
2 novels</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
on her</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
i</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
b</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
m</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
selectric</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a beautiful tribute with a meta touch, as we don’t often
see poems in praise of typing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Desrosiers also remembers her father in the lovely poem, “Poem
with first line from e.e. cummings.” She remembers a dad who read Whitman and
walked the land until “his brain grew star tumors.” Writes Desrosiers,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
his body folded like a bad book</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
voice quieted, hands gnarled</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
feet left stepless, cold</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
gone in winter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Desrosiers also offers up the tenderest of love poems, as in
“I have found what you are like.” She compares her love to “the mud / which
gathers up my feet and cleaves / like nothing else.” She sings the praises of
mud, and thus her love, by writing that it is</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
a fodder for flowers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
home of worms who eat what we discard</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
service of soil-studded creatures</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
joy for dogs and pigs and children</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This close attention to a surprising subject reminds me quite
a bit of cummings, but Desrosiers is definitely writing her own poems here,
despite her tribute.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I recommend this breezy, clever, yet frequently sad
collection for its range and beauty.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-22070366995702915962020-01-26T20:21:00.000-08:002020-01-26T20:21:15.204-08:00Poem366: “A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth” by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sVMYnYpCuB8/Xi5klCSkTOI/AAAAAAAAST0/miYdXwFEiKIaoA4erPQiIU_Lxn7_WVOcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-26%2Bat%2B8.39.06%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="310" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sVMYnYpCuB8/Xi5klCSkTOI/AAAAAAAAST0/miYdXwFEiKIaoA4erPQiIU_Lxn7_WVOcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-26%2Bat%2B8.39.06%2BPM.png" width="273" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth</i> by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth</i> by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner, Indiana: Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2019</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I just finished <i>A Live Thing, Clinging with Many Teeth</i>
by Kolleen Carney Hoepfner, and it was a fascinating immersion into a world I both
did and didn’t recognize.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The chapbook appears to be composed of one long poem, broken
up into numbered sections and separate, untitled pieces. These parts of the
poem have lush, imagistic language, but they don’t aim to answer any questions;
they just offer a tense, worrisome scene with plenty of rather terrifying
details.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the book, a woman seems to be locked up in a place that
isn’t clear. She seems to be alone, but then she doesn’t. There is a feeling
that time is passing and she is losing hope, but still paying attention to her
senses and trying to find ways to bolster her resolve:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
The best she could do</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
was remember how fucking close</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
she had come</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
to escape</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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It’s easy to imagine the frustration that is the closest
thing to hope one can have in a nearly hopeless situation. Writes Hoepfner,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
She had underested the wind,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
the scent of some beloved</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
but long-lost master</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(or,
on the other hand,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
shivering and wakeful,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>the
blood-smell</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>of
a dream full of teeth,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>hungry but not yet desperate).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At this point, the literal was mostly lost to me (whose master?
And who smells the blood?). The best plan of action I’ve found when lost in a
poem is to lean in and accept its premises, while trusting that something will
happen—there will be explanations, or the sense of the poem will be enough, or
you’ll re-read it and everything will click. And this book captured tension better
than any I could remember, from poetry at least; it read like a thriller, but
with the deeper emotional resonance of a poem.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something happens midway through the book and involves
blood, and it feels like a clue to the literal:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Until clotted, blood</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>was
as slippery as oil. […]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Her agenda was not complicated:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
a quick escape</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
unconsciousness<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>death</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
The growing feeling of fury:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
She could feel</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
that hot, electrical tingle</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
like a live thing </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
clinging</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
with many teeth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is real drama in the sparse syntax, and as a reader, I’m
rooting for this woman, and wondering who she is and what kind of trouble she
has found herself in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All was made clear on the acknowledgments page, which
explained, “This collection is comprised of found poetry, using Stephen King’s <i>Gerald’s
Game</i> as a source.” In <i>Gerald’s Game</i>, as I recall, a woman’s husband
dies after chaining her to a bed during sex, and she is left to figure out how
to escape. I won’t spoil it for you, but the slippery blood is a relevant plot
point.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What fascinated me about this collection was how accurate
and familiar it felt to anyone who has experienced sexual violence and
domination. King’s source material was not relevant to the deep appreciation I
felt for the emotional truth and the tense quasi-narrative. Hoepfner is the
artist at work here, and she is masterful at it.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-90739895495087831882020-01-25T20:56:00.003-08:002020-01-25T20:56:49.642-08:00Poem366: “Body Falling, Sunday Morning” by Susana H. Case
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I_4juiOwq7k/Xi0b5_TaSyI/AAAAAAAASSw/RRzLLeOKlMIqykDcsBUVd5CE4MhpIVu2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-25%2Bat%2B10.53.14%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="553" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I_4juiOwq7k/Xi0b5_TaSyI/AAAAAAAASSw/RRzLLeOKlMIqykDcsBUVd5CE4MhpIVu2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-25%2Bat%2B10.53.14%2BPM.png" width="311" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Body Falling,
Sunday Morning </i>by Susana H. Case</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Body Falling, Sunday Morning </i>by Susana H. Case,
Cincinnati, Ohio: Milk & Cake, 2019</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Frances Glessner Lee was an artist who didn’t consider
herself one. She specialized in forensic miniatures, her intricately detailed “Nutshell
Studies of Unexplained Death,” which helped train crime scene investigators in
the 1940s and ‘50s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Glessner Lee’s dioramas are incredibly detailed, and a
chapbook by Susana H. Case, <i>Body Falling, Sunday Morning</i>, describes Glessner
Lee’s work in terms that begin to give her the credit she deserves as someone
often referred to as the mother of forensic science.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Case starts with an intriguing premise, and photos of Lee’s dioramas
are placed throughout the book to heighten the interest. Glessner Lee was known
for her keen attention to detail, right down to functioning mousetraps. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The book includes titled poems, but in between some of them
are prose sections that have poetic economy of language. These are not titled
on the page (the table of contents labels them “Frances 1,” “Frances 2,” etc.),
but the crafted language had me convinced that they were prose poems instead of
mere background information. Here’s part of one:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Frequenting autopsies to verify the
accuracy of her models, Glessner Lee notes the correct amount of bloating among
those in her down-at-heels homes and rooms, victims led astray by desire and
vice. The inherent vice of materials: degradation over time. Nail polish
depicting blood turns purple.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The numbered “Frances” entries are very informative, but there’s
something more than information at work here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One poem, “End of the Affair,” does a nice job of showing
how these miniatures functioned as crime-fighting tools. A man, dead by gunshot
wound, is found at a hideaway cabin. A bullet is found in the rafters, Case
reports:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
He bent over and shot himself,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
his mistress insists.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Knocked his hat clear off.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
How the affair ends.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
No matter that the gun’s not under
him,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
and her fingerprints are on the
pistol.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I realized as I read the book that I had heard of Frances
Glessner Lee and seen her work in the distant past—years and years ago. They
came back to me right away when I saw the images Case had chosen for her book.
