THE DARK TAKES AIM
by Julie Suk
Autumn House Press, 2003
ISBN 0-9669419-8-5
24.95 Hardback Only
Readers of Julie Suk’s poetry are aware of her devotion to craft. She never writes badly or clumsily. Such an accomplishment is, in itself, an extraordinary achievement. Almost every poem within her new collection, The Dark Takes Aim, displays her skill as a technician.
In the poem “From Ruin” she writes about two lovers and the promise of grains hanging on, / feeding them for a time, / their bodies close as flesh can get, / the heart, that bloody artifact, / more difficult to find.
At times, Suk writes like a homegrown symbolist, with poems based more on dream imagery and on association than on any sort of traditional narrative. Other times, her poems are brutally frank and devastatingly literal.
In the very personal “Divorce” she compares the dissolution of a marriage with the aftermath of a tornado. Suk ends the poem with a woman who, sobs / plucking at this this / and this remnant. With the surprising repetition of “this” Suk shows her ability to delight readers through the variation of a common word.
For readers schooled on the bald, flat poetics of writers like Charles Bukowski, Suk might be considered a difficult poet. She demands that her readers have some familiarity with both classical art and history. However, Suk rewards her readers with allusions that are interwoven within the fabric of her lines.
In some ways, Suk, who lives in Charlotte, NC, is reminiscent of another southern poet, the sometimes forgotten Conrad Aiken, in that everything she touches turns to poetry. With subjects that range from travels across Europe, to marriage, illness and children, Suk is intent on turning both the mundane and the extraordinary into poetry. Much more often than not, she is successful.
In “Taking Back The Given” she illustrates the ways in which the personal is universal. The poem begins as a meditation on forgiveness, but changes as the speaker in the poem realizes that what she seeks is not forgiveness, but instead the chance to revise / the roles I failed, / the never ending chance / to play the story myself.
One of the most remarkable qualities of this collection is in the number of fine love poems it contains. Few older poets (Suk is in her seventies) write about love with such eroticism. In “Open To Change” she discusses the physical aspects of late love. In it, she writes of a body awakened / from its long fast.
Readers of Suk’s poetry have no need to worry about any deep hunger not being satisfied. What Suk offers, in this wonderful new collection, is a varied and abundant feast.Mike James
A NORMAL DAY AMAZES US
by David Chorlton
Kings Estate Press, 2003, 98 pgs
ISBN 1-888832-19-3, PoetryDavid Chorlton takes us on a compelling journey in his collection of poems and illustrations called A Normal Day Amazes Us, a journey through both a physical landscape and time itself. The poems’ order roughly mirrors Chorlton’s life: his childhood in Manchester, England, his travels in Europe and eventual move to Austria and from there his relocation to, of all places, Phoenix, Arizona.
His travels instilled in him an interest in the shifting cultures at borders, an interest that filters through his poetry with his portrayals of foreigners and foreign lands. This preoccupation is clearly evident in many of his titles like “After the Border” or “Aliens” but also seeps into a poem like “Phoenix Weather” where We regard the rain// as a foreigner/ who entered the country/ without documents/ ready to work the dry earth. And when he takes on the subject head-on as in “Visitors” we can feel the dislocation of people crossing lines into unfamiliar territory: We walk/ on borrowed streets,// sleep in rented beds,/ and walk in the sun/ that keeps the natives inside,/ then look back from a train// at the walls sinking into the hills/ of our stolen landscape/ and the people/ sinking into the walls.
But Chorlton is no tourist when it comes to the natural world. His words illuminate this world in poem after poem, even if The mountain’s spine// cracks as it opens:/ a book to be read/ only in the dark as in "Night Vision.” And he can read in light or dark this book of nature: Counting their rings/ I open my notebook/ and as I write their stories/ a hundred years pass in a minute,/ a forest takes up/ half a page, creating his “Ars Poetica.”
Chorlton also has a streak of juxtaposing death with domesticity, suggesting an indifferent universe, with works like “Ironing,” “Talk Show,” or “Nuclear Lullaby.” In “Ironing,” after a couple dies their tall clock at the foot of the stairs/ chimes all night as if nothing/ has changed. Though these poems are still skillfully done, their overt themes threaten the subtle beauty of their language. And it is ultimately his use of language that urges the reader to cross the borders and explore on into the nature of this collection.
