I Don't Know Do You - Roberto Montes

Today's book of poetry:  I Don't Know Do You.  Roberto Montes.  Ampersand Books. Gulfport, Florida.  2014.

"Sadness is capable of great acts of beauty".  Sometimes, all it takes is a line.  I read this line, I was hooked.  But there is no certainty here.  Everything Roberto Montes says is a question of one type or another.  His answers are questions as often as not.  His statements are questions.

We've all been in a room where there's a really smart guy/gal riffing brilliant, regardless of what they are talking about you find yourself attracted to their orbit.  Welcome to I Don't Know Do You.

Love Poem for Secret Weather

Do you really want me

to tell you about that night

on the mountain? How we slept

right through the snow?

Melted right to the placid jaw

of the earth? How it felt

in the mountain's cheek?

Two pebbles burning underneath

the riverbed? How the river

was boiling because of us,

because of our opinions

of the sky? What keeps it

way up there? And why

hasn't anyone done anything

about it? How even in sleep

I saw you settling toward me?

Light a weight directing us

from inside our trunks?

...

These poems are not surrealist, although you might get that impression, they are hyper-real.  They have the feeling of authentic moments, those myriad disconnected and disjointed seconds that make up the reality of time.  

Breaking News

I have decided to give up

everything and take up ending

matches in the sink.

They will discover

my head in the marshes.

They will discover

they do not like my voice

until it is inside them.

Yes, I am taken. Yes, I am a grocery

filled with bees. Pollinating

what you think of March.

Pollinating the empty basket.

I have the confidence of a child

fainting as he climbs the fence.

Therefore I am attractive

to the earth. Consider this

when you rub dirt in my ears and hair.

When you let me know

you've never been in love.

Bullshit. Everyone's been in love.

then I fall violently in love

and have to make out

with everything, even my tormentors.

The laundromats. The cul-de-sac

circling my sternum. The way we wet

snuffs the cellar of an afternoon.

No, I don't have a job.

No, I don't have a reason

to walk through the development.

But anyway I walk. I want to mean

beyond myself. I want

to seed the fearful gladiola.

Because anyone who is unafraid

will never understand

how warm a vowel can be

as you hang four-fingered off

the roof. How I am called

noiselessly down. How I pitch

Earl Grey into the streets.

...

Montes can sound lyrical, romantic, Kurt Vonnegutish, splendid, mad, magical and mystifying — all in short order.

In some respects these poems read like a popular amusement park ride.  You never know quite which direction these poems are about to throw you, but you've paid for the experience and are certain to enjoy the ride.

Why We Should Get Married

November stumbles out of my mouth

and into yours. You take my heart's wet mop

and dance with it. You participate

in a field of starlings. You have many talents!

You use them all against me. You stay

up all night planning my downfall.

From what? this pitcher of azaleas?

I'm best friends with azaleas. Joke's on you.

The joke is a fat Chinese lantern

lighting up your sternum.

Soon our chests are buzzing

the whole time at the supermarket.

Soon every last petal is carbonating

underneath our tongues. My startled scalp

occurs to you. It is perfect for holding

things aloft. You are sleepless

all over the brunt of it. You build a lake house

on top of it. We invite the outside in.

We shake hands with all our neighbors.

We are polite and not on fire and so

are forgotten by everyone.

We don't know what to do about this.

We find a creek and we tiptoe

strangely into it. We swallow water

and bite glistening salmon chunks of air.

We follow each other all the way home.

I surprise you with a poppy field

in bed. You surprise me by waking up

on fire. For the rest of our lives

we put toasted poppy seeds on

each other's tongues. It feels

like I am rolling down a secret hill.

I am happy. The sky stands up.

...

I can't pretend to understand all that is going on in these poems and the examples I've chosen don't necessarily best illustrate the full range that Montes lays out here.  Montes range of interests and alacrity will offer all the intrigue and challenge a reader needs.  But there is nothing wrong with a challenge.  These highly entertaining poems offer as many questions as they solve, nothing wrong with that either.

Both playful and deadly serious, Roberto Montes stakes a serious claim.

www.ampersand-books.com

Handfuls of Bone - Monica Kidd

Today's book of poetry:  Handfuls of Bone.  Monica Kidd.  Gaspereau Press.  Kentville, Nova Scotia.  2012

Applying the trade

The flight attendant is magnificent.
An insouciant scarf and a knot of blonde,
a cockeyed pillbox. The rapture in it.
She deploys an atomizer, moves two fingers
to the brows, the hatpin — the hatpin —
then a wand of lip gloss, battening down.
She is Jell-O and Bonnie & Clyde.
She is pink martinis. She is Frigidaire.
We are small and silent daughters
zipped at nightfall into footed pajamas,
sheltering in her beauty.

