Headline News — John Deming (Indolent Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Headline News.  John Deming.  Indolent Books.  Brooklyn, New York.  2018.

what is my relationship with your god

what is my relationship with your god

what is my relationship with your media

the man with the black ski mask

the flashy blade in his hand

the man with the orange hat

INSIDE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY'S

DESPERATE MISSION TO STOP MR. TRUMP

compromising one's fears like putting

on an orange

hat

💫💫💫

John Deming is hot for headlines, Headline News is prescient and makes for an action packed read.  At a time when fewer and fewer poets are interested, Deming is gleaning gold from the mouths of power.

Deming's flash-card epistles scour the media, eat the bold print like crackers, and then like some wizened and wise sage, he parrots the memes to us in these postcard sized pronouncements.

N. KOREA; UNICORNS

N. KOREA: UNICORNS  

ONCE EXISTED  

I know

I've seen the tapestries

placid doesn't

know what

capture means

unicorn encircled

by a small pink fence

bleeding into flowers

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry got a particular feeling in our stomach when reading Headline News.  With every turn of the page we felt like we were being let in on some new hyper-knowledge.  Reading John Deming makes you feel informed and a little edgy too.  That is a good thing - poetry should be unsettling once in a while.

Talk about unsettled!!, as I wrote those last lines a giant spider eight-legged over towards me.  I didn't notice him until he hoofed it over a yellow post-it note on the corner of my desk.  Today's book of poetry is an insect suck (and yes, I do know that spiders aren't insects).  Spiders scare the bejesus out of me, make me weak in the knees.

For the spider-lovers in the audience - it is time for you to turn your heads.

It was with a spontaneous and deadly thumping splat that I introduced myself to the dark brown arachnid.  It was a one time meeting but I'm afraid I had turned the beast into a Kurt Vonnegut doodled asshole ❋.

Today's book of poetry would never kill a spider in the outdoors — but if you're in my house and on my desk — goodbye spider.

Today's book of poetry apologizes for the distraction.  Milo, our head tech, kleenexed the spider to a garbage pail and arachnid heaven.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, got the rest of us rolling with the morning read of Mr. Deming's thoroughly entertaining and enlightening Headline News.  

3 MEDICAL MARVELS SAVING LIVES

3 MEDICAL MARVELS SAVING LIVES

they'll be outdated

just as fast

you watch

the wheelbarrow

also was a tech

revolution

you can only save

lives for so 

long

💫💫💫

Deming is submerging us in the new language of today's media, the modern gaze.  Our future will be described in headlines only, or not at all.

Today's book of poetry was surprised by how easily Deming had us convinced that Headline News is future vision.  These poems had us bending our brittle brains around some surreal curves but Deming always gets his ship back on course.

Yes, John Deming can burn.

belief in the destiny of values

belief in the destiny of values

means community and fear

SCREENING FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

MAY NOT GUARANTEE CARE

when there is thunder

my schnauzer gets scared

the emotional lives of penguins

our emotional lives in dreams

birds fed by dreams and the holes they leave

as with unimpaired meteor streams

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry is exited to bring John Deming into your poetry lives.  These are headlines you must read, poems that force you to think against your own grain and enjoy it are unicorn rare.

Good poetry is always worth your time and Headline News demands it. 

Today's book of poetry is going to share a rare fifth poem.  Why?  John Deming's Headline News earned it.

okay so the worst has happened

okay so the worst has happened

someone build a fire

TRUMP TRIUMPHS

I still have my Duane Reade

Rewards card I'll be fine

after all it's still just the rest of the world and you

some hundred million others wondering

how to overcome extreme

sadness

what to do

💫💫💫

John Deming

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN DEMING has published poems and articles in Boston Review, Salon, Fence, New Orleans Review, A Public Space, Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, and elsewhere. He is editor in chief of Coldfront and lives in New York City, where he directs the writing center at LIM College and, with Jason Schneiderman, co-curates KGB Monday Night Poetry in the East Village.

BLURBS

“It is difficult to get the news from poems,” wrote William Carlos Williams, “yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” In Headline News, John Deming gives us the news and makes a poem of it, springboarding into a prosody informed by brevity, clarity and precision, a kind of decalinear sonnet unfolding itself into blossom. Deming’s great gift here is a capacious and capricious mindfulness, improvising and responding to the deadpan lunacy of newspaper headlines in such a way as to make them seem almost mystical.
     —D. A. POWELL

In Headline News, John Deming makes us feel the strangeness of what we’ve been hearing and seeing in 21st century America. Reading these poems, “I’m feeling weirder/and clearer tonight.” Quoted headlines appear in all caps, but the rest of the writing is equally telegraphic and punchy—until we get punch drunk, wondering what’s real news and what isn’t. This mix-up seems telling and inevitable now.
     —RAE ARMANTROUT

indolentbooks.com 

711

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.

