When I Was Straight - Julie Marie Wade (A Midsummer Night's Press)

Today's book of poetry:
When I Was Straight.  Julie Marie Wade.  A Midsummer Night's Press.  Body Language 11.  New York, New York.  2014.

It's only every once in a while I get to read a book of poetry like Julie Marie Wade's When I Was Straight.  They just don't come along all that often.  Why?  Because writing one fine poem is hard work -- writing a book full of them is almost impossible.  Wade never misses a beat, if she were shooting arrows the bullseye would be full.

When I Was Straight is a teeter totter of excellence, a balancing act of humour and pathos.  Wade marches right into the middle of all our misconceptions about what it is to be queer and comes out the other side in full pride stride.

When I Was Straight

Everything came to me vicariously -- a promise,

a post-script, a preview of coming attractions.

Desire a quiet rumour that rippled through the halls.

At the cinema, someone always paid for popcorn, a soda

with two straws, little licorice candies.

I loved to sit in the back row & watch

till all the credits rolled.

"You have a gift," the blond boy said, "for stalling."

Later, in a twin bed in a college dorm, I spoke without

     thinking--

"I like you. Let's get this over with."

His pink mouth amazed, so wide & round.

"Did you hear what you just said?" he asked.

I hadn't been listening.

...

These confessional poems are as celebratory as they are sensational.  Wade is so damned charming and at ease in the world that the big declarations she is tattooing into your senses don't hurt a bit.  

Julie Marie Wade might have also considered a career as a stand-up comic because her timing is Rolex and her punch lines all George Foreman.

Today's book of poetry was entertained at every turn.  Wade is wicked smart and it shows in every poem.  She never employs the heavy hand but we are certain she has one when needed.

When My

Mother Learns

I Am A Lesbian

At first, silence, & then a thud of breath as if

her throat has slid through the chute of her lungs

& landed, heavy -- like a stone -- like a sword

lodged suddenly inside it.

"This explains why you don't wear make-up!" she wails.

A snap -- a pulsing panic pulled back & lightly

camouflaged as fear: "What will I tell my friends?

How can I tell my friends? I can never tell my friends!"

Finally, fatigued & determined: "No one must know."

I give her permission to lie -- privilege she takes

as right. I promise her nothing has changed except

the second chromosome of the body resting next to me.

She asks, not wanting the answer: "I suppose you have

to sleep in the same bed?"

- No, in sleeping bags, Mom, cocooned on separate couches

still wrapped in our swaddling clothes. -

I could have said it, but I didn't.

No tolerance for the Absurd.

My mother's voice, all tissue paper & cellophane,

turns tearful, liquid in its pain: "Where did we go wrong?"

I want to tell her not to forgive me, plead through

the twisted wires that she will not waste her prayers.

"We raised you with God's laws," she says.

"We told you to be pure."

"You raised me to love," I say.

"You told me to be happy."

- But she didn't mean this way, didn't mean this way.

Dear God, she didn't mean this way. -

I watch out the window, sigh.

Already prayers are streaming up the sky.

...

We had a splendid read in the Today's book of poetry offices this morning.  It almost feels like spring in Ottawa today and our winter crazy staff are now willing to suspend their disbelief.  Everyone intoning a brief incantation of "please, no more snow!"

So, it was high stepping optimism ruling the floor this morning with Julie Marie Wade's When I Was Straight providing the fire and gender works.

Wade didn't get to her gracious heights without some other blazers cutting a path and setting a trail. Wade doffs her respectful hat to Maureen Seaton and her poem "When I Was Straight" and to Denise Duhamel and her poem "When I Was A Lesbian."  Wade tells us in her notes that When I Was Straight would simply not exist without the influence of Seaton and Duhamel.

When An Old

Classmate Learns

I Am A Lesbian

"Oh my God! I knew it! I always knew it. I was

like Julie is so gay, & people were like oh,

whatever, you just think everybody's gay because

it's an all-girls school, but I knew I wasn't gay, &

I knew most of those girls weren't gay, so I was

like fuck you, Jasmine, go suck on one of your

Jolly Rancher rings! Do you remember those?

So, how's it going? Do you have a girlfriend or

something? I have to tell you in college I had a 

gay roommate, & she got lucky like every single

night. Seriously. I'd come back to the room &

there'd be some ribbon tied around the door,

so I'd have to hang out by the vending

machines in the lobby looking like a total loser.

