Joy Of Missing Out - Ana Božičević (Birds, LLC)

Today's book of poetry:
Joy Of Missing Out.  Ana Božičević.  Birds, LLC.  Minneapolis, New York, Raleigh.  2017.

Firegram

Like a river of dope

Your love came to me

A superstar--and even if celebrity is

The prostitute sister of love, its economy

Still strikes us both as true,

And so we do do the world's work. We adore.

Stars gossip with a look of love on the world's edge.

The overlooked, broken, the queer and dark--

All those Heathcliffy words

Relax into a

Sphere of unsafety--

Remember 'we were never meant

To survive'--

Her sex is the power and like

Literally my dildos have melted

From the heat 

Of that fire emoji

...

Ana Božičević is that poet you have been waiting for.  She's as dangerous as the last drink after last call.  Clever, pshaw, Ana is way ahead of the curve.  Božičević is as hard as man-made diamonds and from the Eva H.D. school of not two shits will be given for the consequences, if you can't keep up, it is not Ana's problem.

Today's book of poetry knows that I haven't quite put my finger on it but Ana Božičević writes poetry a little like some angry neo-punk Audrey Hepburn all hard edged and classy had taken over her id.  A suave and sassy, straight shootin' Patti Smith has the ego.  And the result is magic.

                                                        I

                                                        Put perfume on my soles

                                                        (I really do) and

                                                        sleep.

                                                                   I'll Never Forget the Way You Said "Sabine"

Joy Of Missing Out splashes ice-water on your poetry sleepy-face.  Ana Božičević doesn't just entertain and challenge and delight -- she does it with pace.

2 Worlds

It doesn't matter if I feel loved

Maybe I can't and it doesn't

Matter if anyone

Gets a thing I say

All that matters is I should stay

And die only when it's time

But what if it's time.

In another world they're singing

My songs off of cereal boxes

In this one I'm alone

...

Our morning read was back to fireworks.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, was in full fledged full forced full tilt boogie mode today as it was her birthday.  We showered her with poetry books, the birthday gift of choice around these parts.  Kathryn passed Joy Of Missing Out around the room like it was birthday cake and everyone was getting a candle.  

Maggie, our new intern, stated unequivocally that Joy Of Missing Out was the book of poetry she'd most enjoyed since joining the Today's book of poetry team.  She felt that Božičević was speaking directly to her and that was a good, good thing.

Even Milo, our head tech, voiced an opinion out loud.  He said it was like Božičević had channelled Lynn Crosbie's grit and Sue Goyette's sand.  Today's book of poetry appreciated the comparisons to two of Canada's finest, couldn't disagree.

<3

And even now

Even in the (I can't

Believe I'm saying

It) the Trump

Economy (not believing

Is my privilege) the greatest

Hurt is seeing

The back of someone

Who looks like you at the bar

Jet hair trans skin

But it's ok

This pain is how

I know

That love will win

...

Joy Of Missing Out fills Today's book of poetry with hope.  Božičević knows that the world is a silly place and only survivable with a good sense of humour.  She also knows that the world is a dangerous place where your heart could be taken prisoner at any moment.

Poetry like this makes us smile.  

Ana Božičević 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ana Božičević, born in Croatia in 1977, is a poet, translator, teacher,and occasional singer. She is the author of Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) and the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC, 2013). She is the recipient of the 40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism award from the Feminist Press, and the PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire by Zvonko Karanović, forthcoming from Phoneme Media. At the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York she studied New American poetics and alternative art schools and communities, and edited lectures by Diane di Prima for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Ana has read, taught and performed at Art Basel, Bowery Poetry Club, Harvard, Naropa University, San Francisco State University Poetry Center, the Sorbonne, Third Man Records, University of Arizona Poetry Center, and The Watermill Center. She works and teaches poetry at BHQFU, New York’s freest art school.

BLURBS

Ana Božičević invents a new language of 21st century displacement: a displacement that occurs not just in space and in time but in heart, vision and mind. The poems in Joy of Missing Out range from Croatian farm fields and embroidered dresses to life spent online, emoji, chain stores and drugs. Always: emotion. No filter, she writes. Božičević is a master of the startling lyric: her poems transport, but they can also kick dirt in your face in the last line. Her casual poems are formidably informed and, also, great.

