Month: April 2012

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Capable Heart by Ann E. Michael

The Capable Heart The Capable HeartAnn E. Michael; FootHills Publishing 2011WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder 
This quietly powerful collection made me care about horses — and not merely because the title derives from a translation of a passage in my favorite work of philosophy, Zhuangzi. Though I have some friends who are into horses, the horse-riding culture has always been pretty alien to me, and on rare close encounters with the beasts I’ve felt a bit intimidated, to be honest. But the narrator, too, was a stranger to horses, as she explains in “Ways We Are Alike”:

I wanted a way to embrace
my daughter’s fascination.

to overcome my own fear, with carrots,
with a lead rope and soft brush.

I touched the withers and the
warm, broad chest;

I held the lead. Let pulsing lips
explore my hands, my jacket.

Horse and author go on to explore each other, in this poem and as the cycle progresses. Michael ponders the attraction that girls and women have toward horses:

Women who have re-centered their lives owing, in part, to horses,
are shy of nothing, strong as horses…
(“Horsewomen”)

She also examines the interplay between domestication or domesticity and rebellion, as in “Domestic Mutinies”:

Sometimes my outrage gallops
hard inside my ribs
and I feel like Chuang Tzu’s
outlaw horses: domesticated, enslaved,
& utterly capable, in their hearts.

“Dancing Horses” come into their own in a snowstorm:

Now
manes are streaming, necks arched,
an unrestrained blizzard
in the corral where they
toss off the long-bred bit
that is obedience.

Sublimating domesticity,
the screaming stallion wind:
their unbroken past.

In “Boss Mare,” a woman named Rosie embodies the strong individualism of a lead horse.

I can just see her cribbing
her stall, bossing the other mares around: stay back,
do things my way.

Not that the other horses mind. She wields the lead ropes,
she calls at the corral gate and most of them come running—
she’s boss mare.

Is it a sign of the author’s own rebellious streak that she never writes the most obvious poem: about riding a horse herself? The rider is always the daughter, and though sometimes the author or narrator takes the place of the horse, as in “Mare’s Nest” —

Notes and
photos, music, a belt
or rumpled jeans, slippers
slipped off, on, entropy
maybe. Lie in straw, back
toward the stall door. Sniff,
huff, wicker, snore.

— other times, as in “The Indoor Ring,” her gaze shifts away from horses, and she turns to watch swallows diving instead, or — in “Watching a Child Ride Horseback Through Snow” — gets distracted by a preening blue jay and loses sight of horse and rider. The domesticity-vs.-rebellion theme is developed strongly enough that a couple of poems, “Housekeeping” and “Anger Good As Hope,” avoid mentioning horses altogether. But even then, the reader feels the warm breath of the horse and hears it nicker.

This is, above all, a wise book — even if the author would probably disavow any personal store of wisdom, and attribute what lessons she’s gleaned to the horses themselves. As in Zhuangzi, they are teachers by dint of the purity of their natures and their connection to the earth over which they fly, but as such they are not to be taken too seriously. “Evolution of the Horse” ends on a pun; “Stray Horses” are capable of “astonishing vulgarity” and are “pitiable, oafish, indelible as my own failures”; and the “big quarterhorse” in the closing poem, “Riding-School Zendo,” mimes a Zen master with his horsehair whisk.

The stories we tell about horses can never encompass the full strangeness of their being, of course, as poems such as “Putting Down the Mare” and “The Difficult Birth” remind us. And this too is a source of wisdom for those who pay attention as well as Michael does:

We survive drought. Or we do not.
The paint goes back to her grazing,
unencumbered by memory. Perhaps,
next May, I will tell a different story.
Perhaps not.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

O orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone—

“Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

O orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone—
But I know this: the little stone survives the flame of days,
keeps whole its chiseled heart. Don’t weep from sorrow anymore—
The days are longer, and the evenings grow more beautiful.
O orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone
that it might arc across the filmy water better than
a bridge. Don’t ask about the draught that you were made to drink:
new wine or bitter herbs, return them now to earth and slake
your thirst instead on what is clear. That light, that love. Be still,
o orange swirling flame of days. So little is a stone.