In my opinion, Case does important work here, reminding readers of a woman of
importance in her field and allowing us to appreciate the odd lyricism of her
meticulous death scenes. It’s easy to forget our progenitors, especially our
woman progenitors. I appreciate Case’s work to keep one of them front and
center with this compelling collection.</div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-6061311083873666932020-01-24T20:55:00.004-08:002020-01-24T20:55:56.917-08:00Poem366: “Nursewifery” by Ruth Williams<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZyanxyZiu3E/XivKEx44GsI/AAAAAAAASRU/HyNGx-HC1Xc0idd40-9z-uK-mQ4oGSVTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-24%2Bat%2B10.54.18%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="478" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZyanxyZiu3E/XivKEx44GsI/AAAAAAAASRU/HyNGx-HC1Xc0idd40-9z-uK-mQ4oGSVTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-24%2Bat%2B10.54.18%2BPM.png" width="216" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Nursewifery</i> by
Ruth Williams</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Nursewifery</i> by Ruth Williams, Durham, North Carolina:
Jacar Press, 2019</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ruth Williams’ elegant chapbook <i>Nursewifery</i>, from
Jacar Press, is as clever and innovative collection as I’ve seen, and I hope
that my introduction to it here might lead others to discover how special it
is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mother was a nurse and my two sisters are, too, and I’m
interested in the profession, though I was never in any danger of becoming a
nurse myself. (Once, as a teenaged candystriper—which, admittedly, feels like
the first line of a pornographic novel—I had the embarrassing experience of
fainting on the job from witnessing something a little too intense for me. In a
family of nurses, I ended up in the gift shop, in the very hospital where my mother
was the night nursing supervisor. I’m sure she heard about my experience, but I
can promise she didn’t hear it from me.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among the majority of the people in the world who are not
nurses? Ruth Williams. But she is a feminist scholar with an interest in this woman-dominated
profession, and she is also seemingly a student of history. The role of combat
nurse captured her fascination acutely enough to produce this outstanding small
collection about military field nurses from, seemingly, the era of Florence
Nightingale—the Crimean War and thereafter. The nurse whose voice offers up the
poems in <i>Nursewifery</i> wears a pinafore and works alongside horses, but
the exact conflict in which she serves is unstated, unless I missed a clue
somewhere.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most fascinating thing Williams does is her focus on the
different types of stitches nurses use to suture wounds. Some of the poems bear
the names of stitches as titles—titles like “Vertical Mattress Suture,” “Locked
Suture,” “Corset Plication Stitch,” “Far-Near Near-Far Modified Vertical
Mattress Suture” (no, really …), and more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It turns out that our means of repairing ripped or cut skin
offer potent metaphors. She explains each stitch in an epigraph taken from the <i>Medscape</i>
website. The quote to start “Deep Tip Stitch” offers a powerful example:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>The deep tip stitch provides
longer-term support than the traditional corner stitch and improves alignment
of the tip with the sides of the closure.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The unnamed nurse persona who voices each poem identifies
with this stitch:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We thought ourselves exceptional,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
though we knew we were merely women</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
wearing uniforms to distinguish us, not as individuals,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but as a type of caring, a calm blue</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
stitch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Williams continues in this voice, saying, “We pulled together
// what could not otherwise be touched,” adding that ability was the nurses’ “special
softness, // our elegant way of aligning the world.” I offer a lot of this small
poem, but I’m really fascinated by how Williams takes something so prosaic and
makes it in to such a powerful symbol. The life of the nurse is exactly like
the description of the deep tip stitch, and Williams proves it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I savored this chapbook, I took time out to hit YouTube,
where there are quite a few stitching demonstration videos, most of them
featuring thick, fatty squares of fake human flesh, sort of Caucasian-ish on
top and yellow underneath. As I looked up demos of each of the stitches
Williams named, the same calm male voice explained how to execute each suture,
and a video showed a hooked sewing needle manipulated by forceps. Throughout,
he peppered some of the same jargon used by Williams; for instance, the first poke
of the sewing needle through the skin seems to be called “the bite”—another
strong metaphor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Williams has much more than a good concept going for her,
though. This is also a powerful collection, with the suture poems “stitched”
throughout the book, which offers a daming critique of war and the harm it
does.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favorite poems in the collection is called “The
Suitor,” which recalls a first dance with an early beau of the battlefield
nurse. It continues,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Later, you’ll</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
find him again</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
on the table</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
red weather</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
between you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a small poem, but it packs a dramatic wallop, and
damage from war being referred to as “red weather” is highly arresting to me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Williams is the author of two other collections, so her work
shouldn’t be hard to find. I recommend you read her work—stat.</div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style><br />Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-89907137751389438732020-01-23T14:50:00.000-08:002020-01-23T14:50:17.539-08:00Poem366: “The Last Mastodon” by Christina Olson
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CET4R8XqhsU/XioiiRJav6I/AAAAAAAASOs/yEBY1pxnAK88hq_-QTfdgvs3qKulzIUDgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/olson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CET4R8XqhsU/XioiiRJav6I/AAAAAAAASOs/yEBY1pxnAK88hq_-QTfdgvs3qKulzIUDgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/olson.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Last Mastodon</i> by Christina Olson</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Last Mastodon</i> by Christina Olson, Studio City,
California: Rattle, 2019</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since the book itself is an appreciation of relics, I
suppose it’s OK to begin by singing the praises of an artifact: Christina Olson’s
<i>The Last Mastodon</i> is a beautiful chapbook, with a deep teal, matte cover
emblazoned with a hot-pink title and byline. Open it, and laaa! Crisp hot-pink endsheets
envelop the text. It’s a slim volume, at only 36 pages, but the dimensions, 6
inches by 9 inches, are pretty big for a chap. The author photo on the back
flap shows Olson sitting on the floor in shorts and an I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening
grin beside a mastodon skull and a set of tusks.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was disposed to like this book from the outset—and I did!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the third Rattle Chapbook Prize winner I’ve featured
in this series, and it’s still January, so that’s weird. I happened to have
some at home because I entered the contest a few times, and entrants receive a
copy of the winning edition. With the death of my mother and some work make-up
frenzy, I needed short books, and I really like physical copies. Hitting 2018
winners Mather Schneider and Raquel Vasquez Gilliland made sense for size
reasons, and that’s partly why I chose to read Olson’s book, too. (I needed a
chap today because I was nowhere near done with a gorgeous but difficult full-length
collection that will need to percolate for a bit.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gosh, this is the most personal appreciation I’ve written so
far, and I’ve said virtually nothing about Olson’s poems. I’m realizing,
though, that Rattle has an unusually good chapbook series, and they’re three for
three with me—not a stinker in the bunch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Last Mastodon</i> was born during a three-day poetry
residency Olson experienced in the Western Science Center in Hemet, California.
Olson got to spend time with and touch relics and talk to paleontologists at
work there, and I can only imagine how inspiring that was. The resulting poems
certainly are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
Olson is as playful as her cover
photo promised she would be (although many poems or parts of poems are darkly
philosophical, too). I like the poem that is framed in the form of a “how-to”
manual, “How to Care for Your American Mastodon”:<br />
<br />
An adult mastodon consumes nearly three pounds of coniferous twigs a day. They
prefer the tender greens. Brittle twigs will stick in a mastodon’s throat. Your
baby mastodon will spend most of its early life huddled against its mother in
the cold spruce woodlands. Like you, it will learn to navigate. Or it will die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always lift at the midsection, not by the
legs.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s fun, how committed she is to the concept. I forget for
a moment that there’s zero chance I’ll accidentally pick up a mastodon by the
legs.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Positioned alongside some truly funny moments are some
gut-punches — more impactful, probably, because of the juxtaposition. I felt
almost knocked over by some lines in “Among the Bones,” a rumination about the
speaker’s tendency to collect bits of dead things (her dog’s hair, a skull, a sand
dollar), set off by a memory of her father. Writes Olson,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
The advantage to dead thins</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
is that you cannot hurt them</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
anymore. Instead, they hurt you,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
over and over and over.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is undeniably, inescapably true, delivered in a manner
that only poetry can serve up.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Embedded in the book are details about the life of Thomas
Jefferson (who believed his Louisiana Purchase would yield mastodons) and ecological
messages. I like “Broken Sonnet on Teeth,” in which Olson describes the popularity
of the sabre-tooth at the La Brea Tar Pits (“eight-inch knives in its mouth
that / even now haunt our dreams”). Concludes Olson,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>We
fear the knife</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
of the sabre-tooth, its name a
clear warning, but we</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
miss its point—<i>Smilodon</i>
died when its big prey </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
died out, but we’ll expire when
the smallest life</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
on Earth does. Surely you’ve
noticed the bees</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
have gone quiet? Forget teeth.
Time to pray.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a chapbook, <i>The Lost Mastodon</i> is a satisfying
read, full of humor and insights. I recommend it.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-1507716712974606432020-01-22T21:12:00.001-08:002020-01-22T21:12:50.678-08:00Poem366: “Present Values” by José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PpatuxbNxFs/XikrPJaRkII/AAAAAAAASOE/U6EMTPMwt6AHKeSwTxdqaKMURutc6eD-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/reyes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PpatuxbNxFs/XikrPJaRkII/AAAAAAAASOE/U6EMTPMwt6AHKeSwTxdqaKMURutc6eD-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/reyes.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Present Values </span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">by José Edmundo
Ocampo Reyes</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Present Values by </span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">José Edmundo
Ocampo Reyes, Durham, North Carolina: Backbone Press, 2018</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Reading José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes’ work
reinforces on a gut level something that all reasoning people understand, and
that is that exposure to diverse voices matters.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Reyes, who was born and raised in the Philippines, offers a clear-eyed
cultural critique of the U.S., and elements from his first country pop up in
images and linguistic artifacts; at one point he casts a skewed version of “The
Lord’s Prayer” in Tagalog, to remarkable effect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">But this writer also offers diversity through his perspective. No
bio I can find backs up this supposition, but I think he comes from a background
in finance or economics. The title of the book, explained in the front, is a
financial term; “present value,” the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is “the
current monetary value of a future payment or series of payments,” or, more
specifically, “the present sum of money that will equal this when the income
that the sum will generate and inflation are taken into account.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I should probably be embarrassed to admit this, in a book review, of
all places, but I can’t really make sense of that definition. I have a bit of a
block when it comes to financial matters, and I feel flummoxed when I try to
sort these matters out. What I take from the definition is that the financial
term “present value” refers to the worth of something when we factor in its
history (what it cost) and its future (how it will appreciate or depreciate).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">That feels like a potent metaphor to me, but it’s also an unusual
one. Most poets aren’t talking about money. (Despite my misgivings about the
topic, I actually write about money all the time, as a way of coping with my
discomfort or fear — but I have noticed that very few poets are willing to
touch this fraught and complicated topic.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">And the poetic currencies found in this chapbook somewhat resemble
the change jar I keep on my kitchen counter. Reyes offers so many different looks,
including a ghazal, a sonnet, a villanelle — and this last offering imitates an
important Filipino poet José Garcia Villa by including a comma after every word.
