Hermit Thrush - Mark Frutkin (Quattro Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Hermit Thrush.  Mark Frutkin.  Quattro Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Hermit Thrush is Mark Frutkin's newest poetry offering and it is a quietly astonishing book of poems. Frutkin is giving a master class of sorts, these poems all point in the same direction as though guided by a poetry compass.

My memory isn't what it once was, neither is anything else, but I think a cat named Riley Tench introduced me to Mark Frutkin in the late 70's.  A number of "Peterborough Poets" had travelled to Ottawa for a poetry event at Saw Gallery and Mark was our contact, if not the organizer.  Point being that I've know Mark Frutkin for over 35 years.

                                                                           But I don't know him well at all.  Yet I could have predicted my reaction to these poems.  Solid, solid, solid.  Frutkin knows exactly where he wants to go with a poem.

Cathedral of Chartres

Thirty-thousand workers

build a cathedral in silence - 

A few sounds linger:

masons tock granite, carts clatter,

men grunt under loaded hods -

but even the warblers cease their singing

A workman sneezes

and those nearby look up -

what a strange and marvelous noise

The consumptives too try

to do their part,

swallowing their coughs

The architect clutches a board

and a knob of charcoal,

quick to sketch

what before was spoken

They all turn at the sound

of thunder approaching

from miles across the plain,

and hear a nearby brook

unable to curb its babbling.

...

Today's book of poetry knows Mark Frutkin well enough to address him by name but we've never shared wine, broken bread.  We do know how much we admire these well crafted poems.

Hermit Thrust is spotted with 20 or so almost perfect haiku.  You might think Frutkin writes those to amuse himself and tease the gods.  Certainly amused us here.

Frutkin has a range of interests and a broad encyclopedic noggin and he applies his vast resources to poems full of guests and wonder.  Sung Po-jen and Basho stroll through these pages and rub shoulders with Edith Piaf while she sings to a reflection of Baudelaire.  There is even the appearance of a French flaneur which will please my flaneur-friend Lea Dunning very much.

Today's book of poetry is only scratching the guest list surface with this name dropping - what we'd really like to make clear is just how much we enjoyed Frutkin's mature and certain voice.  These poems are crystal, clean as a glass.

Life with Artists

for Faith

Stamped on the back of our china -

Van Gogh,

canned soups in the cupboard

by fifteen-minute

Andy Warhol,

still famously wrong

after all these years,

we own a broom and dust pan

likely by Duchamp

The back garden designed

by Monet, the blur

through the fogged-over

windows quite Impressionist

The living room

quietly breathers Edward Hopper

The cumulus clouds in the sky over the house

remind me of Georgia O'Keefe's

monumental mural in New Mexico,

and when I read the newspaper

I keep glimpsing scenes

from Cartier-Bresson

I linger in bed

and stare at the ceiling

etched by Mondrian

Many a room in this house

could have been designed

by the Russian Constructivists

But when I look at your face,

it's pure Leonardo

and I feel dancing inside

like Klee or Kandinsky.

...

Can we say it?  These are happy poems.  Hermit Thrust is quietly but assertively joyous.  You feel good, even uplifted, after reading these intelligent poems.  In today's monstrously clusterf**ked mad world it is reassuring to encounter such reasoned and sustained hope.  Mark Frutkin's poems call on us to read with our better nature at the forefront.  Today's book of poetry believes Hermit Thrush is a contemplative rhapsody on moving forward with hope.

Our morning read in the office today was a gas.  Everyone in the room was sporting a big Frutkin smile.  We all took turns reading the haiku, Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, led the charge and seemed to have the best handle on them.  But they were enjoyed by all.

Listening for Silence

A sliver of wind

slips between the piano key

slats of the fence,

I hear a single leaf

land on the deck

A white butterfly

tracks its erratic path

like traces of thought,

impossible to describe

but linked

Someone closes the door to a shed -

I will go on listening

for silence

until nothing but silence remains.

...

                 

Hermit Thrush was the perfect tonic for Today's book of poetry, it raises the bar on Dagmar.  We loved lines like these:

                                "every blank page is a poem about snow"

Copied several of them into our notebook, jealous admiration coursing our veins.  Today's book of poetry could feel something like joy radiating the room.

Mark Frutkin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Frutkin, who currently lives in Ottawa with his family, is an author by trade with an interest in the geography of the imagination. He has published a slew of poetry and prose, which have appeared in Canada, the USA, England, Russia, Poland, Holland, South Korea, Turkey and India. In 2007, his novel, Fabrizio’s Return, won the Trillium Award for Best Book in Ontario and the Sunburst Award. In 1988, his novel Atmospheres Apollinaire was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction as well as the Trillium Award.

