Since 1996
April 2015 EXEMPLARS
Poetry Reviews
By Grace Cavalieri
*********************************
The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield. Alfred.A. Knopf. 112 pages.
Jane is a beholder of things, ordinary things; she writes of magicians, eyes,
handkerchiefs,
mushrooms—then from the tensile of the real world emerges a deeper molecular
structure—
complexity, animated ideas, a fine memory, a spiritual slant. Wisdom and
experience are good
qualities but to be of full import they have to come to us from clear language.
Jane illuminates
the surface of this life we share on earth with her illusion, philosophy, and
imagination. Then
life is very much changed. She does this with carefully liberated language, and
a gentle hand.
Restraint and elegance mark her line lengths; her phrases are balanced. She
knows the value of
everything she sees so she knows how valuably they must be offered. She makes us
think
poetry is the last thing left that’s incorruptible. And by the way, there’s
nothing wrong with
reading Beauty for pure pleasure.
ANATOMY AND MAKING
In Chinese painting, there are flowers with bones,
flowers that are boneless.
Also in trees, men, mountains, horses, and houses.
A calcium not subject
but angle
the brush is held by, minerals into.
Fox hairs are soft,
yet fox bones and fox teeth are in them.
Dragon veins, the space between mountains is called.
Lu Ch’ai wrote, “When painting a rock, paint all three of its faces.”
I think of the two Greek masks, one laughing, one weeping,
And then of the third he would have found missing—
mask-face of wonder? of anger? of rigor?
a child’s look before sleep?
Lu wrote,
“There is only one thing to be said here: rocks painted fully are living.”
And then, of painting people,
“Hands slipped into sleeves are warm, no feeling of coldness.”
___________________
The White Spider in My Hand by Sonja James. New Academia/Scarith Press.
76pages.
The child is in the woman and so innocent that she could be writing from the
Garden of Eden—
everything new and wondrous— held tangible in the hand. As we grow, instincts
don’t go away.
Sonja James trusts this, turning them to images that spark the corners of the
mind. It’s “magic
realism,” or realism made magic through the glory of language. She writes as if
she’s dreaming
in a sea of silence 100 miles away and then suddenly! she pops up at your
kitchen table.
Mystical and immediate, both, she sees everything as it is in the moment and so
do we. James
makes leaps but there are no parts lost in the flight. A joyful and interesting
poet and one to
watch.
___________________
Never Ask a Cloud to Marry You
Shelter the dreamers
Jack Spicer
All day the salamander quivers beneath the mossy log
though because no one sees it or feels it,
you say I am making it up
& I say, “No, heaven is closer than that.”
This morning I touched the salamander twice
& it quivered then
so why wouldn’t it quiver
when I put it back where it belongs,
in hiding, beneath a mossy log?
I’m sure the salamander is quivering right now
& I’m not making it up though I am prone
to invent a thing or two, especially when it rains.
However, when the sun is shining,
it’s a different story.
That’s when I like to ask questions any idiot could answer.
Where is Plato?
What in the world happened to Jesus Christ?
A hundred years from now,
will anyone be reading Habermas?
How many characters are there in Middlemarch?
Did Emily Dickinson ever meat Walt Whitman?
You get the picture.
I know you do.
Just like I know it will make you happy
to discover that tonight I shall spare the life
of a beetle as it crosses the sidewalk in front of me
& if fireflies show off their fluorescent abdomens
at the same moment, so much the better.
_______________
Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust, winner 2015 “53 Poetry Press Award.” Press
53. 114 pages.
These sonnets trace the journey of a Pilgrim. Pilgrims as we know roam the earth
as wanderers,
but more importantly they’re on a quest. We could see them, then, as believers;
and to be “a
believer” means life must be examined to see what is of value to worship. In
these commanding
sonnets Foust takes her protagonist/persona from poverty in Altoona to the false
gold of Marin
County. The Pilgrim uses biographical detail to open fields of discussion about
excess, greed,
and a land without higher values. Foust proves the idea that philosophers see
clearly what is
and a poet sees what is and what could be. There’s a luminous quality to
perfectly ordered
sonnets, especially as they house smart stylish observations. Foust is learned,
and witty, and so
the Pilgrim is someone we come to love with her present day jargon, classical
ideas, and a CNN
precision in reporting. This book proves that the record of humankind will be
found in poetry.