My change jar is pretty picked over — completely empty of quarters, which are
useful at the laundromat, but with the odd international coin settled at the
bottom, designating pesos or drams or yuans.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The poem “Present Values,” coming near the end of its eponymous
collection, shows the money-minded poet at his most complex and interesting:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">From their towers</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">little gods wage wars,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">deploying their red currencies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Mine.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yours.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Couched in possession,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">each retort enlarges a world,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">constricts another’s.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Reyes unflinchingly examines capitalistic values in this collection,
and he finds them wanting. We all knew this, but he lays the evidence bare like
a prosecutor:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Arbitrageur, hand poised</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">to level his skewed</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">balance; Speculator,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">eyes wholly invested in the future.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Finance comes down to a matter of perspective, it would seem — and
wars have been started over less.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Of course, when reading about another culture, there are sometimes
delightful tidbits, too, like in “Boondocks”:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">To show our appreciation for your gift</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">of language, we’d like to offer you one word</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">of our own, <i>bundók</i>, which means “mountain.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">In the context of Reyes’ poetry, we are reminded that money, too, is
a kind of currency, its value set by the powerful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">While much of Reyes’ work is simply fascinating for the quality of
its information, I can’t believe I’ve gotten this far in without specifically
praising the quality of his verse. I have a giant poetry crush on his vivid,
precise, and frequently unusual vocabulary, and he has an intuitive sense of
form, each line working beautifully <i>as</i> line, with the received forms perfectly
chosen and occurring very naturally among its sisters in the collection.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">But my favorite part of Reyes’ writing is his knock-your-socks-off
imagery. In “Jardin des Plantes” is the very pinnacle of this feature, as Reyes
describes two gulls fighting over a sparrow, which they ultimately pull apart,
with the losing gull (I picture a short end of a wishbone kind of scenario)
walking away and the winning bird feasting:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>When
he fishes out the intestine,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">like a magician pulling from his pocket a braid
of handkerchiefs,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">those who have been watching cannot help</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">but cheer and applaud, even the schoolchildren.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Like a magician.” Yeah, that works. And there is magic on every
page of this excellent volume.</span></div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-86637277311695027362020-01-21T19:42:00.000-08:002020-01-21T19:42:27.454-08:00Poem366: “the ghost comes with me” by Letitia Trent
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-phGDdKglh7s/XifDogfBpUI/AAAAAAAASMk/oOkZ5OzzvbcP07KktOaLDUSLi0rf4HmeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/trent.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="459" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-phGDdKglh7s/XifDogfBpUI/AAAAAAAASMk/oOkZ5OzzvbcP07KktOaLDUSLi0rf4HmeQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/trent.png" width="264" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the ghost comes with me</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Letitia Trent</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the ghost comes with me</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Letitia Trent,
Syracuse, New York: Ghost City Press, 2019</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">So I’m sitting here in the half-dark of a cold
evening in the Ozarks, and I’m reading poems about … what’s this? Ghosts in the
Ozarks. This is a rare place — the wind, the weather, distinctive; the light
pinning you in place like a moth.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">It’s in this just-rightness that I encounter
Letitia Trent through her chapbook <i>the ghost comes with me</i>, and I have
to say, it’s an impressive book. It’s composed of a single poem in eleven
parts, and all have something to do with ghosts or the other world.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Trent establishes her uneasy motif in the first numbered section,
where she describes ghosts as “genderless / dead, but present.” Though it has
left the body,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>… you
are still</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">here, ceaselessly</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">moving and confusing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the smoke alarms</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the silken curtains</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the good, small dogs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the cat on the mantel </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the television signal</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">What I get from this is the pervasiveness of the ghost — how it
leaves its clammy mark on everything.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">When Trent talks about ghosts, it’s clear she’s a believer; her bio
explains that she lives in a haunted town, and she writes about hauntings as if
they are facts. I like that she isn’t being artful, or at least not merely
artful, when she invokes ghosts. This probably gives her a great deal of
credibility with some readers. It does with me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">However, I don’t think Trent’s ghosts are necessarily spirits of
departed humans. I suspect some of her ghosts are actually old hopes, or maybe regrets.
But they resonate the same way, like a current in the floorboard that finds its
way up your spine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The ghost motif is sustained throughout the book, sometimes with a
twist, wherein the speaker herself becomes a ghost to her son:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>when I’m
dead maybe</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">my son will suddenly remember</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the importance of roses, the smell of sandalwood,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">maybe he’ll need to sit on the ground</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">sometimes because he know </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">that’s where I am.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m intrigued with a character who seems to daydream as she makes
plans for her own future haunting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is deeply satisfying to read poems that demonstrate an
almost supernatural vision—second sight into the after world. But such moments
present themselves again and again in this impressive collection.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am especially smitten with the fourth section, where the
speaker muses on the nature of ghosts:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
Maybe ghosts are the dead left in
the places where they lived or died, attached to the world as we’re attached
when alive, loving a particular place but never able to touch it fully, loving
people who they can watch from a distance but never feel with their bodies or
breath.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;">
There’s this belief that the body
and the real self are made of different stuff and one can slip off the other
like a stocking from a pointed foot.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That image with its exquisite detail—stocking, pointed
foot—is indicative of the power of the pictures Trent paints throughout this
collection. It’s a lush and satisfying read.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-73735325302702569312020-01-20T15:47:00.003-08:002020-01-20T15:47:55.001-08:00Poem366: “Tales from the House of Vasquez” by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KEMY1Nh7zI/XiY79wsShoI/AAAAAAAASLE/HBcWIAvfVbc3XUauPmpUD9BzQkq3FF22gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vasquez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KEMY1Nh7zI/XiY79wsShoI/AAAAAAAASLE/HBcWIAvfVbc3XUauPmpUD9BzQkq3FF22gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/vasquez.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Tales from the
House of Vasquez</i> by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tales from the House of Vasquez</i> by Raquel Vasquez
Gilliland, Studio City, California: Rattle, 2018</div>
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<br /></div>
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I love getting lost in a book of poetry, partly because they’re
all so different. Some work their magic through flawless reasoning or beautiful
words. In <i>Tales from the House of Vasquez</i>, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s
particular magic is … magic, actually—and it makes for compelling reading.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is the magic described in the poems—a specialized
understanding carried down through generations of women—but there is also the
incantatory quality of the work itself that helps to effect the numinous
quality of this chapbook.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are fourteen poems in the collection, all beginning with
“The Tale of …” (“The Tale of the Serpant,” “The Tale of Kitchen Spirits,”
etc.). The tales are family stories that involve mothers and aunts and
grandmothers, and through them, the intelligence behind the poems comes into
her own.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A prevalent symbol in the collection is the eye. Some of the
Vasquez women have four of them, two in front and two in back. “The Tale of
Madness” explains the story; in it, a bear visits one of the speaker’s
ancestors, and the ancestor sang a song that pleased him. In exchange, the bear
offered her the ability to see.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Pero señor, Inez said. I can
already see.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>This sort of seeing opens your
other eyes.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>The ones in the back of your
head.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bear explains that the back eyes offer a different kind
of sight. The ancestor accepted the gift, but as the bear began to open one of her
back eyes, the moon emerged and interrupted the process, and the bear could not
open the second eye. The bear tells the ancestor, “One of your back eyes will
see what is behind / you. And the other will see what is within you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bear continues,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>The madness will gather under
that closed eye.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>And it will be passed on to
your daughter,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>and her daughter, and her
daughter,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>until one of your daughters
will not bear</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>it any longer. It will nearly
kill her,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>but she will pry the other eye
open</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>with her bear hands, and she
will see</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i>the spines of stars.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a powerful prophecy that begins to play out in the book
in fascinating ways through tightly linked, mystical poems.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In these poems, madness is held in awe. “The Tale of Desire”
explains that madness comes from terror:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>… The fear that causes your spirit</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
to break into pieces and run into
all directions,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