BLURBS

“In Mark Frutkin’s marvellous Hermit Thrush, the words are listening to themselves so acutely that the reader can’t help but listen too. This attentiveness has something to do with precision and something to do with wonder. “A bird outside the window / sounds like it’s / gargling sequins.” Can’t you just hear it! The other senses are treated with equal respect. You can actually see the ineffable from many of these lines, can feel it brushing against your palm, can smell it in the binding of this very book. It’s up to you whether you eat these poems whole or take your time, nibble by nibble.”
     – Barry Dempster

“Any day you can’t coax a chickadee to land on your palm you can always read a poem by Mark Frutkin and get in touch with a mind that is quick, minimalist, and profound. A person could list the friends and relations of these deft gestures – Basho, Szymborska, Simic, the Zen koan, Ponge – but Frutkin’s voice is wholly its own creature, assured, sly, metaphorically robust, and whimsically intent on undoing the habits of familiarity. These poems are deceptively simple as the button that is “a flying saucer / flitting through a slit / into the next dimension.” Running through them there’s a humour that’s cosmic and domestic, a kettle–and–button wisdom that leaves you open, empty, and grateful.”
     – Don McKay

Mark Frutkin

Talkin' Poetry Part II (2011)

video courtesy: Olgajanina

from the film Heard of Poets by Josh Massey and Ben Wallace

quattrobooks.ca

493

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Freeze Frame - Robert Hershon (Pressed Wafer)

Today's book of poetry:
Freeze Frame.  Robert Hershon.  Pressed Wafer.  Brooklyn, New York.  2015.

A Poverty Row Production

Now they are all asleep

I am waiting for the toast to pop up

Listening to a chewing gum commercial

my eyes begin to fill

I have become a man who cries at old movies

not when the crippled rancher's son

is killed in the war

but when Jane Powell starts singing

on the hayride

...

Robert Hershon's Freeze Frame is growing up at the movies.  Lash La Rue, Tex Ritter and Randolph Scott ride roughshod all over this sunset.  Hershon writes directly accessible anecdotal gems, think of them as short films that magically contain the whole story.

Today's book of poetry often thinks of poems as short movies.  This combination of cinema, memory and nostalgia works magic.

1948: Saturdays

Every Saturday morning

before my father left to open the store

he's leave a dollar on the dresser so

Susie and I could go to the movies

Every Saturday:

The Loews Gates or the RKO Bushwick

With that dollar we could get two 25 cent tickets

and have plenty left over for Raisinets (her) and

Goobers (me) plus popcorn, but

we had to sit in the children's section

a noisy little ghetto ruled by The Matron

a large woman in a white uniform, with a big flashlight

and a terrible temper, no wonder. I think the same woman

managed to be present simultaneously in every theater in Brooklyn

We'd sit through the double feature and the cartoons, the coming

attractions and "the chapter," at least once, maybe twice.

Then, to really get our money's worth

make noise the throw stuff until we got thrown out

When I turned 12, I had to pay the adults admission: 50 cents

but -- I still bristle at the injustice -- the law said you had to

sit in the children's section until you were 16. Imagine.

Sometimes we'd show up and the children's section was full!

You could only get in if you were accompanied by an adult

One of us, let's say me, would linger near the box office until some poor

dope with a hangover would show up at noon. Hey mister, hey mister

take me in with you? Yeah, okay (mumbled). And my friends, too, mister?

(They emerged from the shadows.) Please, my friends too?

Okay. Okay. It was only after we were inside that

the poor bastard learned his horrible fate. These kids come in with you?

(Dull nod) Then they got to sit with you!

When I turned 14, large enough to pass for 16, I made my break. I got

to escape to the balcony. To sit by myself in the balcony, in the

     embracing dark

By myself, smoking Lucky Strikes. By myself high up in the dark.

It was the beginning of what I thought of as adulthood and

I thought it would just keep getting better and better.

...

Today's book of poetry watched with considerable amusement during this morning's read, as fast as Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, or Milo, our head tech, could reel one of Hershon's poems off -- the other would give us a flying update of the characters within.  Most of my young minions knew who Groucho Marx was but when Zeppo, Chico and Harpo danced into our offices, some of the youngsters were in deeper water.

Today's book of poetry studied film in university, worked as an usher at the local theater in high school and even worked briefly as a projectionist for an art house cinema.  Which is to say that Today's book of poetry loves movies almost as much as poetry.  A book of poetry about the movies is almost as good as a car that travels through time.  We liked this little book a lot.

Humphrey Bogart

31 years since Bogart died

Time sure flies when you don't lurch

down Bergen Street every morning

     the sun slanting through the early spring

     sycamores but so what? heading for the airless train

saying Well, here's another morning on which

Humphrey Bogart is dead

...

Get some popcorn, take a seat in the balcony in the cool dark.  The newsreel is about to start, or a short or the Stooges, the feature, the Western, the Mystery, the magic.  

You just have to open the cover of Freeze Frame and you're there.

Robert Hershon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Freeze Frame is Robert Hershon's fourteenth book.  Robert Hershon’s 12th poetry collection, Calls from the Outside World, was published in 2006. His other titles include The German Lunatic and Into a Punchline: Poems 1986-1996. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, the World, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ploughshares and The Nation, among many others and has brought him two NEA fellowships and three from New York State. He serves as executive director of The Print Center, Inc., and has been a co-editor of Hanging Loose Press and Hanging Loose magazine since the dawn of time. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, writer Donna Brook, and has two grown children.