Face securely fastened, she buckles
into a four-point and tugs her skirt.
Fixes her gaze somewhere
well beyond us.

...

Monica Kidd is all eyes-wide-open observational.  These snare drum tight poems are as crisp as winter weather.

It's almost too easy to say, seeing that Kidd sidelines as a doctor, but these poems read prescription clear, only what is necessary.

And then, just when you think that is true — it isn't.  The journalist/reporter/researcher head of the multi-faceted Hydra that must rest where most of us have a noggin' rears into its' voice with a depth of compassion and moral certainty rarely squeezed out of poems.

March thunder

A line of boots thumping
a set of reels. Bodies
line the Legion  Hall,
buttressing the walls,
the night outside bitter,
the yellow moon limping
toward the horizon.
Anita's contralto sorrow:
another sailor lost

and now more again,
Swallowed by industry,
their woman at lunch
counters, keening. Oil-
patch pickups idling,
waiting for news. The
chomping certainty of
rescue turned recovery.

August gale or chopper
turned Icarus in the
traitor sky: it's all the
same. Our misery,
wandering. Her voice
the way home.

     March 12, 2009

...

This is a very fine set of parlour tricks that Monica Kidd has at her disposal but she never wastes them, or lets the reader down.  Poem after poem her sure-footed voice strikes the right note and the result is flat-out hard-nosed excellent poetry.

Risk factors for hemorrhagic pancreatitis

The bleeding wouldn't stop was the problem. The big
bulk of the man on the gurney rushing from ICU oozing
blood in places it shouldn't. Surgeons hoping to tie
whatever needed tying.

Like trying to stop gravity.

He kept bleeding. They stopped counting at twenty
towels. Packed him full and taped him down, hard.

What I remember is the tips of his fingers calloused
from too many job sites, too many winters. His blood
spreading over a sheet. Someone whispering.

Couldn't afford the time off work to get the surgery.
A sick wife and a kid at home.

The way he died because he was poor.

...

Monica Kidd is not shy but she sure can dig into those difficult places people don't want to discuss.  "Instructions for disposal" is but one of a dozen jaw-dropping slaps to the senses.

2070 miles

2070 miles on a scooter
to place my hand
on this stone and that.
To feel for a pulse
and find one answering
faintly to my fingers.
History is whispered here.

2070 miles: a long white flag
surrendering to the wind.

...

There are love poems in here as well, in fact it might be all love poems.

I copied this from the back cover:

     Monica Kidd grew up on the rural Alberta prairies.  She completed a B.Sc. at the
     University of Calgary, an M.Sc. at Queen's University, attended medical school at
     Memorial University and is now a practising physician and writer.  She is the
     author of two novels (Beatrice and The Momentum of Red), a book of non-fiction
     (Any Other Woman: An Uncommon Biography) and a collection of poetry (Actualities).
     Her short experimental films have shown in Atlantic Canada and in Amsterdam. She
     has worked as a seabird biologist and as a reporter for CBC Radio, where her news
     items and documentaries have won numerous awards.  She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland,
     with her husband and children.

Handfuls of Bone is a book you WILL enjoy.  This particular book another example of why Gary Dunfield and Andrew Steeves are known for the most attractive books in the country.


You can hear Monica read from her first book, Actualities, here:  http://www.authorsaloud.com/poetry/kidd.html

www.gaspereau.com

Cuban Haircut

Normal business and blog will return tomorrow.

For the past several days I've been in Cuba, but I took lots of books and am ready to roll.

In the meantime, one of the things I always try to do in a new country is to buy some poetry and get a haircut.  I was able to do both.

On our first day in Havana I found a plaza with dozens of second hand booksellers.  Find of the day:

Jose Maria Heredia - A Cuban Poet at Niagara Falls (in English and Spanish).

Was also able to find a bilingual edition of Pablo Armando Fernandez - Learning to Die.

Thanks for your patience, see you tomorrow.

Michael Dennis

Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel - Lenore Kandel

Today's book of poetry:  Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel.  Lenore Kandel.  North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, California, USA.  2012.