One final note on the illustrations by Chorlton that accompany many of his poems: these images emerge from the cross-hatching of his ink drawings, pictures endowed with the power of his poetic images.S. Craig Renfroe
SUNNY DAY
by Daryl Rogers
March Street Press, 2003
34 pgs, $9, Poetry
ISBN: 1-882983-96-3I say, “They should have had Alice drown Bobby in the toilet/ bowl when they brought him home from the hospital. He was/ never any damn good.”/ She smiles. Then she moves away. So ends “This Is a Story...” the last poem in Daryl Rogers’ Sunny Day, but maybe we should start at the beginning. In the acknowledgments, he thanks the sun, or rather the forces that keep the sun from destroying us, and that’s as much of a sunny day as we find in his poems.
Rogers has been compared to Charles Bukowski, and, in fact, he has a poem entitled “Bukowski.” But what poet using some well-chosen swearwords and a swaggering tone hasn’t been so compared? He also has a poem called “Jack Kerouac,” so we could safely discuss the Beat influence. What I’d rather talk about is Rogers.
One suspects that his poetry is filtered through a mind that, like the brain in “The Night Sky,” is a frozen,/ knotty conglomeration/ of carbon and dirty water. It is this filter that makes the world of these poems striking and strident. Filled with effrontery, his first person speakers find the details in life that let us know destruction lies on every side but at least for the moment, in acknowledging this fact or viewing those teetering on over, we aren’t yet over the edge. And Rogers only falters when he moves away from this vision, this edge, like in the too familiar third person narrative of “Big Cat, June, and Little Man No Talk.”
And when Rogers is on, we can find “Grace” in the soothing black void of a turned off TV set or be moved when we find A partially burned Bible/ is lying open in the sink/ its pages swelled with tap water.S. Craig Renfroe
NOT SO PROFOUND
by Nathan Graziano
Green Bean Press, 2003
81 pgs, $10, Poetry
ISBN: 1-891408-31-3In most of Not So Profound, Nathan Graziano obsesses over writing and women--or possibly one woman. “Dreaming of Insomnia” gives us a speaker ruminating on reasons to go on with the dance, who finally decides It may be nothing/ but the fact/ that a sentence I write/ might stick to the world. When not writing about writing, Graziano writes on the subject of women, the wanting, the having, and the losing. Much of the time it’s the wanting, like in “Tough Odds” where he calculates touching the face of a woman across from him: Odds/ roughly the same/ as a sandcastle/ falling in love with rain. And sometimes these two topics collide, enhancing each other, as in “Visions of Me,” where the written woman says more about the writer than the reality of the muse.
These aren’t fresh subjects, but it’s the voice Graziano brings to these poems that endears them to the reader, a voice often self-effacing and warm with humor. In “Spontaneity,” the speaker cleans his kitchen, but discovers: I didn’t feel/ any better./ Only like a stranger/ standing/ in the kitchen/ of a man/ I’d never visit. Or in “The Fitness Magazine,” where after his girlfriend complains about her body, he replies “The Red Sox can still/ make the playoffs this year.” Graziano benefits from simplicity, a consistent voice and a clear vision on the seemingly mundane matters that fill our days and relationships.
Unfortunately, this simplicity sometimes leads him to the overused idea and the stock image. Though “Basic Psychology” has a nice twist at the end, its insight that We always want/ the things/ that we can’t have could easily go unsaid. “Sunday In The Suburbs” takes for its tension imagined neighbors outraged by the sit-com standbys of loud music, pot smoking, and unmowed lawns.
Yet for the few pitfalls, Graziano’s conversational tone allows him to prick the pretensions of so much poetry. In “On Seeing Robert Pinsky Read,” Graziano does this directly. After Pinsky states that each object he touched/ had become a poem, the speaker wonders, Does Robert Pinsky touch/ his nutsack while writing poems? And even when Graziano’s not being overt, his dressed-down language shines, as in “For Jeff,” his elegy for a lost friendship: I never thought the telephone/ would slip from my palm,/ your name faded/ on a page with the past. And the emotion in “For Jeff” is anything but simple.S. Craig Renfroe
THE LAUGH WE MAKE WHEN WE FALL
by Susan Firer
The Backwaters Press, 70 pages, $14
ISBN: 0-9677149-7-4, PoetryWinner of the 2001 Backwaters Prize for poetry, Firer’s book bursts into poems, fills the senses with the heady fragrance of words. Her language is resplendent; her images so generous that they seem to blossom. These poems explore what it means to be alive, to survive, to be reborn each season, fragrant and fresh.