one piece under the crook of the
lily leaf,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
another over the eyelid of birch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is so striking to me as a reader is how these
fantastical, imagistic explanations of a woman’s magic seem so accurate. I
believe every word of what is presented as a kind of fairy tale.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something is happening beneath the surface of language in
these poems, so that “The Tale of Kitchen Spirits” feels almost like an answer
key when it says,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
If you listen close, you can hear</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
her talk to the spirits. Sometimes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
she even prays aloud, even though</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
the spirits have always preferred</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
fingers and bone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tales from the House of Vasquez</i> is a small book that
has big things to say, and I’m happy to have stumbled across it. The poet’s bio
notes that she has another book to her credit, <i>Dirt and Honey</i>, and I plan
to hunt it down and read it in one sitting.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-28215715378262821632020-01-19T11:03:00.000-08:002020-01-19T11:03:01.981-08:00Poem366: “Goodbye Toothless House” by Kelly Fordon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ukK1JFfJ-zQ/XiSntfhydGI/AAAAAAAASKc/UsGS4Oy5z_8PCiuXsJNIQEqX6Z35HfWlQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-19%2Bat%2B1.01.35%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="370" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ukK1JFfJ-zQ/XiSntfhydGI/AAAAAAAASKc/UsGS4Oy5z_8PCiuXsJNIQEqX6Z35HfWlQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-19%2Bat%2B1.01.35%2BPM.png" width="214" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Goodbye Toothless
House</i> by Kelly Fordon</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Goodbye Toothless House</i> by Kelly Fordon, Somerville,
Massachusetts: Kattywompus Press, 2019</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first time I had a chance to show my husband my
hometown, I found myself focusing on the underside: where my dogs were buried; where
a boy was struck by lightning; where a woman fell from a tower while trying to
catch a bird. These parts just seemed like part of the important story the
place had to tell—the other part being me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kelly Fordon’s <i>Goodbye Toothless House</i> offers its own
tour of suburbia, and it’s clear we have something in common. Peppered
throughout the book are poems about neighbors, and their titles end with an
address, like “Housecoat: 19 Ballard Avenue” (listed merely as “Housecoat” in
the table of contents). In this prose poem, a neighbor is described: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
You in your cat housecoat, your pumpkin
housecoat, your Santa Claus housecoat satnding sentry on your stoop across the
street. No matter how you fixed your gaze, people never paused in passing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But one person did, the poem reveals: the postman, and even
he didn’t know this neighbor had cancer, until she was gone. It’s a sad
indictment of the concept of neighbor, and so are others in this series, like “Beatrice:
11 Ballard Avenue,” about a woman who ran naked down the street with a kitchen
knife, but then found herself friendless after the “medication took.” Or like “Gina
II: 22 Ballard Avenue,” about a seemingly too-perfect neighbor whose kids are too
polite and whose house is too put-together. “Every day, my face started to ooze
off the bone like meat that has simmered too long in a crockpot,” Fordon writes,
contrasting the speaker’s view of her life with Gina II’s idealized one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe Fordon and I can’t really grab hold of a neighborhood
that is doused in slick perfection. We need the knobby and rotten bits to get a
toehold. Some of the troubled consciousness at work in these poems (and let’s
admit it, at work in my life) seems linked to aging. As the poem “M.A.P. (Middle
aged problems)” advises,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Distance runners</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
know better than</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
to look up halfway</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
through, why</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
did you?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a good question, but for me, and seemingly for Fordon,
that’s where the poems show up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At any rate, it’s good to have a little company in middle
age, and Fordon offers it with perfect clarity in “The Girls in the Camper,”
about Barbie, post-Ken:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Barbie left Ken about a year ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Now she spends her days playing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
canasta with the girls in the
camper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
That’s right she got the camper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken scored the townhouse with its elevator, it turns out.
Ken is 52 in this poem, and his stripper girlfriend is only 25. Muses Barbie in
the poem, “Why did she think they would make it / through decrepitude and
beyond?” And this reader can identify with that uncomfortable question—and so
can the poet, who follows up immediately by confessing, “I’m putting thoughts
in her mind.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Misery, or at least perplexity, loves company, even if it
doesn’t want to mix with the neighbors.</div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-16697224539070311242020-01-18T17:13:00.003-08:002020-01-18T17:13:46.786-08:00Poem366: “the elephants are asking” by Karen Neuberg
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SGeYRcJTZa0/XiOtEyD7aqI/AAAAAAAASKQ/VA3pRz7Ko4QfkaOgGhDWZ6y4rox77xsBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-18%2Bat%2B7.12.04%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="347" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SGeYRcJTZa0/XiOtEyD7aqI/AAAAAAAASKQ/VA3pRz7Ko4QfkaOgGhDWZ6y4rox77xsBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-18%2Bat%2B7.12.04%2BPM.png" width="265" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the elephants are asking</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Karen Neuberg</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">the elephants are asking</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Karen Neuberg,
Glenview, Illinois: Glass Lyre Press, 2018</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Unrelenting. That’s a good word to describe Karen Neuberg’s chapbook
<i>the elephants are asking</i>, a collection that sounds a clear alarm about
the environmental catastrophe that some refer to as “looming,” but that is clearly
happening all around us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The title poem lays the responsibility for addressing the
issue squarely at the feet of the reader. It states,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
the elephants are asking—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
and the bees and the bats, the
prairie dogs, the lemurs, the dolphins—one in six species—asking!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
And the coral reefs, the rivers
& oceans, the islands & shorelines—asking!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The poem goes through a longer list before nothing that the
baby, with wiggling toes and plump arms, is asking. “Even God is asking,”
Neuberg writes. With urgent work to be done, these animals and babies are
asking us what we plan to do about the situation, and maybe why it exists.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The poem I liked most in the collection is called “Information,”
and it starts with an epigraph by Gertrude Stein: “Everyone gets so much information
all day long that they lose their common sense.” It’s a powerful indictment, I
can say after noting that I have been on phone or internet this entire day as I
write this. It’s no wonder the environment has gone to hell; its caretakers are
asleep at the wheel. Writes Neuberg,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
I see another spectacle blocking my
view,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
another fad slipping into my bed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
The cave walls are filled with
conflicting shadows</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
demanding attention in urgent
& dazzling tones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
How small respect has become. …</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The poem points out that a barrage of information is “burying
us beneath ourselves,” and perhaps there is such a thing as “TMI.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Look, it’s not an optimistic collection, and the keening,
desperate feeling of those who care about the world is summed up in “Occupy Today.”
“I have seen falling / continue to increase its pace,” the poem states, and
continues,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Some days I want only</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
my mother. Some days I want to
wrap</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
my arms around the world. I see</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
the future falling at accelerating
speed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But there is one beautiful poem that does offer a glimmer of
hope, and in fact it reminds me of the folk song “If I Had a Hammer”; written
in an era of tremendous turmoil and struggle, that anthem acknowledges the power
of one person to make a difference. So does “If all I have is a teaspoon,”
located near the end of this chapbook:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
If all I have is a teaspoon</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
and if there’s a calamity; say, a
raging fire,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
then I’ll carry my teaspoon</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
filled with water and I’ll pour it
on</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
the raging fire and I’ll go back and
get</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
more water and that’s what I’ll do
…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The poem describes a small act—an act so small that it feels
inconsequential—but any act is better than none at all, and there remains a
hope that thousands or millions or even billions of others will add their own
teaspoons, and together we might find salvation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-45953944418355522122020-01-17T21:05:00.000-08:002020-01-17T21:05:03.248-08:00Poem366: “Spiritual Midwifery” by Kathleen Kirk
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Spiritual Midwifery</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Kathleen Kirk</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Spiritual Midwifery</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Kathleen Kirk,
St. Paul, Minnesota: Red Bird Chapbooks, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Kathleen Kirk’s chapbook <i>Spiritual Midwifery</i> is small in page
count, but it packs a punch, with each poem contributing to a lush and
well-developed whole.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The title of the book reflects the many poems about motherhood,
whether the mother in question is the close, personal voice of “I” or the Madonna.
“My Daughter at the Piano” is a bit of an outlier in a collection, as it is a
small poem about a specific mother-moment, as the speaker teaches her daughter
to play. The mother asks if the daughter if she would like to learn a new song
…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">… but you are smiling now</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">apple in hand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Only on the black keys,”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">you answer. “I like them best.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Together we play the dark</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">harmonies of earth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Actually, that final, ethereal sentence is not an outlier. The
collection offers many moments where normal moments, particularly mother-moments,
are laced with otherworldliness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">In addition to conventional motherhood, the title also refers to the
broader act of creation, and most of the poems in the collection are ekphrastic
examples, for which readers are encouraged to look up the original paintings.
