Blackbird Song — Randy Lundy (University of Regina Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Blackbird Song.  Randy Lundy.  University of Regina Press.  Oskana Poetry & Poetics.  Regina,  Saskatchewan.  2018.

What Today's book of poetry sees most, when we rumble through the pages of Randy Lundy's sublime Blackbird Song, is optimism.  These poems have a knowing bigger than our puny understanding, an entire belief system fueling kindness.  What Randy Lundy does in Blackbird Song is nothing less than reconciliation with the earth, directed by heartsong.

Randy Lundy is a Cree poet so why do I keep thinking of Li Po, the Poet Knight-Errant?  Randy Lundy's poetry makes me think of Robert Bly because these poems are based in the natural world.  Lundy doesn't write like Li Po or Robert Bly but he writes with the same certainty, the knowledge is real.

Happiness

          after Jane Kenyon

It's true what the dying woman said,

there's no accounting for happiness.

No matter the good will you have spent

trying the patience of family and friends,

some of whom have died. Never mind

that every time you dig deep in your pockets

you find those cold, bright coins

of anger and regret.

Sparrows gather daily at the feeder

you have hung in the elm tree in the backyard

and at the earthen bowl you will fill with water

for their raucous bathing.

Sleek, bright wings glisten in the sun.

They have no shame.

💫💫💫

In Randy Lundy world there is time for contemplation and consideration, these aren't meditations, yet.  But in some future world where reasonable people reside, Today's book of poetry could see Blackbird Song as a cornerstone text.

Today's book of poetry is a city boy.  Not a New York City boy, but I grew up with asphalt under my feet.  Lundy, almost instantly, convinces the reader that they inhabit a world only understandable by being in step with nature.

Come to think of it, other than the short mention of a train in one of his poems, the inclusion of an axe and a cigarette in another, Lundy gives us no evidence of civilizations marring of his resplendent nature.  Lundy's world begins and ends in the natural world beyond roofs and ceilings.

Cypress Hills

Here the trees hold the stars

in their spheres. This neither a metaphor,

nor a clever trick. It is simply what to fear

from wind when the cliffs step forward

fall into emptiness.

There is no need for you

to quiet your mind, to shrink your soul

like a drought-dormant root to fit

the coulee's begging bowl.

The coyote and buffalo rubbing stone

pay no heed. The restless dead

wander through pine shadows muttering,

unable to hear your desperate invocations.

Even if they could, they would not pause

but simply vanish into the moon-soaked night

like the white-tailed deer on gleaming hooves

stepping into the mist and darkness, leaving

opposing crescent glyphs in wet earth.

Constellation after constellation turning

on the spears of the trees.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry believes that Blackbird Song is a celebration and that's how we played it with this morning's reading.  We didn't want to appropriate any one's anything but we did give thanks to the maker of all things with a little tobacco smoke before starting in.

Tomas and Frieda dropped by again this morning so we were sure to get them in the reading line-up.

Randy Lundy's poems read more like good prayers, mantra's for future progress, songs for souls deeply attached to the earth under foot.  These poems feel the liturgy, a guide to new rituals, new empowerment.  Most importantly to Today's book of poetry; they embrace the earth and come back future hopeful.

Another Season

Buds on the mountain ash this spring,

a green paler than you have ever seen.

Sunlight, blackbird singing.

What more could you ask, friend?

Pilgrim, what more?

💫💫💫

Blackbird Song is a book of poetry you will always treasure.  These poems are as ageless as the blue, blue sky we hope to see every morning.

Randy Lundy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Randy Lundy is a member of the Barren Lands (Cree) First Nation. He has published two previous collections of poetry, Under the Night Sun and Gift of the Hawk. His work has been widely anthologized. He lives in Pense, Saskatchewan.

BLURBS

“Lundy has entered the place where the masters reside. His poems join the shades that walk among them. There aren’t many people who get to that place and sometimes it can feel very lonely there, but the masters are saved by the brilliant and humble work they have done, their poems the crevices in our lives where the light shines through." 

     – Patrick Lane, author of Washita

“Randy Lundy’s poems bring forward the spirit of his Cree ancestry, and place our species humbly among the creatures of Earth—who are all observed with deep reverence and perceptive care.” 

     – Don McKay, author of Strike/Slip

“This is the book of poems I’ve been waiting for … His poems burn us, feed us, and make us feel beloved even if we have been broken. Language, as he uses it, holds us and leads us to a place where we can mourn and pray and wonder.” 

     – Lorna Crozier, author of What the Soul Doesn’t Want

uofrrpress.ca/poetry

713

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.

Because - Nina Lindsay (Sixteen Rivers Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Because.  Nina Lindsay.  Sixteen Rivers Press.  San Francisco, California.  2016.

Nina Lindsay writes beautiful poems.  In Because Lindsay may be simultaneously contemplating the end of days and the proper mix for scone batter or the theft of a stuffed animal from the Oakland Public Library and how that might be a gesture of love.  Where we find Lindsay is far less important than what Lindsay finds for us.

These poems have a particularly fine glow to them, polished but lived in, precise not pedantic.  Lindsay writes some entertaining verse.

Because

After Brodsky

The song was there before the story

The clay in veins before the vessel

The ideal before the double-cross

The destination before the crash

The path worn down before the road

The pattern before setting stone

The urge was there before the flower

The wave before anything went under

The crystal formed before the snow

The embrace before the word for cold

...