The Fix — Lisa Wells (University of Iowa Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Fix.  Lisa Wells.  University of Iowa Press.  Iowa City, Iowa.  2018

Winner of the IOWA POETRY PRIZE

The Fix is in.

Lisa Wells has climbed right into the poetry heart of Today's book of poetry.  Wells burns like her hands were made of matches.

Today's book of poetry did not recognize the language Lisa Wells was employing at first, some renegotiation was necessary, and it was my fault.  But Today's book of poetry did know from the very first poem in this insanely entertaining debut that it was going to require a seat-belt and helmet.

The Fix has a sureness to it, an accomplished voice, Wells gets to the heart with zest and immediately consumes the reader with her abandon fervor.  Today's book of poetry had to think about it for a minute and then it hit us.  We have only recently become aware of the superpoetry of the nurse/poet Belle Waring (Belle Waring died of cancer in 2015).  There's a zany, I don't give two shits - except that I care deeply, mantra.  A completely abandoned building sort of shouting that goes on in the poetry of Waring and Wells seems cut from the same fine cloth.

What Today's book of poetry was clumsily trying to say is that we are BIG admirers of Belle Waring and were surprised to find Lisa Wells raising the same hairs on our poetry neck.  Today's book of poetry will be looking at Belle Waring's Refuge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990) and Dark Blonde (Sarabande Books, 1997) at some point in the near future.  The Belle Waring books arrived in our offices courtesy of our Southern Correspondent, The Twangster, reigning St. Louis Champ.  He sends regular literary "care packages."

Today's book of poetry is so happy to introduce you to the poetry of Lisa Wells we can hardly sit still in our seats.

Theory of Knowledge

Alive on the highway shoulder.

The ruddy trucker passed

tossed a can from his cab

and I scrambled to retrieve it.

Cut like a twig and titless

the boys said

bbs on a breadboard.

Crossed my arms over my chest

in the frigid stock room of the mini-mart

while a classmate donned a nylon bib

and counted my cache into his hamper.

So I whipped a boy at school with my windbreaker

and where my zipper caught his shin, he split.

Blood slipped through the fold

mercury slow.

For that, a teacher faced me toward a wall

to think about my wrongs.

I don't need a wall to know.

...

When Today's book of poetry tells you the Lisa Wells poems are not concerned with point of entry, they attack you like an unseen gas, impervious to detection and thoroughly effective;  you're not going to believe what will happen to you — even as it is happening.

That last sentence/paragraph will have Max, our Sr. Ed., bleeding out his eyeballs; but Today's book of poetry has learned that we have to poke the beast once in a while just to make sure he is still breathing.

Back to point of entry.  Lisa Wells is the perfect poetry assassin because these poems come at you with such humour and wit that we often don't see the big "pop-up" mallet she keeps in other hand.  The Fix is devoid of trickery, These poems come at the reader straight down the middle of the page, Lisa Wells may be the Larry Csonka* of American poetry.

*Larry Csonka played for the Miami Dolphins and is universally respected for his inside game.  Fearless and unstoppable.  "The Sundance Kid" won a couple of Superbowls and was the star running back on the only professional football team to have a full undefeated season.

Memoir

I stitched my mask of hide- snout- sinew- talon- and rode

the vast savanna to war

in my former life. I was the hybrid. I sewed my brutal double-helix

     into a child

and packed her boots with greasy wool that felted as she walked in bright

stratified color. Carpathian bronze couldn't buy her off

when she leapt at the throat of my lover.

Him I called The Lion for his yawn and yellow ringlets.

I placed a Deglet date upon his tongue, I pressed

the golden scarab into amber, straddled all his lap, kissed

my cresset to the yurts of my superiors

and in this life, I think I'd like to do more damage.

...

Today's book of poetry thinks that Lisa Wells has a considerable reserve of grit, she knows that most injustices go unpunished and that many go unnoticed.  Wells is a reporter, and an excellent one at that, but she can't stay neutral.