Some examples of paintings that gave rise to these poems include <i>The Rest on
the Flight Into Egypt</i> by Caravaggio, <i>La Fruitière</i> by Childe Hassam, <i>Blue
Penumbra</i> by Mark Rothko and more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I particularly love the intimacy between a woman and Death, who
visits her, in the poem “Angel of Death,” based on the 1890 Evelyn de Morgan
painting by the same name. Death has a beautiful, androgynous face, and leans
in toward a woman in the painting, who raises her head to him. Writes Kirk of
Death’s scythe,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>…
will you</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">cut off my long hair with it</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">and scatter the strands upon the earth</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">before we leave it, for the birds</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">to weave into their nests?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There are so many breathtakingly beautiful moments in this brief
collection, her eighth chapbook. I find that I’d like to read a full-length
collection from this talent. Here’s hoping one is in the works.</span></div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-50838861073324797182020-01-16T20:39:00.002-08:002020-01-16T20:39:46.242-08:00Poem366: “Rue” by Kathryn Nuernberger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qcl38umEl5A/XiE6UbHyCSI/AAAAAAAASIc/sGn6WTxWShsqEcPHXp81D5WcnQi8wQgjACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-16%2Bat%2B10.38.01%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="251" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qcl38umEl5A/XiE6UbHyCSI/AAAAAAAASIc/sGn6WTxWShsqEcPHXp81D5WcnQi8wQgjACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-16%2Bat%2B10.38.01%2BPM.png" width="249" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Rue</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Kathryn Nuernberger</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Rue</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Kathryn Nuernberger, Rochester,
New York: BOA Editions, 2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Reader, you’re in for a treat. I was lucky
enough to get my hands on an advance review copy of <i>Rue</i> by Kathryn
Nuernberger, forthcoming from BOA Editions in April, and it’s stellar work,
fascinating from cover to cover.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">All poets have their thing — that aspect of
poetry they do best. I’m always excited by poets who can lean hard into an
image and make it dance in unexpected ways, and I also love poets who have a
musical ear for language and sound. But Nuernberger’s particular skill is
rhetoric, and it’s fascinating to see how each poem’s argument unfolds. She is
brilliant, of course — well educated, well read, a careful thinker — and her
poems come together in such smart ways. As a bonus, they’re well crafted, and
imagery and sound considerations are very much on point. But the best thing about
these poems is seeing a sharp mind at work to solve a rhetorical problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Although I’m going on and on about the rhetoric
here, don’t think for a moment that Nuernberger doesn’t get personal. Within
the bounds of these arguments, the speaker of these poems talks about her
workplace politics (and I absolutely love that she writes about this topic), or
she calls out a townsperson who is too touchy-feely at the coffee shop, or she
indicts an obstetrician who treats her roughly during childbirth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">This latter example is found in the poem “Poor
Crow’s Got Too Much Fight to Live,” which begins with a crow struggling with a
trapped foot but then takes surprising turns to tell the speaker’s birthing
story. There’s a Catch-22 in the whole childbirth scenario these days; every
baby book tells us to formulate a birth plan, something many doctors will
flatly ignore, and some will openly mock, with the attitude that they’re the
doctor, and they’re going to focus on getting the baby safely into the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">in “Poor Crow’s,” Nuernberger writes about a
doctor who seemed to react to her birth plan with malice. Writes Nuernberger,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>That
guy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">jammed his hand into me hard and without
warning,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I think because he was offended by our
conversation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">about my birth plan, which was boilerplate
stuff</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">about avoiding drugs and letting my body run
its course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I’d like to prosecute him, for myself and even
more</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">for everyone else, but it took me months to
understand</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">what he had done and why and by then it could
so easily</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">be time telling the story instead of truth. …</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I know so many mothers who have part of this story to tell — a birth
plan mocked and ignored, with no chance that it will be put into effect — but
the story told here, of a doctor physically hurting the speaker, goes much
further. I find myself cheering for Nuernberger at the end of the poem, which
does all but name this doctor:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I’m sorry, other people he might have or still
yet</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">hurt, but I’m not so naively idealistic as to
think</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">any good could come of saying to the public
that I was</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">assaulted by an OB/GYN in his office in Logan,
OH</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">in May 2010 and I’m willing to testify to that.</span></div>
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I grew up about 60 miles from Logan, as it happens, and I
know there aren’t a lot of OB/GYNs in an Appalachian town of 7,000, so I also know
how bold this poem is, and I am here for it.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Nuernberger is also a delightful nerd, sharing her crush on Carl
Linnaeus, who invented the system we use to classify and name living things. It
makes sense that a science-minded poet would appreciate this historic figure —
a guy who named the largest mammal, the blue whale, “Balaenoptera musculus,” or
“the mouse whale,” Nuernberger points out. She basically shows how adorable he
is to fellow nature-lovers and word nerds, but then she finishes by pointing
out a problematic aspect of this figure — that he classified people by color. “What
do you / think?” she asks the reader. “Can we love him anyway? Did we / ever really
even in the first place?” This is the sort of thoughtful probing found often in
the long, detailed poems in the book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The argumentation in the poems is the high note for me, but let me
be clear: Nuernberger also has beautiful, lyrical moments, like I encountered
in “Dear Reader, I’ve Been Preoccupied Lately by My Own Private Business.” Nuernberger
describes a silent movie with philosophers who travel to the moon (“Le Voyage
dans la lune,” I believe):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Their moon, when they got there, was full of
can-can girls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Their moon wanted a fist in the kisser.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Their moon wanted to pull off those stockings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Their moon was orbited by a comet made of fire,
not some accuracy of ice.</span></div>
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Ah, I love “some accuracy of ice” in this context. Even <span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Nuernberger’s
lyricism is brainy, and that’s delightful to encounter.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I suspect you can preorder <i>Rue</i> right now — and I suggest you
do. I’ve lingered over these poems all day, and I am convinced.</span></div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style><br />Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-60491345804589641442020-01-15T19:57:00.006-08:002020-01-15T19:58:27.617-08:00Poem366: “Accommodations” by Sarah Carey<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jIWZHzdmZR8/Xh_fKrfmTlI/AAAAAAAASHM/99UPKOqxXhoCRkMAkF61hig6OlJtqUsCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-15%2Bat%2B10.56.41%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="394" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jIWZHzdmZR8/Xh_fKrfmTlI/AAAAAAAASHM/99UPKOqxXhoCRkMAkF61hig6OlJtqUsCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-15%2Bat%2B10.56.41%2BPM.png" width="212" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Accommodations</span></i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Sarah Carey</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Accommodations</span></i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> by Sarah Carey,
Tillamook, Oregon: Concrete Wolf, 2019</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">My mother’s celebration of life was today, so
of course I wanted to turn my attention to something both gentle and deserving.
I could not have chosen a better selection than Sarah Carey’s lovely chapbook, <i>Accommodations</i>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Named to the Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook
Award Series and published in 2019, Carey’s book deals with family and loss.
It’s largely a sorrowful work, but sometimes sorrowful words provide the
comfort and connection we need.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Almost every poem in the book calculates some
sort of pain, usually the pain of losing someone. But some address other
losses, as the marvelous list poem “What We Carry” demonstrates:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Some things we took for granted vanished</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">long ago: a store, a mall, a whole shopping
plaza</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">an entire country we grew up in, moving</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">state to state, when welcome signs</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">marked the borders, and no one spoke</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">of red and blue intent …</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">This is a recognizable grief; it seems that at
one point there was a country that looked like the one Carey describes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Today, I was especially moved by “We Gather in
Florida to Celebrate My Father’s Life” and its profoundly beautiful ending:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">My father is salt and mineral, crushed bone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">We arrange to arrange to arrange.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Did you know</span></i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">, I told the
gathered group,</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">flowers from each state he lived in
flank the pulpit,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">bloom today in all of them, in all of
you:</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">dogwood, peony, forget-me-not</span></i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">.</span></div>
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Carey gets mourning exactly right here, and I’m struck by
the translation of the father into salt and mineral. We’ll all get there eventually;
my mom got there today, and I was glad for Sarah’s company as I dealt with that
hard fact.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Carey presents one beautiful poem after another in this
gorgeous, painful, but just-right collection, which I highly recommend.</div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-48369860569302861092020-01-14T20:53:00.000-08:002020-01-14T20:53:01.884-08:00Poem366: “A Bag of Hands” by Mather Schneider
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MgpwkPfr6ww/Xh6aesHB7cI/AAAAAAAASG4/34j3YZuuPfEa-TtrkFyZJ5DdOlff8yMegCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-14%2Bat%2B11.50.26%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MgpwkPfr6ww/Xh6aesHB7cI/AAAAAAAASG4/34j3YZuuPfEa-TtrkFyZJ5DdOlff8yMegCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-14%2Bat%2B11.50.26%2BPM.png" width="238" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>A Bag of Hands</i> by Mather Schneider</span></div>
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<i>A Bag of Hands</i> by Mather Schneider, Studio City,
California: Rattle, 2018</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s interesting to thumb through a chapbook that won a
prize I myself was vying for. I open a book like that not with jealousy, but
with hope. I really want a book that beat mine for a prize to be good. Being an
also-ran to a bad book would feel pretty rotten.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The good news is that it’s pretty hard to deny the merit of <i>A
Bag of Hands</i> by Mather Schneider, a 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize selection.