Firer’s language is often sultry and wild, reflecting the scent of summer flowers and the intensity of their beauty. In “Peonies” she honors the women in her family who valued their prized blooms as much as their cut- / glass dishes and “Limoges.” These are women who carried peony roots from the old country, from the city to the new wilderness of the suburbs, generations of women who savored the “insane” fragrance. But there is more to this poem than just flowers. There is something sensuous, sexual. The narrator says, I will tell you / about women’s body memories, about / the slow, moist-opening / of peonies, the ruffled silk slippery dark- / red petals, the ant-licked / open peonies, the wealthy smell of nights / of peonies that dream and swell, … .
Firer poems often celebrate life, death and how we go on. In the poem “Eating Pears” her language is lush, her imagery lavish as she describes eating summer pears with her son. We unwrap the pears like our sweet lives / that grow into beautiful unknown… She remembers the familiar seasons of pears, and along with them, the deaths, births, rebirths, all the rituals of living. She asks her son to tell me what moment / of the pear’s growing you are tasting. He remembers “raccoon dreams,” and she responds, I am eating all / the lights of … the alley lit by streetlight light, / music & starlight & lightning and candle / of that night. Wisely her son tells her, ’A pear tastes nothing like it looks.’/ And together we blind bite, eat our way / into the many stories of pears.
Firer’s language is ripe with surprising word combinations: Zippo flowers and thunderworms … the uncle sky. People who night hurry home and ants that are drunk crazy. People who recite cold-lipped prayer litanies. The scuffle tremble world where the narrator’s heart is cake batter. We are jewel eaters, she says in one poem; in another, the lake falling jumprope purple.
While there maybe death and birth in these poems, there is renewal in the rituals, too: watching her son grow, finding comfort in a pumpkin patch after a funeral. Lives cultivated with parachuting Elvises, Neruda, Whitman and lilacs—oh, the lilacs, the drunk lilacs … sumptuous benedictional lilacs. Another poem celebrates so many fine kinds of wings. And while Firer’s words seem to take extravagant flight, they honor everyday luxuries: flowers, birds and family.Karla M. Huston
SOMETHING NEAR THE DANCE FLOOR
by Bruce Dethlefsen
Marsh River Editions (2003) 37 pages, $8
ISBN 0-9718909-3-5, PoetryThere’s a beat here, a rhythm. The poems in Something Near the Dance Floor tremble with the pulse of failed relationships, of old loves. Some poems are gentle; some are lavish in language; some are disturbing.
In “Monte Carlo,” the narrator celebrates his son’s first car: … at fourteen and a half / he thinks the future’s wholly / one full tank of gas… It’s the time when a kid could drive off, and there is nothing a father can do but go along, foot jammed into an imaginary brake.
A sort of bewilderment is evident in the poem, “The House We Haunt is Ours,” about how two people might live together but can’t seem to connect, even in the “little hours” of the night. In “Evening Wear,” the narrator finds the only way he can be near his son is to wear his watch, his need for him bound skin to skin / manacled if need be.
While there may be failures, there are love poems—and the moon, which seems to watch, like some lunatic chalk drawing. In “Fingernail Moon,” the narrator meets his lover as the moon rises—in two different parts of the world. [S]o how’d it go for you, he later asks. I hope you saw the moon hang in the sky / somehow tonight.
Some of Dethlefsen’s poems disturb. “The Rest of You” suggests using the deceased’s cremated remains as talc, fertilizer for the garden, or a condiment for his cereal. So many poems in this chapbook risk something—address what we must do to get by.