Our morning read was robust to say the least with an excellent cast of characters here for the event.  Jeff popped by to measure my desk for another bookcase, at present I count something like fourteen bookcases, one-hundred and twelve shelves, in my office, but I need a couple more.  Jeff has the knowledge.  He also has a great voice and rattled off a couple of Wells poems.  Thomas was on this morning, he brought in his friends Pistol and Barb.  All three of them contributed.  The office was a busy place this morning.  

We laughed and laughed.  All complaints get sent to the fifth floor.

With Lisa Wells, no complaints at all.

"Poetry Man"

      after Phoebe Snow

To recall the cull of this life.

That one must harvest by selective annulment

the body they will wed

                     and the body they will hustle

from dress to tongue on the sly

                                           for days

I lay as a flank in my lover's maw

                      swathed in wine while warm

winds frisked the wisteria.

It was innocent.

He lashed my wrist to the mast.

He tied my blind because I wanted

to be battered in the swell

            and blossoms purple still

any place he pressed his mouth

any place

I asked for it.

By now I know, I begged:

relieve your mouth its bland aperture

Talk to me some more

~

Home's that place       somewhere      you go each day

in absence of his finger I have conveyed to my teeth

a relentless procession of corn chips, zoned out

on the bedroom wall.

Little my tongue does for the hole it circumnavigates.

It was a clear day, sun jigging figures from the leaves

on the alien green of College Park

              I was ocular in his arms

an enormous pupil, blown open.

     We knew the hour had come

by the way the light collected

raptured to several heavens

there's no need to choose.

~

If choice is obviated  "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel"

his letter begins, anxiety of what is

in back of each long note.

He compares me to a garden.  "Why weed what winter will kill?"

Fidelity is perennial, survives the cold     cloaked as a peony.

He wishes me a grand carouse at the local dive, a dry

bottom bun for my rubber burger

and another man's sex         bashful boy.

~

do not touch the stove you will

fuse to its element    slaver over

the burn.             You don't have to go.

You're hiding something sweet

from this swollen thumb

and from these glossy welts derives

the suspicion that I am truly sick.

Monstrously wooed by these

reports of injury, he admits

         "its invocation of parts. You have a thumb. Eyes."

Instruments of agency.   Logic divides

pleasure from having

               give it to me

All Medea's remonstrations ended on a blade.

downed in the poisoned mug, draped in the tainted gown

but she never howled

when love departed

she muscled out to meet him.

...

Any of you regular readers of Today's book of poetry will know that we are always a sucker for poets who find hope.  Lisa Wells gives us renewed hope, and why not?  

This energy, zip and intelligence make for that rarest of books, can't miss poetry.  It will "muscle out to meet" you.

Burn, Lisa, Burn.

Lisa Wells

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Wells is a poet and nonfiction writer who lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, the Believer, Denver Quarterly, Rumpus, Third Coast, and the Iowa Review.

BLURBS

“Full and luscious as a grape before wine-making or a moon before love-making, the poems in The Fix live in a roadside space that’s earthy, sensual, erotic, and wild. Lisa Wells writes by feel, shaping, kneading, and bending the line the way a potter builds a ceramic vessel from the bottom up, coiling around a central idea until it’s solid, visible, and ready to be marveled at.”

     —D. A. Powell

“The Fix is ruthless, sleepless, vigilant, obsessive: a profound work of mystery and matter, of power and pleasure, in which any singular truth is always just a step ahead, a bit beyond reach, below sight line. This new voice is so strange it sounds familiar, like family unforgivable or a lover who’s never over, or like a kind of food only grown on alien soil but that tastes disturbingly like your childhood. Here, every line is a surprise, a curve, a path this visionary poet cut just this moment for you to travel deep and emerge altered by this, her stark dark knowing. You’ll read this brilliant book again and again looking for the way back from it.”

     —Brenda Shaughnessy, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize

“The Fix is perfectly executed. It’s always poetry, yet it never strains to be poetry. It’s flush with nervous and yet confidently directed energy. Its most striking moments are never haphazard, but are surprising and indelible. It doesn’t read like a first book, it reads like a book for life.”

     —Shane McCrae, author, In the Language of My Captor

“Lisa Wells knows all too well that a fix is just a habitual stay against the moment’s decay, and in these corporeal poems equal parts binge and purge, one can only wonder what rough bitch slouches down low to be reborn in a Paradise as dirty and comfy as a trucker’s blown rig.”

     —Timothy Liu

Lisa Wells

reads "The End"

Video:  BitchMedia

www.uipress.uiowa.edu

694

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