     -Chris Kraus

Auto-erotic (sunlit) pool life + "the funny softness at the deep end of the field" = Joy of Missing Out. Mid-ocean, is that sound of civilians being murdered, or is it Julie Andrews exclaiming in B minor on an Alpine piste? (Or meadow.) This book is full of switches. Pull the wrong one and there's no Europe. To put it another way, are there continents, cities and countrysides that, having left them, a person might never see again? Twenty-first Century 101: "Stupid pleasures" substitute in their entirety for a very real glacier, etc. I have loved Božičević's poetry for a long time, and it was a glamorous treat for me to be with it again. The extreme poetry that will never, precisely, return.

     -Bhanu Kapil

No matter what the radiant, brilliantly unbalanced work of Ana Božičević always feels right. She’s a bit of a colossus.

     -Eileen Myles

Ana Božičević 

Birds, LLC trailor for Joy Of Missing Out

birdsllc.com

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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

Today's book of poetry 5th annual Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize

Today's book of poetry would like to announce the winner of the

5th Annual
Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize.

The Corpses of the Future  -  Lynn Crosbie  (House of Anansi, 2017)

To see Today's book of poetry's look at Lynn Crosbie's excellent The Corpses of the Future look here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-corpses-of-future-lynn-crosbie.html

Lynn Crosbie

⧫⧫⧫

Today's book of poetry would like to thank every poet and publisher who sent us books, that's what we live for.

It's been a curious year, our staff has increased in happy size and we would all like to wish you the very best for the holiday season.

Our readership has grown.  Last month we had 20,000 readers.  Our total readership recently surpassed 360,000.  Today's book of poetry has now posted 645 blogs/reviews.

The winner of the Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize is invited to have dinner at the home offices of Today's book of poetry.

Past winners of the Prize:

2013 - Nora Gould, I See My Love More Clearly From A Distance (Brick Books)
2014 - Kayla Czaga, For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions)
2015 - Eva H.D., Rotten Perfect Mouth (Mansfield Press)

2016 - Stuart Ross, A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. (A Buckrider Book/Wolsak & Wynn)

We will return in January fully rested and full of piss and vinegar.

645

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 Pillow Book - Suzanne Buffam (House of Anansi Press)

Today's book of poetry:
A Pillow Book.  Suzanne Buffam.  House of Anansi Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2016.

A Pillow Book is a type of private diary.  Ambling around inside Suzanne Buffam's A Pillow Book is about as much fun as you are allowed to have with a book of poetry, it's as much fun as you are going to find.  Buffam makes splendid lists and you all know how much Today's book of poetry loves lists.  Buffam starts with lists, not literally, but her lists are the best.  How she got this much wit into one little pillow is remarkable.

The rest of the connect the dot compendium is a riotous assemblage of a particular Holly Golightly meets a hipster Zen chronologicalist.

Beautiful Names For Hideous Things

Chlamydia.

Concertina wire.

Orb Weaver.

White flight.

Night soil.

Crystal meth.

Kristallnacht.

Escargot.

Abattoir.

Apocalypse.

Ambergris.

Ectoplasm.

Stappado.

Lhasa Apso.

Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Peach Tea.

...

Today's book of poetry simply loved following the flawless logic of Suzanne Buffam's musings about any and everything.  She is ahead of the pack.  She will make you laugh out loud and then make you catch your breath.

Dubious Doctors

Dr. Who.

Dr. No.

Dr. Zhivago.

Dr. Moreau.

Dr. Strangelove.

Dr. Feelgood.

Dr. Dolittle.

Dr. Spock.

Dr. Jekyll.

Dr. Faustus.

Dr. Pepper.

Dr. Dre.

Doctors who drink.

Doctors who don't drink.

All Doctors of Literature.

...

And Today's book of poetry is leading you astray, A Pillow Book is not at all centered on lists, we were simply enjoying them so much we put two together so you'd get the drift.  Most of this cornucopia of delight is held in the short prose passages Buffam peppers at us.  Somehow each is almost perfectly weighed and served with the right degrees of both glee and pathos.  Suzanne Buffam isn't making your everyday bed for her pillow book.  A Pillow Book is its own private universe and that Buffam has let us in is something we shall be grateful for.