Lenore Kandel's Collected Poems starts with her absolutely incendiary The Love Book which was published in 1966.  Most of us don't think of Kandel when we think of the Beats but no one was braver, more daring or more honest than Lenore Kandel.  When you think of contemporary poetry in the United States you better start believing that Kandel was plowing the road for the future.

The Love Book was banned as obscene but when read today it is transcendentally illuminating and still stunningly vibrant for its' joyous candor, optimism and freedom.

To Fuck with Love      Phase III

to fuck with love

to love with all the heat and wild of fuck

the fever of your mouth devouring all my secrets and my alibis

leaving me pure  burned into oblivion

the sweetness UNENDURABLE

         mouth     barely touching    mouth

                      nipple to nipple we touched

                      and were transfixed

                      by a flow of energy

                      beyond anything I have ever known

                      we touched

                      and two days later

                      my hand embracing your semen-dripping cock

                      AGAIN!

                      the energy

                      indescribable

                      almost   unendurable

the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon

          transcended

the circle     momentarily complete

                                                     the balance of forces

                                                            perfect

                      lying together, our bodies slipping into love

                      that never have slipped out

                      I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust

                      the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars

and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven

                      the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria

                      the lust of hermaphroditic deities doing

                      inconceivable things to each other and 

                      SCREAMING DELIGHT over the entire universe

                                                                                         and beyond

                      and we lie together, our bodies wet and burning, and

                      we WEEP    we WEEP   we WEEP the incredible tears

                      that saints and holy men shed in the presence

                      of their own incandescent gods

I have whispered love into every orifice of your body

                      as you have done

                               to me

my whole body is turning into a cuntmouth

 my toes my hands my belly my breasts my shoulders my eyes

 you fuck me continually   with your tongue you look

                      with your words with your presence

                      we are transmuting

                      we are as soft and warm and trembling

                      as a new gold butterfly

                              the energy

                              indescribable

                              almost      unendurable

at night     sometimes     I see our bodies glow

...

In 1967 Kandel published Word Alchemy which contained the longer poem First They Slaughtered The Angels.  It is a beautiful song of protest.  During this same period Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg and Brautigan were all cutting their teeth and breaking new ground, San Francisco was the center of the poetry universe and Kandel was blistering the ears off everyone in town.

Eros/Poem

Praise be to young Eros who fucks all the girls!

Only the gods love with such generosity

sharing beatitude with all

Praise be to Eros! who loves only beauty

and finds it everywhere

Eros I have met you and your passing goddesses

wrapped in a haze of lovelust as true as any flower

that blooms its day and then is lost across the wind

I have seen your eyes lambent with delight

as you praised sweet Psyche's beauty with your loving tongue

and then have seen them sparkle with that same deep joy

as other tender ladies lay between your hands

Praise be to Eros! who can hoard no love

but spends it free as water in a golden sieve

sharing his own soft wanton grace

with all who let his presence enter in

faithless as flowers, fickle as the wind-borne butterfly

Praise be to Eros, child of the gods!

who loves only beauty            and find it

everywhere

...

Kandel writes with such lustful ardour and a feverish sexuality that it is easy to forget that this was society altering, female empowering, revolutionary stuff.  In 1960's America Lenore Kandel was a siren call of freedom.  She might have been the most honest voice of her generation, she certainly was one of the bravest.

These early poems are almost fifty years old and they read as urgently and vividly as the day they were published.

This Collected Poems includes poems published in chapbooks before 1960 as well as material from small magazines, broadsides and previously unpublished material.  Although her participation as a public poet diminished after the 60's Kandel continued to write up until her death in 2009.

Again and again Lenore Kandel shocks the reader with the freshness, fervor and vitality of her poetry.  These thoroughly modern poems will, over time, cement Lenore Kandel not just as one of the better Beat poets but an essential voice of her time.  Few, if any, of the Beats sound as modern today.

Phoenix Song

then I shall never grow up

not if child means a sense of wonder

and my head in the wind rain rain

I will not wither in the blaze of time

but prove myself a phoenix

                     (ashes like powdered stars)

born again     and again    and again

...

Kandel was born in 1932 in New York City, spent most of her life in San Francisco where she died in 2009.

Lenore Kandel, poet, talks with Carlos Fresneda and Isaac Hernandez, illustrated from a beautiful collection of photos from her life. This video was shown at her memorial. Photos and audio ©2012 IsaacHernandez.com, All Rights Reserved.