It’s terrific! And that’s a relief.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The Rattle Chapbook Prize is a particularly nice award. It’s
big money — $5,000 at present — and the winning title gets distributed to Rattle’s
7,000 subscribers, according to its website. Additionally, the author receives
500 copies of the chapbook, and that’s pretty generous, too. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Schneider’s book fascinates from its unusual title to the
first glimpse of the cover, which features original art by the author — a hand
(Schneider’s?) seen resting on the frame of a car door through the side mirror.
It’s a familiar enough scene, but strangely disorienting, with sky reflected
against parking lot pavement and scruffy turf and an inset mirror offering a
slightly different view.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That’s what the poems offer, too — an unusual perspective.
Many of these are from the point of view of a cab driver who loves a woman from
Mexico but transports people who look down their noses at immigrants. In “Consequences,”
a woman’s boyfriend reports that 54 people have died in the last month crossing
the border from Mexico into Arizona.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The other woman looks out the cab
window</div>
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and says,</div>
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Well, I’m glad.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The man looks at her with
something </div>
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that is almost horror,</div>
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almost human.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a surprising link that the speaker of the poem has with
this man, joined as they are by their disgust with the woman’s racism. “There
are consequences,” she concludes, feeling fine about the death of so many.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“A Bag of Hands” is another poem that addresses the
immigration issue. This poem is about 12 severed hands found in a bag in
Jalisco, Mexico. “I’ve stolen things. Hasn’t everybody?” the speaker of the
poem asks while considering the hands, removed, perhaps, for that infraction.</div>
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<br /></div>
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He considers the hands of his passengers, and of others:</div>
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<br /></div>
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Some of them are beautiful and
smooth</div>
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<br /></div>
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as buckeyes. Some of them are so
calloused they cut</div>
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you when you shake them. Some of
them cup</div>
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<br /></div>
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the sunlight.</div>
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Imagine the hands</div>
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<br /></div>
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that held the thieves down, the
hands that raised</div>
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the machete, the hands</div>
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<br /></div>
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that fell.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Smooth // as buckeyes.” That’s quite beautiful to me, and
such a different way of looking at hands. That kind of insight is found
throughout this small collection, which deserves to be in the world, doing its
careful and beautiful work.</div>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-28727334420302209292020-01-13T05:46:00.001-08:002020-01-13T05:46:30.057-08:00Poem366: “Love Me, Anyway” by Minadora Macheret
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4aBhXDaHEOQ/Xhx0gTp0mUI/AAAAAAAASFI/WV3iKTQMJbIsdTianW4Jdn1yvb5wuDSMACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-13%2Bat%2B7.09.20%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="520" height="235" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4aBhXDaHEOQ/Xhx0gTp0mUI/AAAAAAAASFI/WV3iKTQMJbIsdTianW4Jdn1yvb5wuDSMACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-13%2Bat%2B7.09.20%2BAM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Love
Me, Anyway</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> by Minadora
Macheret</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Love
Me, Anyway</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> by Minadora
Macheret, Cincinnati, Ohio: Porkbelly Press, 2018</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know several people who contend with PCOS — polycystic
ovary syndrome — and I know, too, that they suffer in myriad ways from the
condition, with dangerously heavy periods and physical manifestations, like
excessive hair growth, that can make them feel ashamed and exposed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Until reading Minadora Macheret’s explosive chapbook on the
subject—<i>Love Me, Anyway</i>, from Porkbelly Press—I didn’t fully understand
the disease. I still don’t, for that matter, but I’ve come closer, and I hold those
who suffer from it in the light as Macheret brings me face to face with the
burden they carry.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Coupled with the trauma of disease is that of losing the mother,
a subject I became too familiar with last week, on hearing that my own mother
had passed away. This was a hard collection to read, but it is good to have
company in grief—to sit shiva with a fellow poet who has a more advanced
understanding of that kind of loss, thanks to the passage of time and the hard
focus of poetry.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Macheret’s poems are forthright and honest, and they offer a
frank glimpse into the life of one who contends with this disease. “Woman with
PCOS Describes Aversion to Tests” provides one such moment, as the speaker describes
nurses who “stick needle after needle / into scarred flesh,” until she feels “there
is no blood left”:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There never is an answer</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">just test the body, so the doctors <i>know</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">it’s still living.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She concludes that her heart beats irregularly, and “as long
as it doesn’t stop, “<i>I’ll be fine</i>—.” It’s haunting to think of all of
the people who suffer with this condition, alone in the phlebotomist’s chair
that they have occupied so many times before. I wonder if it’s a comfort to some,
having a book that sees them there, and having readers who know them as they
haven’t before.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It looks to me from the medical writing on the subject that PCOS
can mean explosively heavy, painful periods or periods that are missed
altogether. The prose poem “Body of Nothing (Not Even Blood)” seems to explore
this, with its haunting opening sentence: “Settle in beautiful body, settle in
before the night takes you.” It then offers a painful, poetic view of what
happens in the reproductive organs (“Silence the ovaries, choke on pearls”),
before concluding, “The cycles have stopped. Somewhere, a clock hand lingers
between today and tomorrow.” Macheret seems to be addressing the frustration of
not knowing what your body plans to do and when it’s going to do it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I appreciate the tenderness the poet offers herself in a
world that can be far less loving, as in “The First Time PCOS Spoke.” Writes
Macheret, </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Please gentle the body—I</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">thicken it with sleep.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When you slow down,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">you will be</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">a woman,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I really appreciate that line break in the first of the
quoted set above. “Gentle the body—I” suggests that the body <i>is </i>the
self, though so much of our time is spent trying to rise above it. On the one
hand we view our body as a flesh-sleeve, something we ultimately pull ourselves
out of, but then on the other, this body is our precious vessel, the only thing
we can truly be said to own.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My thoughts about ownership here transport me instantly to
the most moving part of this powerful chapbook, found in “To the Bearded Lady I
Am (Age 26),” which begins with the speaker with tweezers in front of the mirror.
In this clear-eyed view of how the speaker contends with the preponderance of
hair that PCOS brings, she ends with an image: “I’m like a teacup left out,
dust covered, a chip in my side.” There is a beautiful rhythm to that sentence,
and a moving view into the writer’s lived experience. It takes my breath away.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I certainly recommend this small powerhouse of a book, and I
look forward to reading more by this poet. </span></div>
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</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-13149355070502298082020-01-12T08:48:00.000-08:002020-01-12T08:48:26.093-08:00Poem366: “Blue Birds and Red Horses” by Inna Kabysh, translated by Katherine E. Young
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OZMSCYU310I/XhtNtScMW3I/AAAAAAAASEk/9hORyMcq7eUt3CXzG_mekF-LcF6N7OXfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-12%2Bat%2B9.59.18%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="391" data-original-width="274" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OZMSCYU310I/XhtNtScMW3I/AAAAAAAASEk/9hORyMcq7eUt3CXzG_mekF-LcF6N7OXfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-12%2Bat%2B9.59.18%2BAM.png" width="224" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Blue
Birds and Red Horses</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">
by Inna Kabysh, translated by Katherine E. Young</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Blue
Birds and Red Horses</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">
by Inna Kabysh, translated by Katherine E. Young, Toad Press, 2018</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">I traveled
to Russia this snowy Sunday morning as I read the chapbook <i>Blue Birds and
Red Horses</i>, poems of Inna Kabysh, in translation by Katherine E. Young.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Kabysh is
a Russian-language poet, though I couldn’t pin down exactly where she lives. I
did locate some information: She is a former schoolteacher, born in 1963, and
is the author of seven books of poetry.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Young’s translations
of Kabysh cast the poet’s work in a naturalistic light. They feature a ragged right
edge, with very long and very short lines appearing side by side, and direct
language that suits the bold first-person voices found her. Kabysh’s poems,
here, at least, a longer ones, and they tend to read as frantic observations,
as if an awful discovery is being made in real time. The result was kind of
nerve-wracking for me; I felt very wound up as I raced to see what was going to
happen. After a few collections that invite the reader to luxuriate and to chew
on the subject, this collection felt like a shot of adrenaline. I appreciate the
difference—and Kabysh’s poems really do offer a nice departure from my normal
poetic fare.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are only five poems in the chapbook, and they begin
with the striking “Cat and Mouse,” in which a young child is abandoned by her
mother to live with her grandmother, but does not feel unlucky. “Look what fell
from the sky for you,” the grandmother tells her upon reading the news that the
mother has decided to leave the country. This is a poem of marvelous detail,
and it includes quick dialogue that pushes the narrative along to its lovely
ending.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Shine On, Shine On, My Star,” the second poem in the book,
features a young couple in school:<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We sat in fur coats and felt boots,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the teacher in
mittens</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wrote out on the
board:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What I Want To Be
When I Grow Up.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Lyoshka wrote:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hell Driver.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I sighed and
wrote</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that I wanted to be
a poet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all the
others—astronauts.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the course of the poem, the speaker loses her love,
presumably to death, but she imagines his return:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so everything would
be okay,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and we’d get
married.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he’d smile his