BLURB
This is your invitation to watch the procession of Hollywood greats—Bogart, the Marx Brothers, Myrna Loy, Rosemary Clooney, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, King Kong—with a wise and witty observer in a movie palace that has clouds in the ceiling and stars on the silver screen.
     - David Lehman

pressedwafer.com

492

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Those Godawful Streets of Man: A Book Of Raw Wire In The City - Stephen Bett (Blazevox[Books])

Today's book of poetry:
Those Godawful Streets of Man: A Book Of Raw Wire In The City.  Stephen Bett.  Blazevox[Books].  Buffalo, New York.  2015.

Stephen Bett is damned sure that none of us is going to get out of this city unscathed.  Those Godawful Streets of Man: A Book Of Raw Wire In The City is a little light when it comes to optimism, this book is a sneer from a mouth full of broken teeth.

Those Godawful Streets of Man (64th St.)

Then there was cousin
Billy (Edinburg)
down the shop
for smokes

Wife & baby daughter
at home for five
minutes

Twenty years later
detective tracked
him in NYC

Heavy-duty
abandonment,
huh

And it's all
about cities
(& borders)

And people really
fucking each
other up

It's cruel as
all get out,
& someone
ought to
die for it

Or lose
heart
(at the
least)

...

In Bett's city someone just played the joker against any chance of a winning hand.  People smear themselves like bloodstains all over their attempts to find love.

Those that do find love discover just how flawed love can be.  Those Godawful Streets of Man... is an illustrated fall from grace, one gut punch at a time.

Those Godawful Streets of Man (24th St.)

Look'it all these god-
awful people hiding in
their square buildings
here a woman protecting
herself from the only
man who's ever loved
her, she's so used to
being stared at &
abused she needs
to hide cause her
meds aren't
working &
trust is
wild, right?

That's why they build
these godawful city
blocks in the first
place & fill them
with people who
are dying of
too much love
in their horrid
but ferocious
lives

...

Stephen Bett's city is under siege, love is a doomed lost cause and you can't trust anyone in Those Godawful Streets of Man....  Love and tenderness are abandoned as life cracks a hard whip over every suckers back in these bruised beauties.  There are no happy endings.

Bett is betting that readers will recognize his remorseless city as a place they've spent time.  We have all had our broken hearts turn black and brooding and Bett is certain we'll remember.  Bett gives voice to some angry sorrow.

These poems sting smart.

Those Godawful Streets of Man (23rd St.)

Where is the godawful
suicide gene when you
need it, tons of other
people have enough
to go around, why
not do the black
market thing, this
is a godawful
black market
day, there's
a sale on at
every corner
buy what you
need & get
it over with

Look at the line-
up over there
short ones tall
ones & you
take an odd
size, poor
sap, here
lemme lend
you some money
fix yr-self up
& drop yr-
self off

I can't I'm
waiting for
someone who
may or may
not come
back
(any week now
any month)

...

Those Godawful Streets of Man... is not for the weak of heart.  These poems are the white-knuckle, white-hot anger of pure emotional betrayal, the picked scabs of love.

Dark and intriguing poetry.  But it won't make you happy.

Today's book of poetry has looked at Stephen Bett before.  Back in April of this year we blogged about Bett's The Gross & Fine Geography / New and Selected Poems, (Salmon Poetry).  You can see that blog here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/04/the-gross-fine-geographynew-selected.html

Stephen Bett

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Bett has had fifteen previous books of poetry published: Breathing Arizona: A Journal (Ekstasis Editions, 2014); Penny-Ante Poems (Ekstasis Editions, 2013); Sound Off: a book of jazz (Thistledown Press, 2013); Re-Positioning (Ekstasis Editions, 2011); Track This: a book of relationship (BlazeVOX Books, 2010); S PLIT (Ekstasis Editions, 2009); Extreme Positions: the soft-porn industry Exposed (Spuyten Duyvil Books, 2009); Sass ’n Pass (Ekstasis Editions, 2008); Three Women (Ekstasis Editions, 2006); Nota Bene Poems: A Journey (Ekstasis Editions, 2005); Trader Poets (Frog Hollow Press, 2003); High-Maintenance (Ekstasis Editions, 2003); High Design Refit (Greenboathouse Books, 2002); Cruise Control (Ekstasis Editions, 1996); Lucy Kent and other poems (Longspoon Press, 1983).

His work has also appeared in over 100 literary journals in Canada, the U.S., England, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland, as well as in three anthologies, and on radio.

His “personal papers” have been purchased by the Simon Fraser University Library, and are, on an ongoing basis, being archived in their “Contemporary Literature Collection” for current and future scholarly interest.

He lives in Vancouver.