~ for Jennifer Patricia A. Cariño

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Dickens today

Alison Brackenbury:

I heard a comment on the radio that very little survives of Dickens’ London. Statistically, I am sure that this is true. But I was once walking South of the Thames when I passed under a wet, black bridge and was suddenly struck by a panicked sense of evil. I almost ran out into the daylight. By a set of dripping steps, I saw a plaque. Here, in ‘Oliver Twist’, Dickens set the murder of Nancy, by Bill Sykes. So some of Dickens’ places do remain.

Dickens’ descriptions of London are, of course, not photographs, but selections, from Dickens’ roving eye. What would Dickens see today? He would see Canary Wharf, but he would also see the immigrant workers with no papers, sleeping in the streets behind Victoria Coach Station. I do not think he would be impressed – perhaps appalled – but still, fascinated. And blogs? He would have had six of them.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Dark Things by Novica Tadić (translated by Charles Simic)

Dark Things Dark ThingsNovica Tadić; BOA Editions, Ltd. 2009WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder 
4012 A.D. An archaeologist from Alpha Centauri who specializes in the Late Anthropocene has uncovered a strange text. Dark Things, it’s called — the work of a Serbian poet and a Serbian-American translator. She knows little of the wars and genocides that convulsed Serbia in this period, and only fragments of 20th-century poetry have survived — mostly copies of A Coney Island of the Mind, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Jewel Kilcher’s A Night Without Armor — so she is not sure how to classify the writings in this miraculously well-preserved text. But based on existing knowledge, she and her colleagues generate several competing theories about its origin and purpose:

1. It’s the collected sayings of a Zen or Sufi teacher. The combination of standard syntax, non-specialist language and recondite, gnomic or hermetic meanings strongly suggest utterances intended for an audience of initiates to some religious mystery. How else are we to understand lines such as:

Poor us, we are all kings
when we gaze at the starry sky.
(“Night Passes”)

The rabbit is in the pot, the broom is behind the door.
(“While You Count The Stars”)

Strangers came and took my sheepskin coat.
Now, what will I cover myself with? Only with prayers
and with the light, trembling wings of a moth.
(“Sheepskin Coat”)

Under his coat, next to his ribs,
the collected work of some classic would fit.

Without a friend or acquaintance,
alone like a bone in a soup plate…
(“Book Thief”)

2. These are clearly lyrics for an otherwise unknown death metal band named Novica Tadić, who had an old man as a mascot. Consider:

I’m a cross of human flesh
on which nothingness is crucified.
(“Soldier’s Song”)

You are all-powerful, you are a giant.
No mother gave you birth.

Every street is too narrow for you.

You pull back your shadows, burn holes with your eyes.

Everyone gets out of your way.
(“You Are Mighty”)

We’ll drink each other’s blood
as we have always done
and won’t dream of it anymore.
(“Someone Whispered to Me in a Dream”)

Time races on, bearing you along
toward your last
wretched breath.
(“Ten Fingers”)

3. It’s a reporter’s notebook from the global conflict between reason and irrationality, which eventually spawned the Endless War:

an ocean of hatred splashes over me
every day
(“Hatred”)

Dark things open my eyes,
raise my hand, knot my fingers.