Gagarin smile</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because, in point
of fact,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he wanted</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to be an astronaut</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>more than anyone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s a gripping and tender love story, told with uncommonly forthright
honesty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The book ends with the poem “Children’s Resurrection Day,”
about the afterlife for aborted children—and these are children, instead of embryos,
because they have beds and clothes and speak a language. In a surprising turn,
the janitor in the poem helps the children to dig toward their resurrection:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then he hit the
shovel on something made of iron,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>opened the lid
above his head</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and, pulling
himself up by his hands, crawled out—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and pulled us out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was a surprise to me when the janitor’s long digging
resulted in a thunk <i>above</i> his head, and another when it was revealed that
the tunnel opened into Children’s World, which sounded like a fantastical paradise
of toys until I read the book’s notes, which explained that this was a Moscow
shopping destination for children’s goods during the Soviet era.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s healthy to look outside of ourselves a bit, and through
these careful translations of Katherine E. Young, I was able to do just that
for a morning.</span></div>
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</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-28246185268313834992020-01-11T14:25:00.001-08:002020-01-11T14:25:19.177-08:00Poem366: Some thoughts, and an appreciation of "A Finitude of Skin" by Clayton Adam Clark
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Although I
may slip up and use the word from time to time, “Poem366” is not a series of book
reviews. A review is something very different from these little essays, which I
refer to as “appreciations.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">As a
journalism major, I was trained up in reviewing in what was probably my
favorite course in the curriculum. The 300-level class was called “Review and
Criticism,” and it was held one night a week. Most of what we did was watch classic
movies — <i>All About Eve</i>, <i>Citizen Kane</i>, that kind of thing — and
then write reviews about them. I hadn’t seen those films, so the course was
doubly educational for me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">But we
also talked about the ethics of reviewing, and it was made very clear that a
review relies on trust. Audiences need to be able to trust reviewers not to
have a financial stake in what they’re reviewing, be it a restaurant, movie, or
what have you, and they should also trust that they’re getting a
straightforward look at the subject, both the good and the bad, with the writer’s
personal concerns not mixing too much with the job of reviewing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Although I
come from, and work again in, the journalism world, I’ve spent a lot of time
tooling around on the literary scene, and I’ve found the ethics here to be
quite different. Friends review friends all the time; I’ve even been in
Facebook groups where people have attempted to swap reviews — you do me and I’ll
do you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Whether in
blurbs or “reviews,” you’ll find very few poetry collections that aren’t
luminous (or numinous) and essential. We seldom get the straight poop, because
I read a lot of collections with language that could use some tightening or
imagery that misses the mark or rhetoric that lacks precision and logic, but
these are said to be as numinous as all of the others.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">In the
Poem366 project, I’m offering a taste of the work that I am reading and
enjoying. (What I’m reading and not enjoying, I just skip over and don’t
mention here.) There is a lot to like in most poetry collections, and I love to
see what I can learn from anything I pick up. What I find, I share with you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Because I’m
really just being a fan instead of a critic in these little essays, I am free to
bring you some things I would never find ethically appropriate to review. One
of those is today’s selection, <i>A Finitude of Skin</i> by Clayton Adam Clark.
This collection is the winner of the Moon City Press Poetry Award, and I am the
series editor for that award. With my partner Lanette Cadle, I chose this collection
as the prize winner, and I edited it in close partnership with Clayton himself.
I feel very connected to this book, and I’m excited to share it with the world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Could I
review this book? Never. Can I love it and tell you about it? Yep. And right
now I’m going to do just that.</span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: dotted windowtext 3.0pt; border: none; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
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<br /></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JEcdqcYShDU/XhpLPwtal6I/AAAAAAAASEA/ReK4aSR88HEJiNnW_tXprxk8NK94vTvQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/clark%2Bbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JEcdqcYShDU/XhpLPwtal6I/AAAAAAAASEA/ReK4aSR88HEJiNnW_tXprxk8NK94vTvQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/clark%2Bbook.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">A Finitude of Skin</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> by Clayton Adam</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">A Finitude
of Skin</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> by Clayton
Adam Clark (Springfield, Missouri: Moon City Press, 2018).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Clayton Adam Clark writes beautifully about place, and I
know this because I’ve been to many of the places this Missouri poet writes
about in <i>A Finitude of Skin</i>, the winner of the 2018 Moon City Press
Poetry Award.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I helped to choose Clark’s collection for the MCP prize, and
I did so on the basis of his careful use of language — no extraneous words or
syllables here — and his lush imagery. But I think I was most impressed by his keen
understanding of the environment, which he describes in precise and scientific
terms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The tone of the book is set in the
first three lines of “The River of Ugly Fishes,” the first poem in the book:<br />
<br />
Blame it on the limestone—the sinkholes,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the speleological interest, an
overwhelming</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">karstness here. People get lost.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve lived in Missouri for eight years, and this seems true
to me. The state has a way of taking us in, and it can also feel a little hard
to get away from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Clark writes about a hellbender (giant salamander) that is new
to the region, and the way he presents it makes a reader feel as though it’s
right in front of her:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>The
snot otter, grampus,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>devil dog can
breathe underwater</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>without gills,
lungs only for floating,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and most closely resembles
crayfish-eating</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>petrified wood.
Until it swims. …</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>There’s nothing wooden</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in a hellbenders
wiggle work upstream,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the backbone soft,
the little flesh around</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>infused with capillaries
that filter</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>oxygen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Clark writes like a naturalist, or like a journalist whose
beat is the disappearing world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another favorite poem of mine is the multipart “The
Noctambulists.” Here, too, Clark writes with meticulous care about nature, this
time about an unexpected Missouri denizen: sharks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bull sharks swim up
the Mississippi, singular</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in their blood’s
regulation of salt in freshwater.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The northernmost
shark caught on record</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was hooked on the
Illinois side near the Piasa Bird,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a
fish-bird-reptile-deer painted on a bluff</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in red-black-green.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s a real petroglyph, and bull sharks on the Mississippi are
well documented, too, but for some reason, Clark can write about simple facts
and make them seem not just unlikely, but wondrous.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The poet’s appreciation for scientific detail even shows up in
a beautiful love poem, “7-10 Years.” Writes Clark,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing
left of your skeleton</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from the day we
met. Every cell</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>forming, your
spinal column, your femurs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and scapulae, has
been replaced.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your blood
traversed the thousand miles</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of your body and died
in your spleen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>again and again,
and I’m sorry</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never saw you
change.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s certainly a strange sentiment, but so tender and loving
that I fall a little in love with the voice of the poem myself. If there were a
prom somewhere, I’d ask this guy to it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The end of this poem shows that the poet’s philosophical
range extends beyond details and data into deeper waters. After explaining how
the body regenerates every seven to ten years, he concludes,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>What I can’t let go of</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is if we want to change
the people</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we have been, we
don’t have to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Change will come, whether we want it to or not, whether that’s
in our fading natural world or in each other. It’s a thought that’s as
horrifying as it is comforting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-71622380354725716332020-01-10T19:39:00.000-08:002020-01-10T19:39:05.065-08:00Poem366: "Scared Violent Like Horses" by John McCarthy
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XS5R4rdxGEo/XhlDDKs8WqI/AAAAAAAASDg/1fCWs1Ig-ioSNtPWavtn39w6vMCdc85SACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-10%2Bat%2B9.36.21%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="233" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XS5R4rdxGEo/XhlDDKs8WqI/AAAAAAAASDg/1fCWs1Ig-ioSNtPWavtn39w6vMCdc85SACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-10%2Bat%2B9.36.21%2BPM.png" width="188" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Scared Violent Like Horses</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> by John McCarthy</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 272.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Scared
Violent Like Horses</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">
by John McCarthy, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed, 2019</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">I’ve spent
most of my life in the Midwest … arguably speaking. I’ve been on the fringes —
the Appalachian part of Ohio and southern Missouri, both sort of liminal spaces
within the region, but also northwestern Ohio, right there in America’s bread
basket, if you’re willing to count Ohio as part of the Midwest. (It’s got to
start somewhere, right?)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway,
when you look at something from the edges, you probably get a better idea of
what it’s all about, so I think I have a pretty good bead on the Midwest — and John
McCarthy definitely deserves some overalls, a pickup truck, and a piece of hay
to chew on, because he’s the real deal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Of course,
the real Midwest can be a pretty cosmopolitan place. You can eat at 25 different
Michelin-starred restaurants in the Windy City alone, if you’re so inclined,
and thoroughly modern industry and culture throughout the region.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">But in <i>Scared