The Harmonist at Nightfall, Poems of Indiana - Shari Wagner

Today's book of poetry:  The Harmonist at Nightfall, Poems of Indiana.  Shari Wagner.  Harmony Series.  Bottom Dog Press.  Huron, Ohio, U.S.A.  2013.


The Harmonist at Nightfall, Poems of Indiana is exactly as advertised.  Within these pages Shari Wagner gives a physical, cultural and historical portrait of her home state.  Not exactly set yourself on fire material at first glance, but I've always believed the subject was less important than the poet's vision, that a good poet can make a platform out of every subject and Shari Wagner is a very good poet.

That sounds like such a back-handed compliment and clumsy as well.  For this reader poems about nature and history are not my first fodder.   Wagner doesn't worry about stereotypes, when she is describing Indiana you can smell the earth.  Wagner is writing poems about place, her place in the world, and articulating the theory that her place, like yours, is as vibrant, alive and important, as any other.

Inside Stone

Bluespring Caverns

The farmer never suspected
that when he fenced in
was the surface of something larger
till that morning in the early
1940s, after a thunderstorm
when he couldn't find his cows.
The pond where they'd jostle
to drink was an empty basin
he pondered with hands shoved
deep into his pockets. On the bared
slope, he spied a sinkhole,
and his lantern swept the vaulted
cavern, the cut of a subterranean
river that coursed for miles
with no one watching. It wound
past rock with velvet folds—
like the dress a girl once wore,
a stranger held at a winter dance,
her hair still damp with snow
and brown eyes clear as the water's
depth. Did they kiss beneath the mistletoe
or was it a dream plowed under
till it came out right? Waist-deep
in a loneliness he'd never known
was there, he called his black-hooved
Jerseys and heard in the distance
what might have been their bells.

...

You can see the Indiana soil, the very earth beneath Wagner's fingernails, you can hear the song of Indiana in her voice.  But this isn't patriotic flag waving and marching bands.  This is Wagner giving voice to the land, to nature, Wagner is the Harmonist in question and these nature poems hum the land electric.

But there are more than nature poems in The Harmonist at Nightfall.  Karen Kovacik, another Indiana poet, called The Harmonist at Nightfall a "field guide and travelogue" and she was right on the money.

Amish Hymn

If you catch its cadence
in the night, in a slow

and somber rain,
then by Sunday morning

hoof clip will have carried
the rhythm further,

a refrain you'll follow
down a road where bullfrogs

drone bass notes
from the stiff bur-reeds

of a creek.
You're getting closer

the moment you grasp
wind's lyrics in wheat:

how nothing it touches
is ever along. Field

meets road in a swell
of bellflowers or the rasp

of ragweed and spurge.
You're immersed

in the blue hymnbook
of the sky, in the old

wheeling of starlings
over a barn, and you know

that today is a church
with its door left ajar.

...

These poems are not just a psalm about the natural world and natural wonders of Indiana but they also cover history, culture, religion, rumour and legend.

Shari Wagner honours the history of Indiana and many of the luminaries who carved its' story but these poems work because of Wagner's sure footing, her nimble footwork.

During the course of events in these poems the Dali Lama floats a scarf over the grave of John Dillinger, the moonshine soused Etheridge Knight is lamented, President Harrison's final resting place doubles as a darkened rendezvous for daring lovers.  The sound a waterfall makes is the sound of a billion bison.  Sheri Wagner romps historical, waxes eloquent and writes very fine poems.

Last Pilgrimage

Pine Hills Nature Preserve

I will go, when I am old,
to a box canyon
where ice and water
have chiseled the earth
down to its bones.

I will touch my youth
in the blue shadows
of Honeycomb Rock
and in the emptiness
where a mill once stood,
its waterwheel turning
in my head.

I will quiet that wheel.

Then walk into the white hive
of a dream some glacier
pulled down from the North
and balance in the silence
on Devil's Backbone,
a hundred feet above
two creeks sidewinding
toward each other.

On that smooth spine
I'll kneel among etchings
of passenger pigeons
engraved when clouds
of their bodies swept
through the sky.

I'll listen for their wings,
sleigh bells mixed
with thunder.

...

"Sleigh bells mixed with thunder", that line knocked me out.  It was a trick Sheri Wagner pulled off frequently during The Harmonist at Nightfall.  This book was a complete happy surprise and a great read.

And just as an aside, I now cannot get the old R. Dean Taylor song "Indiana Wants Me" out of my head.

R. Dean Taylor  -  Indiana Wants Me

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