They are close and far away,
in a safe hideaway
beyond nine hills.
(“Dark Things”)

Out of some old thing
(a hideous ruin of a building)
people peek outside

They slap their heads,
chatter, stick their tongues out

Twist their mouths
in every direction
(“Out of Some Old Thing”)

4. These are Wikileaked communiqués from the Serbian ambassador to an unnamed superpower, possibly Hades.

Tonight he shows me
his wire-glass-and-flower hairdo
double-edged lips
five-pointed tongue

Ah he unbuttons
his silk vest
ah, even so, he has a body—
and a gold watch
(“No One”)

We don’t know what he did,
where he went, what he suffered.
He stares at us crossly,
answers to the name of Rat.
(“The Seventh Brother”)

He needs to be an infamous and marked man—
it makes no difference for what reason.
(“He Needs”)

A bird started to sing
on a clear day
over the gallows

[…]

Wind lifted the ashes
and spread them
over other ashes
(“A Bird Started to Sing”)

A straitjacket
is being woven
and cut to measure
on you.
(“Straightjacket”)

5. This is a 20th-century version of a much older text, a lost gospel attributed to the risen Lazarus.

On a low chair, the book
opened by itself.
A gust of air blew—
it was the Lord’s breath.
(“Book, Dream”)

May the earth be easy on him,
since it was only today that we noticed
he was alive.
(“About the Dead, Briefly”)

it’s not easy for the dead to carry water
oh black she-goats black goatherd
oh Lazarus

you need to put your life in order Lazarus
make it clean as death
oh sun
oh you risen from the dead
(“Whisk Broom 50”)

I wandered everywhere
like a God’s fool.
Whatever I acquired—I lost.
what I gave life to—died.
(“Stepmother”)

Go into town and buy a spade
as if intending to turn over a garden.

Instead, find your humble place
in the village graveyard,
swing high and dig yourself a grave.

Set it up, decorate it, write on it.

Find your humble place
in a world gone mad.
(“Spade”)

6. Finally, and most convincingly of all, a scholar of 20th-century children’s literature suggested that this was a children’s book that had grown up and gone wrong, after an abusive childhood.

Again that dangerous confusion
of things and people.
I see an ashtray next to a dozing armchair
and say it’s a baby-ashtray.
In the pantry: bottles-maidens.
[…]
In the tavern I spoke with a human cash register.
(“Again That”)

Midnight lady
covered with nets and shining scales
walks down the hallway
beating a drum full of mice
(“Midnight Lady”)

Old shoes in the rain
next to a dumpster
wait for the one who will pass this way

[…]

Carrying the shoes in his hand,
he’ll find my room and bed
and will lie down in it and then vanish
just as my dream about him comes to a close.
(“Old Shoes”)

I found an empty cardboard box
and sat down in it

My mad old sweetie
will pass this way and buy me
(“In Front of a Supermarket”)

Hey, little marsh, reed, cattail and water lily.
flies flies the gray crow.
[…]
here, there, there’s no one in the rotted boat.
[…]
let’s set out for the open waters.
let’s turn and lie on our backs forever.
(“Big Mud”)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

New wine or bitter herbs?

the cassandra pages:

His left eye was completely gone. The skin around his right eye hung in deep folds beneath it, the lower eyelid stretched and turned outward, weeping, a dark red color– the same deep red as the stone we had just bought. Out of that horrible socket, though, his eye slowly focused on my face as I held onto it with my own gaze. Bonjour, Monsieur, comment ça va, I said softly, and watched the light in his eye brighten ever so slightly. It was as if he — the man inside this ravaged body — were swimming up from a great depth, having almost forgotten how. We looked at each other, and something like a smile formed on his face. Merci, he said. Merci.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt by Karen J. Weyant

Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt Wearing Heels in the Rust BeltKaren J. Weyant; Main Street Rag Publishing Company 2012WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder 
Is there such a thing as a coming-of-age poetry chapbook? This is that and more. Although the narrator appears to change from poem to poem, she is always female, rural or small-town working-class in the Rust Belt. The collection won Main Street Rag’s 2011 chapbook contest, and I can see why: the poems are richly evocative, and mingle lyricism and gritty realism in just the right proportions.