Violent Like Horses, </i>McCarthy writes about Springfield, Illinois, and the
honest-to-goodness corn country surrounding it. He proves his bona-fides by
knowing the names of grain — </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">zoysia, sedgegrass,
corn, sunflowers, panicgrass, switchgrass, wheat</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, they all
show up in this book, just as they do in central Illinois. Maybe they show up in
L.A. as well, but it’s unlikely that most who observe it outside of farmland could
identify it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I have a positive impression of the Midwest, but McCarthy
takes a darker view of it. Maybe it’s because cruel people and difficult
situations inhabit the pages. The result is edgy sometimes, sad others, but it
always feels like looking through a dirty window into a place we don’t usually
get a glimpse of.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some of McCarthy’s lush description is notable in the poem “Confirmation”:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[W]e used to dance in The Corner Tavern’s neon light</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">where the pickup exhaust wafted
inside like harvest dust.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Life in the Midwest is like one long goodbye because life is the same</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">everyday, and I didn’t realize you
had left until there was nothing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>but hard work and long days ending with the wind’s silent dirge</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">that sounds like trying not to die
but dies in smaller ways —</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>screen doors that slam shut but don’t shut all the way</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">because the house has settled and the
roof is warping from the sky</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>boiling over with thunder and rain. …</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I write this, I’m actually sitting in the lower Midwest,
and the sky is boiling over with … well, thundersleet. It’s winter, after all. Practically
the same, though. I find the imagery here very accurate and evocative, and it’s
this way on almost every page.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s another glimpse of McCarthy’s specific imagery, from the
title poem, “Scared Violent Like Horses”:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back
then, everyone I ever called a friend held fire in their fists</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">when they talked to me. Their fists
were dingy, grime-covered, and grease-slick</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as if they were made of
horsehair, as if they were untamed and lonely,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>galloping and wind-swollen. We didn’t know how to talk about loss …</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know that in the Emersonian sense, all people kind of
experience the same feelings, no matter where they are: “To believe your own
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for
all men, — that is genius.” So intellectually, I know that there’s nothing
unique about the particular feeling young Midwesterners know — how they ache to
escape, “fire in their fists,” “as if they were made of horsehair” (itching for
more?), “untamed and lonely, / galloping and wind-swollen.” This is a violent
poem, about a boy kicked dead by a horse, but it also punched me in the gut, because
I remember what it was like to be young in the middle of nowhere. McCarthy’s
writing is honest and accurate, and it takes me right back to where I started
it all.</span></div>
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</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-3197200416929061842020-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:002020-01-09T16:12:00.459-08:00Poem366: “The Crossing Over” by Jen Karetnick
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I1ABTX2b9-E/XhfBKt_rEMI/AAAAAAAASDE/FZMzoLKuRG0-fcq9zRXFJ1NTxovscrtMACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Karetnick.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="637" data-original-width="470" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I1ABTX2b9-E/XhfBKt_rEMI/AAAAAAAASDE/FZMzoLKuRG0-fcq9zRXFJ1NTxovscrtMACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Karetnick.png" width="235" /></a></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Crossing Over </i>by Jen Karetnick</span></div>
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<i>The Crossing Over </i>by Jen Karetnick (Split Rock Review,
2019)</div>
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<br /></div>
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I thought today would be a good day to tackle a chapbook,
and I happened to have one at hand: <i>The Crossing Over</i> by Jen Karetnick,
the 2018 chapbook competition winner with Split Rock Review.</div>
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<br /></div>
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While I was seeking a shorter book on a complicated day, the
reality was that the poems in this small collection were not light fare. This
served as a reminder that the universe sometimes gives you exactly what you
need, even if it’s not what you asked for. I spent a few hours today feeling
out these poems, following their lush, vine-covered pathways, and I found that
the work within <i>The Crossing </i>Over was complicated in just the right way.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The start of one poem, “Mobility,” was so arresting to me in
its beauty. It begins, “If my path is that of a note blown through / the reeds
of a bellowing accordion ….” The poem goes on to place of desire and physical sweetness,
but at the outset, I’m struck by what an apt description this is of a life—how
breath follows a circuitous path, then gets one loud, seemingly unending tone.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many of these poems are quite musical, and I notice that she
was once awarded a fascinating prize: the “Piccolo in Your Pocket” Poetry Prize
from the Alaska Flute Studies Center. (She has a lot of prestigious prizes to
her credit as both a poet and a food journalist, and her official bio says that
<i>The Crossing Over</i> is Karetnick’s eighteenth book of poems.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many of Karetnick’s poems have little moments of defining
clarity, like the example offered above. These are often isolated, or maybe
isolatable, moments in a poem with more meaning at play. These are my favorite
moments, though—like in “Yearn,” where she writes, “I am a brief dream the ocean
/ once had. A blip of phosphorescence.” Karetnick recognizes the fleeing nature
of life and of any moment in it, and we need to be reminded of this, time and
time again. We really do.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A favorite moment for me is found in “Little Geese Swimming
in a Sea of Bones,” which starts with utter confidence, declaring, “The sacrum
is an ocarina, four / holes in two columns and a mouthpiece.” The poem
continues,</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
You can put your mouth to the
fissures </div>
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of many thousands of irregular </div>
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parts of rising axial skeletons,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
play ancient tunes through
chambers like cones</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
that resonate through narrow,
entire</div>
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cavities. …</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I admire Karetnick’s bold declarations, her musicality and
her twisting logic. There is a lot packed in to this chapbook, which is a full
meal, rather than an appetizer.</div>
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</style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989462215449497614.post-81063148101667379482020-01-08T13:45:00.000-08:002020-01-08T13:45:27.439-08:00Poem366: "Achilles" and "5 Tankas" by Eileen R. Tabios<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dIdn4g7XBI/XhZNALNtWCI/AAAAAAAASCc/ILpWz8kIvpY2lOLKR2sGlYh80p0ZCphEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/tabios.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dIdn4g7XBI/XhZNALNtWCI/AAAAAAAASCc/ILpWz8kIvpY2lOLKR2sGlYh80p0ZCphEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/tabios.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Achilles</i> and <i>5 Tankas</i> by Eileen R. Tabios</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Achilles</i> and <i>5 Tankas</i> by Eileen R. Tabios (both San Diego, California: Poems-For-All, 2019)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the lovely aspects of writing about poetry
collections in this blog is how I occasionally receive surprises in the mail. I’ve
put out a call for recent books (anything after 2018 is fair game), and some
poets have been kind enough to respond. When a book shows up in my mailbox, it
is always a treat—and having two books show up at once is doubly fun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The books I’m looking at today are tiny ones — really tiny.
Poet Eileen R. Tabios sent me two titles published in 2019 by Poems-For-All, a San
Diego-based press that puts out miniscule books. I just measured the two in
front of me, and they are 1 ¾ inches by 2 inches, which means they would fully
fit in a small child’s palm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What a wonderful concept for a book of poetry. The tagline
on the website says, “Little books of poetry, scattered like seeds,” and I love
the comparison, since lovers of poetry know how some words can take root in us and,
to continue the metaphor, bear fruit forever. There are lines from poems that I
come back to again and again, and I think I’ve been meditating on them my whole
life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The two books Eileen sent included <i>Achilles</i>, which
included only one poem about the poet’s dog (presumably the German shepherd
that is pictured on the book’s first page), and <i>5 Tankas</i>, which
delivered on its promise with five tanka about various subjects.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t like to state the obvious, but I also don’t like to
leave anyone behind, so pardon me while I remind you what a tanka is. (You
wrote one in fourth grade and may have forgotten.) This Japanese form is
ancient, dating from the seventh century, and it contains five lines. Some
people compare it to a sonnet, rhetorically, since its first three lines typically
offer observations in the manner of a haiku and the last two provide a
commentary on that observation. Tabios follows the conventional syllabic
constraints, so that the lines’ syllable counts are 5-7-5-7-7.</span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Achilles” is a poem about putting a dog to sleep, and it
brought back some familiar pain:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We put down our dog—</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We agreed to cross that line</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To end his anguish—</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We did not anticipate</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our pain lasting forever</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have I mentioned a hundred times yet that I’m the Poet
Laureate of the State of Missouri? I’ve reminded my friends repeatedly every
day since I was sworn in. And maybe it’s this official role that has me thinking
about the importance of poetry for the people. I think it’s very good for poems
to be accessible in at least two ways. These little books are lovely, and I’d
love to have a Poems-For-All title of my own to strategically leave behind here,
there, and everywhere.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s also refreshing to read poems
that are accessible the other way, too, and that’s true for these little
poemlets as well. That doesn’t mean they’re not richly rewarding, like the tanka
“April”:</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Ping! We’re alerted!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The space station is flying</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">over our slumped heads—</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eyes opened, we rush outside</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be reminded of stars</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is some depth to this poem. I remember how different
the night sky looked when I was young, and I guess I thought there would always
be plenty of stars. Not so. This poem expresses that worry about technology dominating
and changing the night sky.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If anyone else has any poetry books to share, I’m eager to
read them. </span></div>
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</span><style><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
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@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
-->
</span></style>Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03015043462448739504noreply@blogger.com2