I never saw the girls go, through, I guess they

must have gone out the fire escape or

something. Nobody thinks there would be that

many gay girls in Iowa, you know, but I guess

they're kind of everywhere now. Do you still

live on the West Coast or what? If I were gay

I would be like San Francisco, here I come, but

truth be told, it's kind of dirty. My boyfriend took

me there once -- we're actually engaged so

technically he's my fiance now, but you know,

he wasn't then, so -- we just walked around a lot &

got some of that good chocolate & saw the seals.

& I was like hey, isn't there some really cool old prison

that you can see if you take a ferry from here, & then

he was like San Francisco is full of fairies, ha, ha!

I hope that doesn't offend you. I mean, I thought

it was funny, but my boyfriend is like totally down

with gay people. He would really like you because

you're smart & it's kind of hot when a girl isn't

into you at all, you know? Well, I guess you would

want a girl to be into you, huh? So scratch that.

But I mean most girls are always trying to get with

him & then I have to be like whoa, hands off, that's

my man. Sometimes I think it would be so much

easier to be gay. It would just take all the pressure

off. I wouldn't have to get my hair done or worry

how my boobs looked, & if somebody called me

fat, I could just be like I'm a lesbian, douchebag.

I mean, seriously, do you even have to wax?

...

Wade has no qualms about using humour/sarcasm to get us where we need to go.  When I Was Straight is one of those books you need to get into the hands of every queer person you know because it will make them feel better about the world.  Then we need to get When I Was Straight into the hands of every straight person because it will make them smarter.

Julie Marie Wade kills it.

Julie Marie Wade

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Marie Wade (Seattle, 1979) completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012.

She is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010), selected for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series; Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011), selected for the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize.

Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University and a regular reviewer for Florida Book Review, Lambda Literary Review, and The Rumpus.

She lives with her partner, Angie Griffin, and their two cats in Dania Beach.

BLURB

“Julie Marie Wade’s lush post-confessional poems are unabashed in their desire, tentative then bold in their knowledge. They’re sparkly talismans to transform and transport us, delicacies with creamy insides to fill us up. WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT is a profound ‘before and after’ examination of the self, complete with cultural and family commentary—delightful, heartbreaking, magic and real stories with a multitude of prepositions to guide us: a gifted young poet’s coming to, coming out, coming jubilantly back into self. ”

     - Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

amidsummernightspress.com 

563

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.

A Dog's Life - Adam Scheffler (Jacar Press)

Today's book of poetry:
A Dog's Life.  Adam Scheffler.  Jacar Press.  Durham, North Carolina.  2016

Adam Scheffler is singing a big, big song in A Dog's Life and it is mostly a song of joy.  You'll hear a few complaints and genuine concerns along the way but that's only natural. Mostly Scheffler is aiming high, he's generous and kind.

Scheffler ruminates at length in his conversational and prosodic style and boy oh boy do we like to listen.  There's nothing naive about the poems in A Dog's Life but there is a certain innocence.  Adam Scheffler's innocence has some experience to it.

Years ago I published a poem that had a line in it that insisted you can't have innocence and experience too, they are two separate horses bursting out of the gate.  Well, apparently I was wrong.

Woman and Dogs

My girlfriend's dog is small and fat and neurotic

and smells at night like an African meat flower.

It loves her more than some people love anyone

in a riddle of love it worries at, lying there on the floor.

As she writes it makes strange sounds:

lickings, sighings, sucking, shiftings

like the worrying-tide of the world, like the vast

dog-tide of the world in its love of the moon

and of fetching sticks. My girlfriend is very quiet

and very white like the moon, and some people think

she is cold and uncaring just like it.

But her dog knows better, it knows she is quiet

like the sun as she writes her stories

tapping them quietly with her fingers, shaping

the messages she has heard of painful warmth

and love, quietly as a tree repeating the hard message

of the sun in its devotion of leaves and listening.

I have listened carefully to the dog. I have stolen

the dog's secret about her. I have figured it out.

She is quiet and so she writes long stories

and I am loud and so I write quick poems

tiring myself out more quickly to look up at her

as lovingly and neurotically as the dog

perhaps never as lovingly as the dog

who unlike me has nothing to prove

who does not write poems except the thought-poems

of the chase, the sky, the walk, the meal.

Sick of the dog, I have had too much also of poems

petulant, filled with strange achings

I think of my navel which is too deep like a mine

I send my finger into it like a canary and feel sad

and weird and know I will die. But sometimes

she tells me she likes my chest and I take her

in my arms and feel for once superior to the dog.