I grew up in the Rust Belt myself, and Weyant’s portrayals ring true to me. I was reminded a bit of Jeff Walt’s Soot, thought I think Weyant’s characters are a bit less hopeless, a bit more fully realized. This is also a more ambitious collection: Weyant sets out to define a Rust Belt aesthetic in the opening poem, “Ways of Writing Rust,” introducing themes and imagery that will re-occur throughout. It begins:

Use a red pen. Push October’s full moon through every line.
Scribble down an old barn and a children’s game of tag

that ends with a nail’s scratch and tetanus shot.
Remember to cross all your t’s.

Save the graffiti, the sharp letters, the language,
even if you are not sure if the words are a Bible verse

or lyrics from an old rock-n-roll song.
Scrawl down corner bars and closed stores.

This is one of three poems in the hortatory mode, incidentally, which may explain why I liked it so much. The others are “How to Be a Rust Belt Feminist” and “Advice For All the Rust Belt Cassandras” — the closing poem. Most of the other poems are first-person narratives, almost all of them just about a page long. The almost-title poem, “How We Learned to Wear Heels in the Rust Belt,” actually brought a tear to my eye, I’m not sure why — I guess because the determination simultaneously to learn toughness and cultivate traditional femininity seems so desperate and doomed.

Our world a catwalk, we practiced balancing on construction planks,
railroad ties, backporch banisters. […]

We swaggered our thin hips and thighs,
every strut full of defiant assurance.

But if conformity to social norms seems a stretch, that’s because in other poems girls question religious orthodoxy, collect bees and bones, throw stones at porn shop signs, carry knives for protection, and are troubled by the shunning of the children of scab workers:

I learned grownups knew how to punch,
how to kick, how to spit, how to yell
bad names, like the boys at recess
who threw rocks and sticks at Danny Pontzer
calling him Scab Spawn. I learned
the power of silence, like the way the girls
shunned Stacey Mitchell at recess.
(“Sacrificing Scabs for the Union Gods”)

The poems have their share of natural imagery, too, though much of it’s fairly bleak: a shrike’s victims found during a dry spell impaled on barbed wire and thistle, gypsy moth caterpillars defoliating oak trees on Bear Mountain, and an off-beat portrayal of a gang of dead-animal enthusiasts in “Roadkill Girls”:

For every antler or loose feather, we found
groundhog teeth, a set of claws, soft wisps
of a rabbit’s tail. Sometimes, we grew brave,
flicking maggots from fresh kill, the dull thud
of soft bodies hitting tree bark reminding us
of June bugs hurling against back doors
and bedroom windows. […]
With every bone, we planned our new world,
starting with a single rib from a raccoon.

And I suppose that quote, which includes the closing lines of the poem, serves as well as any to showcase the subtlety of Weyant’s political stance. Whatever I might’ve thought I was going to get with a title like “Roadkill Girls,” this was something altogether more surprising — and disturbing. Starkly realistic as the poems in this collection may be, this is not old-school social realism with the characters flattened to conform to some ideological agenda. Instead, there’s a generous and imaginative humanism at work.

By the end, the lives and thoughts of these working-class girls and women seem not only compelling but admirable and worthy of emulation. In a literary tradition dominated until quite recently by men of privilege, and still largely the province of the middle class, such lives are nearly invisible. So I’m really glad that Karen Weyant has put together such a strong collection, and I hope there are many more to come.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Retreat

(another sweetelle)

…entering the ancient city,
descending into another world.
~ Robbi Nester, “Uttananasana”

When things get bad, remind yourself, there is another world.
The phone rings, startling you in response; you knock the coffee
over, and there’s a long spill on your desk. Restrain yourself—
the only casualties: paper and a foam-backed mousepad.
When things get bad, remind yourself, there is another world.
The sky’s cerulean: impeccable behind the windows.
Quiet your jangle of nerves, breathe deep, touch index finger
to thumb and make the shape of petals. Behind each surface
is another layer, a deeper sleeve: go there, retreat.
When things get bad, remind yourself, there is another world.

 

In response to Balance by Robbi Nester.