She allows a comment on our culture with its gluttony and deprivations. It’s
funny and
compelling. It aches with truth.
Family Grammar
1. Diction
Oh what’s the use in tinkering, dialing
in each word, memory for desire
so the reader can share the feeling
without feeling lectured? Does the fire
care what phrase names its fierce thirst
or on which beat I break the line?
What metaphor can loosen the vise
closing the actual throat—not just mine,
but hers from an actual tumor—
Mom’s face under her sad, festive turban
while she chose the clothes and shoes
to wear for her cremation? There’s no use
here for words, the vaunted largesse
of English, or any language. Not for this.
________________
Hive-Mind by Suzette Bishop. Stockport Flats. 79 pages.
A whole book about bees so highly imagined—all the many nouns and verbs
attributed to bees
make up literary content. But bees inspire –and tucked within the economics,
history, ecology
and folklore is imbedded a family’s travail with its layers of disappointments
and rejuvenations.
In poem numbered “lV Best Wishes” a two page poem (beautifully designed) has
telegrammed
headlines : U.S. officials concerned about the economic ramifications of bees
dying off and
then, “…. My mother doesn’t kill my sister and me; she doesn’t kill herself. She
doesn’t get/ a
bus ticket and take us back to New York City, where she was from, The scenarios
I /wonder
about ,now. She goes away for a short while, a few weeks, perhaps a month, / my
father is
home more.” Then a non sequitur: “I have had your dear letters in my hands for
some weeks,
and I cannot describe the pleasure it gives /me to receive such lovely long
letters.” The page is
then laced with headlines of bee problems before we return to the story, “…And
she returns,
But not healed. She gets my sister and me to school, ballet, / handing us our
lunches as we
leave…” This is heart tearing humanity in contrast with a massive bee die-off.
These two pages
contain emotional trauma, disassociated responses, and bee news. Every page has
a different
order of design. The factoids are in bold type – and in between—in varying
fonts, an array of
chilling life detail. All this is so original it’s a miracle it got published.
Vanishing Hum
You are the dreaming man asleep
in a brown and purple haze,
you are an oboe asleep.
Purple mist rising off the mountains
and you are here, sleeping,
your dreams lifting like mist
from a mountain.
What are you hearing?
Dreaming man, man asleep near his oboe,
are you dreaming of it whole again?
Making reedy sounds like bees evaporating?
------------------------
Mr. West by Sarah Blake. Wesleyan. 106 Pages.
Blake writes a sweet oration about a pop star, using social media, biography,
news sources, TV
and a pharmacy of gossip to memorialize Kanye West. Poetry may make him better
than he is -
--before we knew him as through sound bites and tabloid headlines. Along with
Kanye’s
thoughts, fears and triumphs are Blake’s thoughts fears etc. about her ongoing
pregnancy
during poetry-making. I like the way she gives us her memories as well as
West’s, sharing this
royal family album fraught with bright lights and dark thoughts. This is not,
however, People
Magazine. The subject is pop culture as baseline but there’s a true spirit
behind its author, the
singer/songwriter, and the fetus whose bones shine through the story.
Who is worthy of biography? I love that Sarah Blake draws no line between what
is divine light
and what scintillates the world. You could cut your finger on these poems; so
awakened,
intimate dramas, little chamber plays from the unlikely intimacy of news
clippings and “the
cloud.” We all reach for heroes but Blake instead epitomizes contemporary
obsessions with
West as her centerfold. It takes a daring literary will to create literature.
Blake relentlessly
imagines and adorns a man she never met and makes him “lived and felt.” This is
a good
natured book with an extraordinary range of writing from a charged reactor about
a (made)
personal relationship. I’ll bet it’s the most faith, loyalty and love West will
ever know in this
fantasy tribute to creativity—his life and Blake’s own.
MYTHIC
The world’s on the back of a turtle, on the back of a turtle, on the back
of a turtle,
on the back of Kanye.
Eve gave Kanye the apple—after Kanye was formed of dust from the
Ground.
Kanye was raised by a nymph and not eaten by his Titan father.
With a giant axe, Kanye separated the murky Yin and clear Yang.
Kanye once grew from the ocean and reached the clouds in the sky.
And Kanye almost died in a car accident,
so he became a star.