...

     A Great Book can be read again and again, inexhaustibly, with great

     benefit to great minds, wrote Mortimer Adler, co-founder of the

     Great Books Foundation and the Great Books of the Western World

     program at the university where my husband will be going up for

     tenure next fall, and where I sometimes teach as well, albeit in a

     lesser, "non-ladder" position. Not only must a Great book still matter

     today, Adler insisted, it must touch upon at least twenty-five of the

     one hundred and two Great Ideas that have occupied Gread Minds

     for the last twenty-five centuries. Ranging from Angel to World, a

     comprehensive list of these concepts can be found in Adler's two-

     volume Sytopicon: an Index to the Great Ideas, which was published

     with Great Fanfare, if not Great Financial Success, by Encyclopedia

     Britannica in 1952.  Although the index includes many Great Ideas,

     including Art, Beauty, Change, Desire, Eternity, Family, Fate,

     Happiness, History, Pain, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, Time and Truth,

     it does not, alas, include an entry of Pillows, which often strike me,

     as I sink into mine at the end of a long day of anything, these days,

     as at the very least worthy of note. Among the five hundred and

     eleven Great Books on Adler's list, updated in 1990 to appease his

     quibbling critics, moreover, only four, I can't help counting, were

     written by women -- Virginia, Willa, Jane, and George -- none of

     whom, as far as I can discover, were anyone's mother.

...

These missives are written in English but Buffam's sensibility might actually be foreign, no, not foreign but perhaps like Claire Randall/Fraser in Outlander Buffam is travelling through time and collecting the goods on us mere mortals.  She may be a time traveller.  

What Today's book of poetry means is that to be able to focus and report on a culture with such accuracy you either have to be alien to it to see it in clear light or a time traveller like Buffam.  No other explanation will do.

Buffam moves past witty into another type of humour.  She is in Eva H.D. territory, Buffam has the same sort of universal clever and it's got a type of intoxication all its own.  

Ignore At Your Own Risk

Education.

A train whistle.

A knowing wink from a drunk.

Campus security update alerts.

Warming currents.

Vows made in the dark.

...

Buffam's A Pillow Book is a charmer.  Other women have ploughed this ground, Dorothy Parker may have got here first, Fran Lebowitz certainly claimed this ground with aplomb (we cannot possibly express how much we admire Lebowitz), and there was a woman I knew in university about forty years ago named Kristy Eldredge, she also lives in New York City.  It's a sophistication that is warm and welcoming but comes with the appropriate sharp knives.

...

     The skeleton of the stocky, sixteen-year-old Neanderthal boy known

     to us as Le Moustier was discovered curled on its die in the foetal

     position in the dim glow of a cave in Peyzac-le-Moustier, France,

     in 1908 AD.  Beside his dusty remains, over forty-five thousand

     years old, lay a small handaxe and the scattered bones of wild cattle.

     Miraculously intact, the boy's toothy skull, with its lumbering brow-

     ridge and sloping forehead, rested on a small, undisturbed cairn

     of ancient stones.  His bones were promptly sold for a handsome

     fee by an amateur Swiss fossil hunter and suspected German spy

     to the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, where all but his badly

     damaged cranial remains were destroyed in the flames of World War

     II.  Le Moustier's pillow, which as far as I can discover is the oldest

     one know on Earth, has not survived.  The foxes have their holes,

     the birds of the air have their nests, bu the Son of Man hath no

     place to lay his head, says Jesus in the Gospel According to Luke.

...

Our morning read was a great one.  Everyone in the office takes a turn in our read and so do any guests who happen to wander by and hang around.  We had a new mailman this morning and I invited him in.  He was old-school and having no part of any antics of any type, and he wasn't happy.  He dropped off several small parcels and said he'd be back with the truck for the larger boxes.  He was kind of grumpy so I didn't remind him that Suzanne Buffam pays his wages and if she hadn't come through the door along with all the other poetry he wouldn't have a job.  I don't think hearing that would have made him happy.  But I did want to shout "poetry pays your wages!"