BLURBS

Bett’s poetry are offerings: they expose themselves like nude paintings, providing only the essentials and inviting the reader to extrapolate interpretation based on the subjective reading. This is authentic minimalist poetry. The words are so modestly beautiful in their arrangement upon the white page while showing an emotional intelligence within the micro-text. Poetic minimalism is notoriously difficult to master, especially on a topic as complex as human relationships. Yet [this work] manipulates the sparse format so aptly that the outcome is a poignant expression of the tensions that exist between two people. At times, the collection demonstrates the understated gentleness of the English language with a human voice that makes the poetry so accessible to the layperson (while it beckons multiple readings from the widely read). To satisfy both types of readers is an incredible accomplishment.
     —REM magazine, New Zealand

You are on what first nations call a vision quest. Track the process and trust the signs. Look for totems. All decisions must come from the biggest part of yourself...in the epic form… of books you are living.
     ―Michael Kenyon (poet, novelist, editor)

blazevox.org

491

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Knuckle Sandwhiches - Wayne F. Burke (BareBackPress)

Today's book of poetry:
Knuckle Sandwiches.  Wayne F. Burke.  BareBackPress.  Hamilton, Ontario.  2016.

Today's book of poetry had the real pleasure of checking out Wayne F. Burke's Dickhead (BareBackPress, 2015) back in January of this year.  You can read that blog here: http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/01/dickhead-wayne-f-burke-bareback-press.html

Apparently Burke liked what I had to say enough that he quoted Today's book of poetry for one of his blurbs for Knuckle Sandwhiches, good on him.

Saw a video yesterday of an aging but still impressive Buzz Aldrin punch a man in the mouth, this man had been hounding Aldrin unrelentingly and saying the most vile and untruthful things.  Although Today's book of poetry believes that violence is never the answer we couldn't resist chuckling as the moon walking octogenarian set the man and his jaw straight.

Reading Wayne F. Burke's Knuckle Sandwhiches leaves a similar smirk on our entertained mug.

Christmas Morn

I woke and poked

my little brother

and he followed me

down to the living room

piled neck-high with presents

like the cave of Ali Baba

and then Gramp's voice

boomed "get back in those beds!"

and we crept back up

like condemned prisoners

to await a pardon

from Grandma who

gave us the okay

but said not to open gifts

until Uncle Al got up,

but he never did;

"must have celebrated too much"

Grandma said;

we dug in,

tore the paper

to shreds:

I got the black figure skates

I'd asked for

plus a book of Shakespeare's plays

from my sister

which I never read

because 

I did not know Shakespeare

from Shitmore.

...

Burke writes in such a straight forward line you could rule a page with it.  The laconic characters that walk through his world and these poems hurt where we hurt, dirge the same damned dreams as the rest of us.  Fail frequently.

Rights

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, outside

The Mug & Muffin Restaurant

a guy wearing a pork pie hat was

singing "Sixteen Tons"

for spare change

as another guy

over by the newspaper kiosk

poured gasoline from a can

over his head then asked passersby for a match

and some jackass gave him one

and some waitress screamed

and the guy with gasoline was

tackled

and as I moved ahead

against a tide of liberals

fleeing

as if for life

a girl with terror-dazed eyes

ran into my chest,

and the guy,

pinned to the ground,

screamed

"I want my rights!"

as if

setting himself on fire

in public

was one.

...

It's not that Burke is entirely without hope but his pragmatic realism doesn't leave much room for resplendent happy endings.

This morning's read was chirpy affair.  Instinctively, everyone rose before reading their poem.  Milo, our head tech, ranged around the office like he was trying to escape a wasp's sting.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, stood as rigid as a flag pole that nonsense would never run up.  The poems cracked, snapped and generally blue-sparked about the room.

Burke's Kunckle Sandwhiches had everyone on edge, alert.

Jackass

Trouble at the door of

Dunkin' Donuts:

a guy smiling like a 

happy jackass

stands holding the door open

for me

and 

when I fail to say

"thank you"

or anything else

his happy face turns to

mud

like the coffee served inside

and he snidely says

"you're welcome!"

to which

I reply

"get bent!"

and all his happiness

disappears into

the uncouth bowl

of jackass

life.

...

Knuckle Sandwhiches is exactly as advertised, a poetry punch in the head.  Wayne F. Burke is totally unadorned and he doesn't care who knows it.  His poems resonate with pure distilled precision, truth over tact.  

Today's book of poetry sees Burke as a clear drink of water in a world that is murky as hell.

 

Wayne F. Burke

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wayne F. Burke was born in Adams, Massachusetts and raised by his paternal grandparents. As a boy he was an All-Star baseball player, and in High School an All Class-A football player. He attended the University of Massachusetts—where he was a member of the freshman football team—and three other institutions of higher learning before graduating from Goddard College in 1979. His work history includes stints as bartender, moving man, cook, machine shop operator, sign painter, substitute school teacher, carpenter, truck driver, book reviewer (for the Burlington Free Press newspaper, Burlington, Vermont), and, for the past four years, LPN in a nursing home. His stories, essays, reviews, and poems have appeared in numerous publications. He has two other collections of poetry, published by BareBackPress: Words that Burn (2013), and Dickhead (2015).