__________________
Favorite Bedtime Stories by John M. Fitzgerald. Salmon Poetry (Ireland.) 77
pages.
There’s definitely a lilt to the Irish/American poet and more a European diction
than an
American accent. This is seen is by word choice and tone, velocity of syllables
within the line
and his selection of subjects. We don’t know what this poet eats for breakfast
or the
neighborhood he lives in. He’s not interested in actual everydayness He places
great
importance on an aerial view of life with an almost biblical seriousness. His
poetic issues
include relationships, poets and poetry, the muse, chess (a handsome set of
poems,) ghosts,
God and fairy tales. Fitzgerald is what he claims he is—a storyteller looking at
human behavior
from a high place. His careful stanzas, precise rhythm are products of a man
schooled in the
kind of literature that changed Irish and American cultures to a high form. In a
way he’s an
activist determined to preserve what’s best in speech to keep it alive.
Devolution
Ceaselessly flick me with light.
I buzz ‘round in circles a one-winged fly,
will waylaid by sheer brute strength,
free to believe as I’m told or be beaten.
I remember all this when I hear the alarm,
and I’m so hung over yet have to wake.
I cannot stand that race again
but I am the meat to be eaten this day.
Alert, I take to trees
where serpents sing children lullabies.
Mothers decode their forbidden language;
Hush, the snake is on the prowl.
I stake out my limb and begin to nod
when my strings get jerked with their fear of falling.
A reflex from leftover monkeys, crushed,
at the end of a dream about flying away.
________________
The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie. Graywolf. 64 pages.
Jamie is a nature writer making the natural world permanent in spite of its
seasons and flights.
As with all such observers the landscape is about who is watching. In essence,
then, the hawk,
the cliff and the deer are really about self creation in their names. The
currency in writing is the
translation of subject and form to a textual spirit. The poem becomes larger
than the writer and
the topic. Her timing is perfect and her language makes new frontiers from
common content.
“The Gather’ is a 6-page poem about men at work “knocking their tea back” on
shore awhile to
clip “lamb’s testicles.” The poet shows no judgment in the poem but an honest
look and then
the men are off on a boat, ”...they roared off at top speed, throwing us a grand
wave.” The
straight reportage here does more to evoke compassion for the animals than any
editorial
insertion could. The poet is designated to take care of man and creature alike
and Jamie does
this. She writes as custodian to the animals that she sees in her country. As a
bonus there are a
few poems for us in Scottish dialect.
ROSES
for M D
This is the moment the roses
cascade over backstreet walls,
throng the public parks –
their cream or scrunched pinks
unfolding now to demonstrate
unacknowledged thought.
The world is ours too! they brave,
careless of tomorrow
and wholly without leadership
for who’d mount a soap-box
on the rose-behalf?
‘I haggle for my little
portion of happiness,’
says each flower, equal, in the scented mass.
_________________
Honest Engine by Kyle Dargan. The Univ. of Georgia Press. 77 pages.
The sounds of History are in this book. Dargan takes on culture’s standards with
racial themes
in a way that you almost miss his idealism—but it’s there. These poems are a
touchstone for
future readers about important issues— small public debates –an awareness of
society’s
demise. There are two separate hearts here: One; a criticism of our present
state of affairs –a
country struggling with oppositions—and two; a love for a country he cannot deny
is his.
Dargan must believe art can change people as he shows first what is good and
then what
disappointment can come from the lack of it. It’s a form of social action we can
call the Textual
Factor in intellectual leadership—or writing as a moral force. The poet knows
what’s at stake
and we get that in Dargan’s measured emotion, and his careful word. There are
terrific lines in
each poem, stirring from spiritual sources and sadness spawned from anger.
Most of his poems are the same length 1 ½ pages – showing an energy pattern and
a significant
style. Because the poem is a place for ideas, the obligation of the poet is to
be thoughtful first,
then use sonics, rhythms and images to drive the thought. Dargan’s process—known
interests,
and sure hand— change social calculations to literary art.
He also gets the Exemplar gold star of the month for his attitudes about women.
The last stanza from the poem CORMAC McCARTHY AS TRANSLATION:
Everywhere—or the need to be
everywhere—has no middle
And yes, planet America requires
saving. Maybe that is why our stories
all begin with the world almost ending
here. That keeps us up at night, shatters
our sleep—which Xiao Fan can’t grasp
because he was never taught
our Pottery Barn rule: That if you’ve saved it,
then you’ve broken it. Then it’s yours.