You can see what kind of cloud of unreasoned turmoil I live in.  Books like A Pillow Book are problem solvers.  When I read poetry this smart it clears the air for me.  When I read books of poetry like this it is like that first big breath of fresh air when you open the door in the morning, all of a sudden - you know you are awake and in the world.

I stood on our stoop and debated saying more to our tired mailman but could see he wasn't having the sort of day where he'd appreciate further debate.  Back in our office the staff were passing Buffam's A Pillow Book back and forth like a giant burner at a Grateful Dead concert.

...

     The pillow has a certain sacredness, reports Lafcadio Hearn, also

     known in some circles as Koizumi Yakumo, in his 1894 account

     of life in the Far East, Glimpses of Foreign Japan. Only this I know,

     that to touch it with the foot is considered very wrong: and that if

     it be kicked or moved thus even by accident, the clumsiness must

     be atoned for by lifting the pillow to the forehead with the hands,

     and replacing it in its original position respectfully, with the word

     "gomen," signifying I pray to be excused.

...

Suzanne Buffam's A Pillow Book is more fun than any book of poetry has a right to be.  Brilliant, funny, illuminating, clever and so on.  If all poets were this smart we'd be running the world.

Suzanne Buffam

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SUZANNE BUFFAM’s first collection of poetry, Past Imperfect, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry and was named a Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail. Her second collection of poetry, The Irrationalist, was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in international anthologies and publications, including Poetry, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Books in Canada, and Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets; her poetry has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Slovenian. She lives in Chicago.

BLURBS

"A Pillow Book is one of the most finely controlled, subtly structured books of Canadian poetry in recent memory..." 

     - Globe and Mail


"Suzanne Buffam’s third poetry collection, A Pillow Book (House of Anansi), takes the reader into the haze-filled world of the insomniac, turning the half-muddled thoughts of sleepless-ness into irreverent, sharp and meditative poems." 

     - Maisonneuve


"Buffam’s pillow may not inspire sleep, but it does inspire smart, relevant writing." 

     - Arc Poetry Magazine

Suzanne Buffam

reads from The Irrationalist

Video: Griffin Poetry Prize

houseofanansi.com

637

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

TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY - 4th Annual Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize

Today's book of poetry would like to announce the winner of the

4th Annual
Kitty Lewis 
Hazel Millar 
Dennis Tourbin 
Poetry Prize

Stuart Ross, A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. A Buckrider Book.  Wolsak and Wynn.  Hamilton, Ontario.  2016.

To see Today's book of poetry blog/review of  

A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/05/a-sparrow-came-down-resplendent-stuart.html

Stuart Ross

⧫⧫

Today's book of poetry would like to thank Christian McPherson and Cameron Anstee for their generous assistance and support.  Today's book of poetry would also like to thank every poet and publisher who sent us books, that's what we live for.

It's been a curious year, our staff has increased in happy size and we would all like to wish you the very best for the holiday season.

Our readership has grown.  Last month we had 20,000 readers.  Today's book of poetry has now posted 536 blogs/reviews.

The winner of the Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize is invited to have dinner at the home offices of Today's book of poetry.

Past winners of the Prize:
2013 - Nora Gould, I See My Love More Clearly From A Distance (Brick Books)
2014 - Kayla Czaga, For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions)
2015 - Eva H.D., Rotten Perfect Mouth (Mansfield Press)

We will return in January fully rested and full of piss and vinegar.

537

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.

Shiner - Eva H.D. (Mansfield Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Shiner.  Eva H.D.  Mansfield Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2016.
.

Eva H.D. is back and she has brought all her dark charms with her.  Her first book, Rotten Perfect Mouth, stormed through our offices a little more than a year ago (you can read that blog here:  http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2015/07/rotten-perfect-mouth-eva-hd-mansfield.html ) and tore up everything in sight.  Since we opened the doors for business Today's book of poetry has had over 1,500 new volumes of poetry land on our desk and we liked Rotten Perfect Mouth as much as any of them.

So you can understand why expectations were high when Shiner grumbled through the mail slot.   Lucky for us that Eva H.D. sets some very high standards for herself, there are no mimicking birds here.  Shiner is a completely apt description, these poems smack you up the side of the head whether you like it or not.  We wouldn't be the least surprised if they left a mark.