BLURBS
The word genius is bandied about far too freely, and most geniuses are not recognized as such in their life time. With that being said I am not the least bit hesitant to claiming Burke's poetic genius and I hope it is recognized in his lifetime.
     -  Matthew J. Hall, Screaming With Brevity

...a monster among us, a dangerous beast...reads like the best of Bukowski. Dead serious, no nonsense and if feels absolutely true. Burke swaggers through with such confidence you could almost resent his elan.
     - Michael Dennis, Today's book of poetry

NO ONE ELSE is writing poems like this, rooted in the read world, and with such a powerful voice.
    - Howard Frank Moser, Stranger in the Kingdom

...paradoxical twists, wordplay, subtle associations and darkly fun atmosphere.  (Burke) is an earthy pragmatist with a surreal inner life...an insomniac dreamer.
     - Ada Fetters, The Commonline Journal

barebackpress.com

490

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

...

Российские читатели - Большое вам спасибо за ваш интерес к современной книге поэзии . Я очень ценю иметь вас с собой в поездку .

A special thank you to the Russian readers of Today's book of poetry.

....

Algaravias/Echo Chamber - Waly Salomão (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
Algaravias/Echo Chamber.  Waly Salomão. Translated from the Portuguese by Maryam Monalisa Gharvai. Ugly Duckling Press. Brooklyn, New York, 2016.
Winner of the 1995 Premio Jabuti.

Waly Salomão (1914-2003) was so revered in his native Brazil by the time of death he had been given the title "Secretary of Books."

Algaravias/Echo Chamber is brash narrative tropicalismo from the source.

Our big, small world has so many lovely voices to celebrate, our newly discovered Brazilian friend Waly Salomão is a splendid addition to the international choir here at Today's book of poetry.

Open Letter to John Ashbery

Memory is an editing deck - a nameless

passerby says, in a nonchalant manner,

and immediately hits delete and also

the meaning of what he wanted to say.

The self expired, there remains the shock of the world not being

dragged away altogether.

Where and how to store the color of each moment?

What stroke to retain from the translucent dawn?

To set ablaze the dry wood of shriveled friendships?

The scent, perhaps, of that faded rose?

Life is not a screen and never acquires

the rigid meaning

that one wishes to imprint on it.

Neither is it a story in which each detail

locks away a moral lesson.

It is stuffed with fish-spawning pools, hams,

shopping sales, the burning of archives,

divisions of captures,

the conclusions of fragments, vanishings of originals,

extermination groups and exploding photograms.

Who cares if the cold ashes remain

or if they still burn hotly

if some proper urn is not selected,

be it Grecian or barbarian,

in order to deposit them?

Before tomorrow pours down here,

still forgotten now will be what brings

today's watermark.

Hyenas keep watch in the ambush of the thicket while

the cattle dogs of time make a threaded

archipelago from the suit of memory.

Islets. Images in distress from the days past.

Innumerable ozone craters.

The family ties having become lapsed.

Vacant and crumbling and sunken and prosthetic,

the world goes on giving birth to the cadaver

of its synopsis.

Without any final explosion.

Nulla dies sine linea. Not a day without a line.

One, without name and with watery will,

raises this slogan like an anti-entropic

barrier.

And the days follow each other and settled is the intention

to convert all prohibited things and rust

into pieces of paradise. Or vice-versa.

At the pleasure of one's own convenience,

as one who presses the homemade button

of an editing deck

and a god emerges at last to redeem the human

freight.

Correction:

                         the human fate.

...

The translation of these poems by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi doesn't read like a translation at all, Gharvi has magically learned to inhabit the subtleties of Salomão's dialect.  She renders Salomão's Brazilian into a birdsong we recognize.

From what Today's book of poetry can tell much of Waly Salomão's earlier work was far more experimental in nature, cut and paste, concrete and so on.  Algaravias/Echo Chamber was meat for a far bigger table, it reached a much larger audience because of it's crisp and nuanced dialect.  Algaravias/Echo Chamber won the prestigious Premio Jabuiti in 1995, Brazil's highest literary prize.

Class Nightmare

                           for Marcelo Yuca

if i don't take my foot out of the mud

and don't partake in ecological tourism

at the Chapada dos Guimaraes

or the Chapada dos Veadeiros

if all of a sudden the mud hardens

turning hard as bronze

and i never take my foot out of the ground again

if i lose the penultimate migrant's lorry

or the last wagon of the hunger train

if i don't smoke a joint at a 5-star hotel

or on a first-class flight

champagne, caviar and blinis

smoked salmon and Chablis

if i don't take a twin-engine plane

on a low-flying flight over the swampland

and a hand span of the top of a wood stork

and open jaw of an alligator

oh what a nightmare

if on the capital-h hour

i were unable

to take my foot out of the mud

if i don't hear the singing frog

on the bank of the Cuiaba river

if by bad luck i don't take part

blow by blow

in the neo-pagan festival of the Parintins ox

if all of a sudden the mud hardens

turning harder than bronze

and i never take my foot out of the ground again

...