While Dethlefsen’s humor is a consistent thread, perhaps the most well-used instrument in his toolbox is language. There is a rhythm inherent in these pieces, a careful crafting of words and sound. Some poems seem to exist solely as word-play. For example in “Shebang,” he says: … then these night/ these children moon/ these stars on strings/ these stars/ these twang of things.
The poem “To Bees or Not” explains everything: A poet plays with words / the way a sculptor plays with clay and the drummer slaps his knees, because—the artist’s hardest work / is mostly play.Karla M. Huston
LOOSE CHANGE
by Louis McKee
Marsh River Press, 2001
ISBN: 0-9718909-0-0, PoetryLouis McKee’s poems slip into your ear so easily that you don’t realize their impact until you’re left shivering with a sense of longing and loss. Many poems concern failed love and a narrator who’s been left wondering what happened. Yet in these poems, there is always hope that the next “Plane to La Paz” will bring redemption.
McKee is a man in love with language, a man whose poems love many women, sometimes just because they are women. In one, the poet imagines a woman walking naked across a Jersey beach, and he’s too stupefied to even write haiku. In another he falls in love with a woman for her politics, the way she speaks hard g’s. In a third, he hopes that the husband of the woman he loves takes care, for both, for all our sakes.
Some poems shudder with loneliness. In “Loose Change,” the narrator pays fifty cents for poems from a street poet as a way to buy time (and hope?) before he goes home to his troubles. What he gets, he fingers like coins in his pocket, something to carry him, protect him from pain.
While most poems start simply, a wistful regret fills them. Still, they often end well, the possibility of hope trembling, like a kiss that still burns in the morning. In “Revision,” the only thing that matters now is the memory:
The moon will tell you that it is a short story/ words were said that couldn’t be taken/ back, couldn’t be changed. The differences/ between what two people thought/ and what was said is a wildfire; you can see it/ burning like moonlight on a peaceful river,/ the white moon given to easy shadows.
In “The Nurturing” the poet—with blessings from his friend—samples the breast milk of his friend’s wife. This simple act becomes rebirth. So it was mindless really, when/I pulled away, a different man now,/coming through a different childhood…
McKee is a writer of tremendous gifts. Each poem is constructed out of what the poet knows, the substance of his experience—no matter how tender, how troubling. In spite of the longing, the loss, these poems somehow make sense.Karla M. Huston
JOY UNSPEAKABLE
by Laura Stamps
Kittyfeather Press, 2003
69 pages, $15, PoetryMany poets write poems filled with angst and anger, with trouble and tension, with desire—poems filled with wishes and wanting and warning. Not so, these. These poems are filled with joy. Plain and simple. Stamps finds joy in her every day world, the world outside her window, in the playfulness of her cats, in the blooming of her garden, in the birth of each new day.
Although many have written poems of praise, admiration, and celebration, what makes these poems notable from the rest is Stamps’ use of language, a diction that is both luscious and surprising. For example in the poem “Treasure” she says: Thunder curls its long,/ loud fingers around the limbs/ of evergreens, trembling/ the ground, pleating the sky/ with eyelash-shivers/ of lightning sizzling in/ from the west/ …the grass opens its green/ apron, gleefully catching/ this damp treasure, not caring/ how loudly it arrives,/ but that it comes, and often.
In another she says, the fierceness of winter / withdraws its frigid breath, / slowly folding its ice robe / like a monk. In the poem “Smile,” Stamps says, it is The last week of January, / and rain drums the house / with a thousand gray sticks.
The poem “Lizards and Lightfall” describes her dismay with poetry magazine guidelines that say, there are too many / poems written these days / about sunrises and sunsets, but what about lizards, she wonders, are there too many / poems laced with lizards? She tells the reader that lizards lounge like little green licorice / sticks … on the leaves / of my gerbera daisies … the ones with the marshmallow / bellies … their pink eyes flashing / as if dreaming / of raspberry pudding. Stamps finds her bliss in these simple treasures.
Stamps’ poems often pay homage to the antics of her cats. She describes them in language that is rich and fresh—like the sleeping sighs / of the kitten / wound in a knot at the end / of her bed, while outside, the fading rumble-thread / of a plane stitch[es] the clouds. In the poem “Happiness by Design” she describes the latest feline shenanigans: the television / section shredded in strips / of noodles like newsprint / spaghetti piled high / on the green plate / of the carpet. In the poem “Silver Leaves of Prayer,” her kitten sleeps in her arms like an answered prayer, / wrapped in a black / purse of fur. In another, she corners her cat so a bunny can escape, this feral / tom with a taste for blood, not before lecturing the cat for twenty minutes on the proper / behavior for a good kitty.