She even leaves some breadcrumbs, small trails of beauty.

Rocher Perce

Woke up and dawn was

slicing the starboard sky, with

the Rocher Perce to our port side. 

Made apple fritters for breakfast.

The dog curled up on the couch

next to me, nose to hind paws asleep,

torqued like a Mobius strip.

The simple, humming life.

Reading on the Reformation

in the dim glow.

The afternoon threw itself

forward like a jittery sprinter,

pitching and scending into dusk.

Blueberry pie in the oven.

Saw the lights of Rimouski

glitter at sunset like it was

somewhere else.

The riverlight

like a filament of gold

threaded through a young girl's

ear,

aging her.

The hold in the rock eyes us

in the night, from afar

while men of freighters

in Quebec City read dirty

magazines,

flip the luminous

pages that flash like morning

fins to greet us.

...

Eva H.D. spends considerable time and energy searching out and speculating over the forgiveness game.  These poems are pulled taut and strummed hard by tension even when they strive for a certain type of peace.  The search for tranquility isn't entirely futile but Eva H.D. is as suspicious about horse-piss promises as she is smitten by peaches.

Today's book of poetry really enjoyed Eva H.D.'s riffing on travelling across Canada.  We too love the idea of eating a bacon sandwich in every province.

The thing about Shiner is how complicit Eva H.D. makes the reader feel, she has an uncommon common touch that draws the reader in close.  Cleverly enough H.D. has added an instant connect device to most of these poems, you are inside them and involved before you knew you cared about Toronto, or baseball or wild salmon.

If Today's book of poetry had to distill Eva H.D.'s style, label it, we'd call it "vigorously hopeful despair."  This is a suspicious poet, doubtful and leery of our best intentions, doubtful and leery about her own.  And then along comes optimism.  It's in there like a twist of lemon in your drink.

Legion

There was a bottle of malt liquor at

the Legion Hall, the small town

Canadian church,

for small men from little towns

who like lager and history

and three-part harmony and falling

in love

as much as they hate bus rides and

yelling and dog dares and heights.

And falling in love, too,

that noisy, dizzying dog dare.

"We just didn't have enough

time," she said,

which is one way

of saying goodbye,

like pulling the plug

is a way of turning out lights

without touching them.

...

These poems burn.  Shiner affirms what anyone/everyone who read Perfect Rotten Mouth already knows, Eva H.D. is a poetry assassin.  These poems are killer.

Eva H.D.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eva H.D. lives and writes in Toronto. She recently won the Montreal International Poetry Prize for her poem “38 Michigans.”

BLURBS
“… the collection Rotten Perfect Mouth is a miraculous calling forth of melancholy, but drenched with dry wit, very Toronto and deeply musical. Poetry find of the year, easily.”
     —John Doyle, The Globe and Mail

“How does Eva H.D. write? Playfully, gamely: She understands that poetry can be—and can do—anything.”
     —George Elliott Clarke, The Chronicle Herald

“This poem—“38 Michigans”—is a quirky, intense elegy. It works so well, I think, because it makes fresh again an old and powerful basis of lament: one in which all the contours of ordinary reference and experience are forced into a new shape.”
     —Eavan Boland, judge’s citation on awarding the Montreal International Poetry Prize.

“These poems are so packed with energy and weird precise knowing that you almost don’t notice the cumulative emotional groundswell building… Today’s Book of Poetry and our entire staff could simply not recommend a book any higher than this one. It is instant required reading.”
     —Michael Dennis, Today’s Book of Poetry

mansfieldpress.net

495

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.

All The Gold Hurts My Mouth - Katherine Leyton (Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions)

Today's book of poetry:
All The Gold Hurts My Mouth.  Katherine Leyton.  Icehouse Poetry.  Goose Lane Editions.  Fredericton, New Brunswick.  2016.

Today's book of poetry figures Katherine Leyton must have been getting more than a tan at Al Purdy's old Ameliasburgh home.  These poems are rockets.  As the first resident of the Writer-in-Residence program at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-Frame, in the summer of 2014, Leyton must have been swatting mosquitoes and quiet summer illusions with equal fervor.

Old Al would have been thrilled to death to know that someone was putting his digs to good use.  I met him once or twice and am certain he would have heartily endorsed these poems.  