Today's reading was a lesson in modesty.  The challenge, as presented by Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, was for each reader to read their chosen poem aloud in English and then in Portuguese.  I killed my translated poem and the Portuguese poem killed me.  Next time we'll call out for some help.

Today's book of poetry is convinced that the people at Ugly Duckling Presse have the most interesting jobs in poetry because they consistently pump out volumes that are as diverse as they are excellent.  

We would like to give the impression of being deeply sophisticated and worldly here at Today's book of poetry but in fact we know nothing of the political landscape of Brazil, modern day or otherwise.   That makes it hard to comment on Salomão's experience in post-dictatorship Brazil and to understand how it fueled his vision.  But the view Salomão  provides us with Algaravias/Echo Chamber makes for great tourist travel in his splendid and generous mind.

Guarding The Hollow Of Time

I slide,

concealed here,

guarding the hollow of time.

Uninhabited space, stopped.

Nothing happens. Nothing seems to happen.

But something flows, the incurable,

burning all the bridges of return.

All the past is dead;

it only guards what comes, what arises.

All the full things tear each other to pieces

or are lacerated.

The old well-traveled lady,

holder of mileage record,

fearful of cows from the Ganges

after having gazed at a larval parasite

under a microscope.

A larva that defiles and putrefies

whatever fresh meat it sees

as its eye holograph

the underlying skeleton of all living bodies.

To inhabit change.

The wood floor full of old snake skins

and the fuzzy down of tarantulas.

To inhabit change.

That super-human poetry prick and poison a

man.

...

Waly Salomão founded a poetry magazine, Navilovca, became a publisher, wrote about movies and theatre, video and photography, he also wrote songs and collaborated on several very popular Brazilian hits.  

 

Today's book of poetry has another Brazilian friend.  Descansar bem , Waly Salomão , você nos fez um grande serviço com os seus poemas.

Waly Salomão  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Waly Salomão (1943-2003) was one of the foremost 20th-century experimental poets of South America. In 1995, his fifth book of poetry, Algaravias: Echo Chamber won Brazil’s highest literary prize, the Prêmio Jabuti. Born in Jequié, Bahia, to a Syrian immigrant father and a Brazilian mother, Salomão carved out an early career as a songwriter to major Tropicália vocalists, including Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso. In 1970, at the height of Brazil’s military regime, he was imprisoned at Carandiru prison in São Paulo. The author of more than ten books, his poetry has been included in major anthologies including Nothing the Sun Could Explain: New Brazilian Poetry (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). Following the author's death, the Waly Salomão Cultural Center was established in Rio de Janeiro.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist, poet, and theorist. Her work in visual art and text appears in a wide variety of exhibitions and publications. She completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Film & Visual Studies at Harvard University and a B.A. in Film and English at the University of California-Berkeley. She is an editor at The New Inquiry.

BLURBS

Despite his own immersion in English, one can think of few worlds and languages as distant as Waly Salomão’s tropicalismo tinged and politically hued Brazilian Portuguese and our present American poetic lingo. Yet, somehow, with uncanny magic and scrupulous care, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi has imbued this tongue with a lilt it has not heard before, transmitting the fluidity of Salomão’s airy and slippery lines across caesuras of thought and texture in which not one false step impedes the continuity of song and motion.

     - Ammiel Alcalay

In Brazil, the name of Waly Salomão will mean different thing to different people. For many he will be remembered as the deft lyricist of some of the most original pop songs that came out in the 1970s. Others will recall him as the cultural entrepreneur who would eventually became Brazil’s first Secretary of Books and Reading during President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s first tenure, with the charge to promote literacy among underserved populations.It is not an overstatement to credit Salomão with the task of reorienting the course of Brazilian literature in the aftermath of concrete poetry: his stature as a major poet is only beginning to be assessed.

     - Sergio Bessa

uglyducklingpress.org

489

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Tandem Bicycle - Robert Grant Price (Life Rattle Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Tandem Bicycle.  Robert Grant Price.  Life Rattle Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Tandem Bicycle rolled across my doorstep, skidded into a left turn just outside my office and came to a rest, brakes squealing, on top of my cluttered desk.  Robert Grant Price provides quite the entertainment with his highly polished first book of poems.  

Tandem Bicycle asks plenty of question about how we live our lives but instead of assuming he has the answers Price has faith enough in the reader to let them draw their own conclusions.

The Acrobat

Rolling backwards, the world upside down,

I travel the air, caught in the spotlight,

calling the terror that cuts through me delight.

I am the acrobat on the high trapeze.

My hands, two dusty birds, drag me

above the emptiness, but barely.

A moment longer here and I'll feel the earth.

I hold my breath and hand precariously,

my arms out for the hands that must be coming.

...

The Acrobat is like many of the poems in this tight package, clean and clear and to the point, with just enough suspense to tittilate the poetry senses.  

Price's Tandem Bicycle is lyrical enough to contain the occassional rhymer and hard enough to chip your teeth if aren't careful, he marches with a confident voice over some rough terrain.