Joy is a rare commodity in poetry, but it is readily available in the pages of Because.  Today's book of poetry suggests that Nina Lindsay is a pragmatic realist most the time and yet she has found a way to give these poems considerable and optimistic light.  

This morning's reading was held in the garden just outside our office.  Bright sunshine filled the sky this morning in Ottawa and these suckers rang out like welcomed birdsong even though there were still a few wine bottles left on the table from last nights revelry.  

Last night while K and I were inspecting wine glasses a wasp crawled around the neck of one of the bottles of red and then had gone in for a drink.  It was an almost full bottle so we decanted it and the wasp into a wide-mouthed glass.  The wasp hadn't gone under yet and although he was wobbly he was able to hang onto the offered garden shears of life.  Set him up on the wide wooden railing and let him drink/dry off.  After a few moments he kind of shudder stepped to his belly and dropped off his feet.  We thought he might be a goner.  Ten minutes of hard sun later he scampered to his wasp knees and startled to air his wings.  A few minutes after that he took off like a helicopter, like an elevator, flying straight up.  And that's how these poems work, a little wine, and then flight.

Poetry Is That

Prayer is that which conveys a message to God, who is either known or knowing, more or less

by definition. Poetry is that which conveys a message to a stranger.

--G.C. Waldrep

Put God aside, your glass of wine: someone is knocking at the door.

The late light is pressing them against it,

late, for April, and warm--

after a week of storms it came out falteringly, then stronger,

like a mezzo-soprano reaching full throttle.

So: the sun, the stranger, and there are birds

singing over supper, wisteria hanging full and drawn to earth,

neighbors crouched in shadows planting annuals from plastic 

     containers.

And if you like to pretend to be impervious to the advances of 

     spring,

at least take joy in the pretension

and joy in the declination of the dark

and the richness of dream that the dark produces.

It has something, still, to impart,

the part you most need, the dark part that spins,

so that the light spins off it, the minutes, the heat,

the nectar, nasturtiums, pollen, fennel,

steam from hung laundry,

blossoms blocking gutters,

loved ones doing dishes, chopping ginger,

bartenders paring gem-like ribbons of peel,

bus drivers pulling levers, bandmates returning amplifiers,

carpenters writing thank-you notes on yellow legal pads,

fathers clipping nails, jewelers crimping gold,

judges tending reservoirs of doubt,

children breaking sticks in the last of the light,

the unconsoled coming home,

and the stranger at the door:

still knocking,

soon to be either known or knowing,

and you: who are present, who are with them, who answers.

...

Lindsay contemplates post Katrina New Orleans by channeling Li Po, offers us up a poem about one house looking for another house with matrimonial interest, insists on upending our expectations by giving us "mistranslations" at whim, even a series of "Mistranslations of Animal Riddles," and writes the loveliest love poems to/about her husband.  This is a good thing.  Poetry should open doors we had yet to perceive.

Today's book of poetry was made enthusiastically happy by reading Because.  If you had any idea of what a miserable old contrarian I was you would see the magic in that statement.  

In Our Warm Tree House of Evening, You Stood

Before the Undone Dishes and I Answered the Door

Until I answered the door,

rain blew against the house.

I answered its perplexing questions, and it left.

We imagined the dishes done. We imagined our meal again.

Unguarded,

the single pair of us in our floating house.

I sat and watched you stand before the undone dishes.

I flattered you with familiar phrases, I put my hands in your back

     pockets.

We uncomplicated the quilts. We stacked the beams. You sat by me

and unlaced my three levels. We understood, unbuilt,

repaired ourselves from spine to elbows. We lay back to back.

Unseated, in our unaccomplished,

unfamiliared, familiar bodies.

...

Nina Lindsay speaks so lovingly about love that everyone here at Today's book of poetry is jealous of her Oakland husband.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, and Milo, our head tech, were all lovey-dovey after this morning's read.  I told Kathryn that TBOP would need our copy of Because back for the office collection.  Almost certain I heard her mutter something like "not likely" but that couldn't be true for she is not the insolent type.  Besides, I know where Kathryn and Milo have their poetry bookcase.  

Because was thoroughly enjoyed here at Today's book of poetry, apparently enough to warrant theft because I just saw Kathryn leave with it under her arm.

Nina Lindsay

(Photo by Aya Brackett)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nina Lindsay’s work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry International, the Colorado Review, Fence, Rattle, and many other journals, and has been awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Nina also writes children’s literary criticism and reviews for Kirkus, The Horn Book Magazine, School Library Journal, and others. She grew up in Oakland, California, where she lives today, and works for the Oakland Public Library.

BLURB
Nina Lindsay’s Because is beautiful work. The poems pick through the things of the world, her world, exposing the unseen and intensifying the seen. They question what she calls “our multifrond uncertainties and errors” and “hesitant happiness.” She negotiates with great poise the push-pull of darkness and light, presence and absence, waking consciousness and the dream life. The familiar becomes, in her telling, unfamiliar and fraught. “February’s dust is rapturous,” she says. The poems, too, even in their melancholies, are rapturous.”

      –W. S. Di Piero

sixteenrivers.org 

496

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.