Richard Gere's Grand Piano

Here. This is it:

you're a waitress.

You bring people French toast

and bacon. You can't pay the Hydro bill.

I used to think of you as somebody

grand, like one of those pianos Edward

fucked Vivian on in Pretty Woman.

Maybe you are.

Maybe your greatest talent

is gleaming in empty foyers.

...

Leyton has a monster sense of humour and we certainly appreciate that around here, funny is good. The best kind of funny is true, Leyton nails that no problem.  But funny is just the tasting menu, something to get your blood running for the real meal.  Leyton's All The Gold Hurts My Mouth has a level of sexual tension boiling over the pages that is both erotic and political.  

Leyton seems to be sussing out the transitory nature of power and where it is rooted.  She tackles the big three:  LOVE  SEX  DEATH.

Al Purdy would approve, let us remember his own Sex & Death (McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1973).  Al knew then that there is nothing new under the sun and Leyton knows it now but it is the dance that sustains us and Katherine Leyton knows how to kick up the heels.

Small City

When I lived there I roamed shopping malls

on lunch break. They advertised Katy Perry

was coming. I sat in Starbucks obsessing.

The university kids couldn't tell

but the men on their computers could.

I puppeted my arms for them, my mouth.

One followed me home through a snowstorm.

A snowstorm won't stop me!

It was a declaration of psychopathy, like my moving

was a declaration of psychopathy. And that word

declaration, an icicle glinting in the infrequent sun,

on one of those days I felt we were living

in a farmhouse,

dinner fresh from the oven,

snow a violence spun for us,

like fate was a thing we would die doing.

...

Kathryn, our new Jr. Editor, said that she had a new heroine when she walked into this morning's reading.  That sent Milo, our senior tech, in a curious spin, had him sitting in the corner for the rest of the morning pouring over All The Gold Hurts My Mouth as though it were the Rosetta Stone.

The reading itself was great, Kathryn took the reins and held the floor.  There were no objections.

There is a small army of excellent young Canadian poets publishing at present, Katherine Leyton steps up onto the same inspiring mantel as those like Eva H.D., Kayla Czaga and Suzannah Showler. These ladies are tearing it up.

Today's book of poetry does not fear for the future of Canadian poetry.

Witness

I see this lady going door-to-door

with an armful of pamphlets.

I'd like to be that sure of anything.

At a funeral

my mother took me aside,

"I believe when I die I'm going up there."

She pointed to the stucco ceiling of the funeral home,

her other hand clutching a dry brownie

wrapped in a white doily.

"And all the people I love..."

she said it pleading-like, self-mocking,

too intelligent for God, like the rest of us.

As if I wouldn't want her to have that.

I want her to have that.

I sat next to a bouquet

on the car ride home,

its sick-sweet smell

like the thinning perms

that bobbed in the sparse pews.

I didn't know what to do

when they bowed their heads.

I kept my eyes on the bald minister,

who looked like 80's Florida,

and while everyone around me broke

down, I was on a plane to Miami.

...

Today's book of poetry won't be the only reader waiting on Katherine Leyton's second book.

Katherine Leyton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katherine Leyton was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-Frame in the summer of 2014. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including the Malahat Review, Hazlitt,the Globe and Mail, and the Edinburgh Review. She is also the founder of the highly unorthodox video poetry blog, HowPedestrian.ca. A native of Toronto, Leyton has lived in Rome, Montreal, Edinburgh, and Forlì.

BLURBS

"In this fierce debut, Leyton explores women as palaces and grand pianos, gleaming objects admired and shattered. Through her lyrically exuberent voice, whirring with musicality and subversive jabs, art becomes a looking glass. Just as 'women hum to drown their hunger,' these poems bring the salve of self-creation to their reader."

      - Cassidy McFadzean, author of Hacker Packer

"Leyton's voice is both enigmatic and unabashed, delving into the mysteries of selfhood while offering a vivid meditation on what it means to be a woman alive today. A fearless, urgent, and beautifully wrought debut."

     - Kerry-Lee Powell, author of Inheritance

Katherine Leyton

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Video: Howpedestrian

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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.