Because Stamps often enjambs her lines skillfully, there is a surprise at every turn. We find that her neighbor thinks the mailman is / a terrorist because he fills her mailbox with more packages than it can handle. We see cats / galloping and songs / purling and amazing / equations. There are starlings [that] screech / with glee like wild / monkeys and Miro, / a man who painted / like a poet. Like joy, there is an abundance of splendid language here. Her lines are generous with their surprises and each one brings some new delight to astonish even the most jaded reader.
These poems are filled with simple, daily miracles. If you’re looking for the dark side of Stamps’ soul, you won’t find it here. She practices a zen dependency to her ecstasy, transparency; / the art of allowing / every jot and tittle … flow through [her], permitting nothing to stick. In “These Days” she says, My ministry is simple— / to seek the love and peace / lining the hidden pocket / of the present moment. And she does; yes, she does.Karla M. Huston
SHOOTING THE RAT: Outstanding Poems and Stories
by High School Writers
Editors: Mark Paulak, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon, Ron Schreiber
Hanging Loose Press, 2003, 280 pages, $16
AnthologyIn the exciting third edition of Hanging Loose Press’s anthology, Shooting the Rat, the poems and stories that are presented are in no way cute, cuddly or poetic for the sake of poetry. What makes this anthology unique is that the authors are all high school writers. But these are not your typical teenage writers and poets. These artists write with candor, honesty and ‘nothin’ but heart. The editors present these poems and stories with elegance, grace and quality. Each section takes takes its title from the poem that opens it, as with Gemma Cooper-Novack’s poem “Shooting the Rat” where Cooper-Novack paints a gruesome if not gory picture of a rat’s demise by a shot gun. One twitch of a finger and blood and fur/ sprayed over the room.
Shooting the Rat is an anthology filled with writings from high schools from many states, including New York where the press’s literary magazine, Hanging Loose, has been based since its start in 1966. The editors of this anthology and the magazine have chosen some of the best writing from past issues of Hanging Loose to represent the anthology. What makes this book so intriguing and different from other anthologies is that it’s not tangled in a dry, often mundane web of prestige and fame where the same poems from poets are continuously regurgitated in book after book. These fresh, new writers evidence the next wave in American letters. Shooting the Rat is a book that can be enjoyed by teenagers and adults alike. This reviewer loves how the poems from this anthology are able to make a connection to its readers because of the subject matter such as love and family that we can all identify with. These young poets and writers write with such beauty and pop culture realness, they could make a common grocery list sound poetic.
Much like in Matthew Moses’ poem, “Farmacy” in the “Pears of the World” section. Peeking out into the new world/ already instinctively looking/ for some poor soul/ with dry skin and dirty hair. Moses makes the alternative spelling of pharmacy relevant to the descriptive content of the poem itself by describing shampoos, deodorants and feminine products to the equivalency of food on a farm. Moses’s poetic techniches are clever and fresh.
Shooting the Rat is a great learning resource for other poets and writers, for adolescent and high school teenagers, because the writing does not restrict or limit itself to a certain audience. Teenagers will identify with the writings because of the raw issues dealt with so honestly. Adults can read and understand the plights presented in the book, for the fact we have all been teenagers. The poems are reminiscent of our own spent youth, as in Christopher Lew’s “Faculty Christmas Party at Webster Middle School,” in which he playfully writes of past teachers.
Mr. Palmer, Earth Science, has his arm on the back of Mrs. Chan’s chair. / His eyes wander over Ms. Samson’s reindeer sweater. Ms. Samson, 6th Grade Math, can’t believe there’s/ four shopping days/ left, wants to get an ab-roller for her brother in Kalamazoo.
These are rekindlings of junior high memories at their best—poems that take us back to those timid, sensitive times of bubble gum innocence. If you are wondering what teenage writers are writing, Shooting the Rat will give you a grand eye view.Shane Allison