Before this dog she had another dog I never met, a

golden retriever, who was not at all neurotic

who swallowed her childhood happily

like a white spiral fossil and brought it back

covered with a fine varnish fine slobber of evening

and died, and now is only a picture in a cheap frame

on the top of her desk as she writes. It makes me think

of all I can't see: the long list of books she gave me

how they existed all my life and before it

and her story right now invisible to her too

like the idea of a flower to all the roots underneath

their gossipy brags and worries: how their flowers

grow tall as the spine of a young boy, go blue

as a nun's lips in winter, unless the earth goes

upwards forever unbroken - but there she is

at least, complete: watched by the dog who is dead

watched by the dog who smells bad and is alive

watched by me, who am sick of poems and of life too maybe

but am alive and glad to look at her, at the tiny mark

on her cheek where the clamp brought her forth kicking

from the womb to sit one day quietly in the

wound and fury of writing before the three of us

who cannot help, who wait in aches and shiftings

for her to turn round and speak gently our names.

...

Today's book of poetry found a lot of joy in A Dog's Life despite the arrows of real life skewering hearts, Scheffler has created an entertaining and compassionate balance in these poems, a sense of hope.

We do hear about the irresponsible parenting skills of pandas and the inexplicably large salary of a business man from Tulsa, there are laments of different orders peppered here and there, but Scheffler never loses his focus.  The dark is only ever a reminder that the blue sky is coming.

Great Grandfathers

They sit quiet in murmuring

restaurants, at family gatherings,

wearing old paisley ties and tweed,

hands folded on their laps,

ready to ask for the one thing on the menu they can order

for old age means fewer choices.

At the end of the table

they float on pillows, counting out

the abacus of their pills

for they are unhearing

though their ears are swollen up

big as cabbages in lovely whorls,

cobwebs, funnels gathering darkness.

Their boredom is loud though,

a knot we try to untie with talk.

They catch a few words, maybe,

or let them drift past like feathers,

turning their eyes inwards

to the root cellar where memories

and dreams grow twined.

...

It came as no surprise to Today's book of poetry that most of this collection had been previously published in scores of magazines and journals.  Good ones.  In fact it pleases Today's book of poetry to know that the editors of these publications saw what we see, Adam Scheffler writes damned good poems.

A Dog's Life comes right up to you just like a friendly dog, licks your hand, settles down at your feet and you feel reassured.

Our newest staff member Odin was particularly charmed by Scheffler's poems and made a special request that I post the following poem.  Apparently Odin never met a waitress he didn't love.

Waitress

Half the men in here tonight

are in love with her,

ordering twice as much wine

as they planned,

getting quite drunk.

She's not beautiful

quite plainly dressed,

in overalls,

in her early 50's. But the men

look up and drink,

admiring her no-makeup,

her aloofness,

joking to see her smile blandly

and glide away,

making empty plates vanish

like any hope of her number.

They are in love for once

without desire, as she recites

tonight's specials

from memory, taking orders

in her head too,

forgetting nothing, leaving them all

feeling that care and

distance are what they wanted,

not love after all.

...

Today's book of poetry felt that the poems in Adam Scheffler's A Dog's Life were straight forward and true.  You will feel better about the world after reading these poems.  Reason and hope go a long way to beating back the darkness.

Adam Scheffler

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Scheffler grew up in California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and is currently finishing his PhD in English at Harvard.

BLURBS

“A Dog’s Life is a delightful romp through Americana by way of ‘real’ America with sly, politically engaged poems. Though this poet issues a rallying cry against ‘siren songs of entertainment,’ his poems are completely entertaining but, at the same time, completely wise. He takes on true love, extinction, our fragile environment, war, technology, porn, aging and our fight against it, cancer, nursing homes, and death. A Dog’s Life is an enlightened look at Doritos, Carson Daly, Walmart, McDonalds, theme parks, and, of course, dogs.”
     — Denise Duhamel

“The real singers – whether lamenting or praising – give us a sense of life as larger than we could have expressed before they arrived. With an explorer’s curiosity and drive, Adam Scheffler turns his poems into a treasury. He speaks of the value and wonder in small and large things, and like a dog (the dog he’d have us believe his soul is), meets the world with undisguised exuberance. These poems are spiritual in the way poetry is best suited to be: they articulate our good fortune to be alive.”
    — Bob Hicok

jacarpress.com

515

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.