Our morning read was a gentle success, we all had to share Price's long poem Bell Sound Like Birdsong which ran roughshod for most of thirty pages.  That left some marks on our floor.  If Today's book of poetry had to quickly summarize Bell Sound Like Birdsong we'd use one of Price's own lines from the poem:  "This is how we love."  It is compelling stuff. 

The Game

When finally the door withdrew its tongue,

no impediment except the road remained

and to run was simply a matter of effort

and dream: we ran so fast our destiny changed.

It became a game. It became chase. Passing posts

to pass the posts, trees flickering by

until, looking back on those coming after,

we discovered who ran faster.

...

Price is asking some big questions in Tandem Bicycle, he wants us to ponder "why we are here, what is love, what holds us together as a people?"  The invitation is for us to join Price on his bicycle built for two as he pilots us through his narrative of the clockwork of the world.  Emotional and otherwise.

War Music

Songs from the Second World War

play inside a coffee shop. Women sing

a sad, low harmony for men

in another world killing each other.

Someone's going to die, the music says.

A man isn't coming home

and if he does he'll be different.

Time apart will make them see

it wasn't love but adrenaline, the sex

of war, the uniform, the heavy chords

of a song that says Goodbye to You. My love.

Romance before a carpet bombing. A song

at a dance. They sing about a love

made of wanting something already dead.

...

Today's book of poetry felt that Tandem Bicycle was a fresh take, a little less cynical than our usual cup of tea and that warmed our hearts.  Robert Grant Price's debut volume has promise written all over it.

Robert Grant Price

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Grant Price was born in Milton, Ontario, in 1976. Previously for Life Rattle Press, Price collected and edited Passing Through: Stories about Places (2015). Price won the E. J. Pratt Poem of the Year award (1999) and the Harold S. Ladoo Book Prize for Writing (1999). Find him @pricerobertg.

liferattle.ca 

488

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Wavelengths of Your Song - Eleonore Schonmaier (McGill-Queen's University Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Wavelengths of Your Song.  Eleonore Schonmaier.  McGill-Queen's University Press.  The Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series #26.  Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca.
2013.

Eleonore Schonmaier's Wavelengths of Your Song really does have something for everyone.  She is able to find beauty everywhere and express it so that you are transported, she takes us to the North Sea to watch a black horse swim, gives us cello music saintly as prayer and so on.

What Today's book of poetry liked most about this book was how long it took to read it.  I re-read many of the poems in Wavelengths of Your Song several times before I could move on.  Not because I didn't understand - but precisely because I did and wanted to know more about how they worked.

Postcards

I explain to the customs

agent that my suitcase

is filled with stones

and spider tales

preserved like messages

in a bottle, I can tell from the look

on her face that she'd rather

be talking to a terrorist, and wishes

her colleagues were the ones

left to deal with the wackos.

It's only a story, I say, and

unfortunately add, I suppose

you prefer

people to simply lie? She asks then

if she can feel

my breasts, I tell her

they are shaped

like the polished

beach pebbles

I'm transporting,

that they're white

and pink like the spider

I saw inside a wild rose

and if she touches

me she can only do so

with all the others

watching.

...

Schonmaier would seem to be one of those people who has read everything, been everywhere and can identify ever major musical opus.  Normally that would irritate Today's book of poetry but  Eleonore Schonmaier can burn, burn, burn.  These poems work big time and all the time.

Sitting on the front porch this morning Today's book of poetry saw a murder of crows land in the tall fir tree just up the street.  It might have been a reminder to us to comment on Schonmaier's affection for the northern Canadian wilderness of her youth.  There is a natural environmentalism romping through these adventures, Schonmaier is able to give voice to the connection she has with the world and make it splendid.

Music and art get more than walk-on parts as well.  Norval Morrisseau is in here along with Kandinsky, Kafka, Celan.  Beethoven and Rzewski chime in with a soundtrack.

As If

As if we could

stroll all day

along the shore

heading south.

As if the sky

was our art

gallery, and

our thoughts

a curation.

As if the

horizon was 

endless.

As if we

could whisper

among the long-grass

gold

of the dunes.

As if I could rest

a shell in your hand

and this shell would

not be empty.

As if

the shell

could hold

what the heart

knows.

...

This morning's read was a heated affair, no air-conditioning in our offices.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, led the charge as these poems travelled from one great green sea to the next.

Today's book of poetry would be remiss if we did not mention that Eleonore Schonmaier's Wavelengths of Your Song also has moments of high erotic tension, tender and delicate as first love, and others as hard as the splash of illicit skin on skin.

Bathing of the Black Horse

Waves thudding into his legs

the horse pulls back to shore,

but the woman tugs the lead

and they go deeper and

deeper into the sea, until

finally the horse

swims alongside her.

When we understand

euphoria will we lessen

the constant rushing

need: after their swim,

woman and horse race

across the sand: resting

on towels the nude men

stare: roseate terns dive and arise

with glistening fish.

...

This is accomplished poetry.  Schonmaier takes no shortcuts.  Today's book of poetry enjoyed Wavelengths of Your Song and suggests you will too.