____________
The Uppity Blind Girl Poems by Kathi Wolfe. Winner of the Stonewall/Brickhouse
Award. Stonewall/Brickhouse books. 36 pages.
We all know Kathi Wolfe from her articles in The Blade newspaper and Scene4
Magazine. She’s
the clarion voice of reason, social justice while peppering and salting us with
wit, and just the
right amount of piss & vinegar. Kathi is the leader of the pack, for sure, but
if you Really want a
zenith moment, invite Uppity Blind Girl into your life. She’ll drink your
margaritas, steal your
feather boa, and fall on top of your spouse, but it’s all O.K. because there‘s
no one you’d rather
be with. Kathi Wolfe has broken the boundaries with a hilarious alter ego who
may just change
the world to the good. Wolfe’s persona stars in life’s theatrical revue
playfully, and
energetically. And of the evil people Uppity knows? Well, I’d imagine her
saying, Let me write
them a satire. And I’ll laugh them to death.
Pulp Fiction
All those lesbians you pal around with will lead into a blind alley, her
grandmother told Uppity. For the love of Sappho, Uppity thought, slipping on her
silver pumps, take me there! Bring me to this dyke-infested place where
Sapphic ghost kiss blindly in devil-encrusted glitz. Where forbidden fruit
ripens. Let me caress the shattered stone. My cane, a dagger, will slash the
heart of my ex who left me standing alone on the street after the midnight show
of Wait Until Dark. In a blind passion, my hands will stalk the crumbling wall!
Looking for requited love. Like a sightless idiot, believing it can be found.
___________________
Deflection by Roberta Beary. Accents Publishing 25 pages
Roberta is the mistress of the short form poem and known for her haiku. In
Deflection she
extends her reach with some of the most searingly truthful work I’ve seen this
year. We can
take a lesson here. Courage and truth in perfect line lengths that expand and
compress so the
poem make a breathing thing, and yet can take our breath. When I’m afraid to say
what I have
to say, I’ll pick up this book and remember what keeps poetry alive.
IRISH TWINS
We share an attic room.
In the corner in an old double bed
that smells and sags on one side. My side.
Late at night I hear my heart beat. Loud.
So loud he will hear it. He will think my heart
is calling him up the attic stairs.
His footsteps are heavy.
He smells of old spice
and cherry tobacco.
My eyes shut tight.
I know he is there.
I feel the weight.
Never on my side.
Always on the side she sleeps.
When the bedsprings sing their sad song
I fly away. Up to the ceiling. My sister is already there.
Together we hold hands. Looking down we see our bodies.
We are not moving. We are as still as the dead.
attic rain
the backyard swing
off-kilter
__________________
Through a Garden Gate, poems by Charlotte Mandel/ photographs by Vincent
Covello. David Roberts Books. 57 pages.
This is a shared experience of visuals and poetry. The cultural terrain is
nature’s beauty and the
interpretation is spacious and calm. Two artists collaborate to interpret the
world with a
spectrum of views and poetic commentary. Reading this book is to enter a
sanctuary of
meditation, for it’s twice blessed with combined interests of what is natural
and what is man
created.
Japanese Fountain
Water trickles from bamboo
disappears
into a bed of raked gravel
Underfoot soft paths
Pine needles
wood chips
mosses
Musical sound
continues
_________________
Vessel by Parneshia Jones. Milkweed Editions. 97 pages.
I never thought I’d use the word “heartfelt” in a review. I don’t want to be
confronted by the
Academy’s Poetry Police. But Parneshia Jones lets us enter her youth and life so
willingly , we
want to find and meet this poet we suddenly care about. Not all the times spoken
here are easy
or magical; they are, virtually, a reality with governable language and pleasure
not always
simple to come by. Black life is drawn “truly” with a membrane of honor between
the words. If
a poet does not know herself, who can know her? Jones does know who she is.
She’s lived in
the sun and the rain. There’s little wonder that she holds the Gwendolyn Brooks
Poetry Award
and the Margaret Walker Short Story Award. And even though I’m Italian from
Trenton, there’s
universality here. I can definitely relate to the oversized speakers in the
basement of the YMCA.