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Rotten Perfect Mouth - Eva H.D. (Mansfield Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Rotten Perfect Mouth.  Eva H.D..  Mansfield Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Eva H.D. is a conundrum.

I met her briefly at the book launch for Rotten Perfect Mouth here in Ottawa.  Eva H.D.'s reading that night was as bad as any I've ever been to - and I still loved it.  Couldn't help it.  Her casual disdain for the audience and the poetry reading process was palpable, obvious and clearly stated - and we still all loved it.

She has the same tarantula charm as Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday.  Crazy wisdom filtered through an eternally broken/bent heart.

What matters most is the startling poetry Eva H.D. writes.  And my, oh my, does this woman write up a storm.  Rotten Perfect Mouth had me yelling again.  My head runs out of places to contain my enthusiasm for writing like this.

Racing It

The sky never touches the ground but races it, forever and ever.
Amen.
I am driving us home from the church,
away from the last of summer, through the
funeral dusk. There is no bend in the road.
She is riding shotgun, exhausted, curling away
from awful truths. Blowing smoke from a crack
in the window, eyes closed.

We are surrounded by wheat and corn,
just like people always say.
I can feel the farness in my muscles.
I can feel the love in my teeth, humming.

When we get home, we can have a drink,
uncoil, not talk about it. This is what we
do best.

I want to stop the car, walk out into the fields,
and lie down on the ground, flat on my back.
I want to lie flat out, not feeling it,
until forever lets me on for the ride.

...

Today's book of poetry will put Rotten Perfect Mouth up against all comers today.  This poetry shines, I mean literally sparkles like fireworks in front of your eyes.

These poems intersect those tangent lines of cool, wise and charming.

I mean Miles Davis cool, I don't give a rat's ass cool.

Wise like Sharon Olds, wise like your smartest friend.

Charming, because fierce intelligence like this is always charming, whether Eva H.D. likes it or not.

Teenage Stuff Forever

You can continue doing this teenage stuff forever.
You can sit on the road in the perfect summer dark
and listen to a married man rail against the prison
he has built for himself. It's the same street where
you sat and smoked at fifteen, listening to a boy
describe his father's rage, the bruises, the lonely
why. They could be the same man. The man already
jealous of his toddling son, the boy cowering from
his father. It could be the same night, that June
damp, the desire to touch the face of someone beautiful
with your rotten, perfect mouth.

...

Damn it.  I am trying to put on the brakes, curb my enthusiasm but Rotten Perfect Mouth is in Nora Gould, Kayla Czaga, Sue Goyette class.

If you buy one book I recommend, and you SHOULD be buying ever single one of these books I recommend, you can start with this one.  Eva H.D. is not kidding around.  Rotten Perfect Mouth hits like the first frantic riff of Eric Clapton's Layla - and once you read these poems, the melody will stay with you for a long, long time.

Jerusalem Morning

I'm radiofree.
Wandering and orange as a flower,
pale as an orangeblossom,
fullstopped and transiting. Doves
in the gravel.

The cat is after a bird, claims Absal.
The bird is after, an afterthought
in the humming bushes,
a noise on the air that is not
an engine.

A love song to the cats, then
the hibiscus, the cyprus, the
stones.
To the pink plastic lighter
and the pink tracksuits
in the market and the half-eaten
pastries and the schoolgirls and the Gauloises.

A toast to the homeless man
at John's Pizza six years ago,
the Chinese characters like marble beads &
the jade about my neck.

God, it's perfect,
the pink blossoms,
the pink afternoon.
Crates of wine stacked
like pineapples,
the tale the muddy bank
of coffee tells
the china. I was here.
Remember me.

...

"Remember me"?  I dare you to try and forget.

These poems are so packed with energy and weird precise knowing that you almost don't notice the cumulative emotional groundswell building.

Eva H.D. wields a sledgehammer like a scalpel.  She isn't playing with the reader's emotions but she is sharing a complex palate of her own dismay and it is like riding a roller coaster of the heart designed with Edith Piaf aplomb.

Today's book of poetry and our entire staff could simply not recommend a book any higher than this one.  It is instant required reading.

Eva H.D.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eva H.D. lives and writes in Toronto.

mansfieldpress.net 

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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.