Eleonore Schonmaier

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eleonore Schonmaier's award winning poetry has been publsihed and translated internationally.  Her previous book is the critically accalimed Treading Fast Rivers.   She divides her time between Canada and the Netherlands.

mqup.ca

487

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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

Isn't It Romantic? - John Popielaski (The Texas Review Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Isn't It Romantic?  John Popielaski.  The Texas Review Press.  Huntsville, Texas.  2012.

Winner, 2011 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize

Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is what Today's book of poetry is currently reading for non-poetic giggles.  A real chuckle, that old Genghis Khan was not kidding around out there on those steppes.

So when I opened John Popielaski's Isn't It Romantic? last night and saw the Great Khan prancing around in the first poem I figured serendipity and history were both playing with me.

But Popielaski isn't playing, he is playful.  These poems are easy access gems, erudite and keen.

Boys

Saturday, October, lead slug loaded

in my father's Remington, my brother

and my friend took cover when I chose

my uncle's Monte Carlo, junked

but still in one piece, rusting, resting

in the sunlight, in the weeds.

Reading Hemingway years later, I remembered

how the trigger quietly resisted,

how the butt let loose and kicked

with mule force at my shoulder,

how the barrel leapt and the explosion

shook a snakeskin from the wheel well.

We marveled for a minute at the blast hole

we could fit our fists through, knelt and peered

across the bench seat to the daylight

of the exit wound, grew large

with such destruction and reloaded

as we strode like new men toward a Pinto.

...

Popielaski understands the silent rules of men, the dark foreboding of failure looming over unspoken transactions.  He knows that the smiling neighbour might not always smile.  But Today's book of poetry is on to Popielaski, we see an underlying optimism spiralling to the surface all through Isn't It Romantic?, or it could just be Popielaski's wit winnowing towards sunlight.

Elegy for Kenny Bighead, 39

If you're inclined toward admiration

for this man whose prized possession

was the bottle-cap collection

he'd amassed since he began

the steady drinking in the ninth grade

like the rest of us,

I'll have to pigeonhole you

as an optimist, not cockeyed

necessarily but as a person

who, despite these rouged cheeks

and this silk tie on this torso,

sees the bright side even

as his mother, an Italian,

trembles in the front row, dabbing

hopelessly at eyes that won't obey.

We tripped once at a Dead show

fifteen years ago this month

at RFK in Washington, our seats

a tier down from the nosebleeds,

and I wondered then what someone

in the anti-psychedelic field

of HVAC repair and installation

on Long Island saw in that

environment of glow sticks

and ecstatic dance and shared belief

in the redemptive power

of a band's extended jams.

It wasn't cool to ask.

And we diverged, I heard,

I heard, I heard about his progress

toward decline, the morning six packs

and the nights he still parked in

the power trails, the dense glow

of the seamless joints that made him

sense the inarticulate expression

of the cosmos in the ordinary

objects that, when he was younger,

he attempted on occasion to explode,

and no one whom I know was too

surprised when they were told,

but even knowing what we know

it is surreal to see him

dressed like this, embalmed,

supine among the flowers, mourned here

by we ironists, who afterward

will drink to him and shake our heads

like wizened sages at his passing.

...

Isn't It Romantic? is an entertaining romp from a Walt Whitman loving devotee, a poet with a love/hate relationship to ancient Sumeria because they discovered alcohol.

What Popielaski seemingly does best is to make fine poems out the minutiae of everyday life by making the necessary connections available to the reader at every turn.  We understand.

Invasion

I watched a line of ants last night

for hours instead of going

with my wife to visit friends

and wondered how the scent

of pheromones could organize

this guided missile of a march,

could summon loyal subjects,

wordless, from the woods.

The queen, I gathered, lounged

behind a cedar shingle just below

the eave, my cocked ear

picking up the crunch and rustle

of her bored realm, sawdust flashlit

in a spider's web my proof

her moving in was problematic.

Ortho's poison powder tapped out

on the corner of the step

was carried up by workers,

unsuspecting, a decision

as destructive as the Trojans'

to admit the Horse.

I did not burn a city down last night

but knew, according to the label,

things were not well in the nest.

This morning, casualties

are strewn, and I imagine,

morally, it's best to crush

the twitchers and the ones

who run in circles, clutching

larvae in their mandibles,

trying to regain a center,

but I know I am no better

than the realistic soldier

who persuaded Hector's widow

to hand her only child over

to the mercy of a quick fall

from the parapet, still high.

...

Both Saint Francis of A. and E. Hemingway darken Popielaski's doors, coyotes and wolves loom in the shadows competing for imaginary space, and John Popielaski skillfully and lovingly gets it all down.  He still believes we have a chance.

John Popielaski

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Popielaski was born in Port Jefferson Station, New York, and attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook and American University. He is the author of A Brief Eureka for the Alchemists of Peace (Antrim House) and O, Captain, which won the 2006 Ledge Press Poetry Chapbook Award.  He lives in Portland, Connecticut, and spends time at his camp in Maine.

texasreviewpress.org

486

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

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