LEGACY
for Evanston
We came from histories,
planted centennial stories along freshwater coasts.
An earthly heaven of emerald lagoons
and godly oaks shadow the chiseled
trails of our arrival.
We are the northern folktales.
Copper-back ancestors, with cotton-tipped,
woodcutter hands—
the heirlooms that built this landscape of jubilant
churches and miniature châteaus.
A harvest of migrating hearts
tell our way back when.
We are porch stories, buttermilk aprons,
Lovers of Sundays and sailboats.
Land of dew-winged cardinals with chandelier
forests preserves our pioneers and preachers.
We are the long grass and anxious wind,
the generations, speaking softly, between
the lines of history.
____________
The Arranged Marriage by Jehanne Dubrow. Univ. of New Mexico Press. 55
pages.
Violence and fear are subtexts in a set of prose poems interweaving plots with a
nighttime
intruder, an arranged marriage, and a Mother/Daughter relationship. These
elegantly wrought
poems are small scenes from an ill-suited marriage, plus other
dominations/submissions. The
recurring image of a knife conveys danger through several poems with its
metaphor/threat of
the cut, the split, and the actual tear of flesh.
These strong mysterious episodes take on the myth of marriage in opposition to
its romantic
celebration, serious commitment and repertoire of love. It’s a woman’s life
changing through
flashes of emotional brutality, and just plain wrong-pairing. The admirable part
is the dignity
that persists; but make no mistake, the frame of reference is mistreatment.
Reconciliations
emerge from Dubrow’s expert sensory abilities—the tropical scents and tastes,
lush
descriptions and her poetic determination to draw exact scenes. The
mother/daughter
relationship threaded through the story gives us faith in the future.
Although these are prose poems, luckily the lyricism in the line registers
rhythm and motion.
This is bold writing with visionary power and strong language. It’s like a
detective story with
heightened moments sorting things out. “Detecting” means finding the truth in a
situation. I
couldn’t stop reading it.
Café con leche
It’s ten thirty at night. My mother leans across
the stove to check the boil on the milk, whisk in
her left hand, a jar of Folgers in her right. Her
mouth purses in what looks like a kiss but is
only a little breath to stop the liquid from forming
a skin. We’ve been standing in the kitchen,
talking about marriage, not wanting to sit or fall
asleep. So she uses the recipe she learned as
a little girl. Sometimes, she says, what’s
sweetest and most flavorful comes from the
fake stuff. I watch her dissolve brown crystals in
the pot. It’s true. The coffee tastes like coffee.
With my eyes closed, I can’t tell the difference,
which has always been the problem for women
in my family—the way so many of us would
rather drink something instant, that bitterness
can be hidden with enough spoonfuls of sugar,
or how good it feels to burn our fingers on a
chipped ceramic cup.
________
Itself by Rae Armantrout. Wesleyan Univ. Press. 97 pages.
Now that Armantrout has become a classic, who’s going to be Rae Armantrout? We
finally vibe
with her percussive words and sharp philosophical jabs. She’s biographically not
to be seen but
somehow we feel she’s like us and not “other.” This could be the fact that her
poems are
devoid of age, race, gender, and personal affect, allowing her to blend into
whomever and
whatever we are. Armantrout’s short phrases are restraining orders that embody
very large
ideas and there’s a trick to her melody—it seems to suit everyone’s dance step.
She
demonstrates that the less it is detailed, the more it’s global. Her poems have
based their
literary fortunes on this and it paid off. I, for one, believe she becomes more
relevant with each
reading.
Here is a rare “personal” poem:
FRIENDS
1.
Peace be upon
the transparent maroon curtains
and the chesty air-conditioning unit
spilling yellow foam from between its ribs,
side-swiped by sun
so that shadows
of the window bars around it
in the shape of two
Valentine’s Day hearts,
one perched upside down
on top of its mate,
can grow sharp.
2.
In the next seat
a dentist tells her friend
she is reading Rent Boy to the Stars
and a book on reincarnation.
3.
I’m all used up,”
I tell myself,
“all gone”
Like that was some new
kind of luxury—
one I could afford!
Grace Cavalieri is the producer/host of “The Poet and the Poem from the Library
of Congress.”
Her latest books (2014) are The Mandate of Heaven and The Man Who Got Away.
All reprinted from the Washington Independent Review of Books.