Bone Light — Yasmin Belkhyr (Akashic Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Bone Light.  Yasmin Belkhyr.  New-Generation African Poets.  Akashic Books.  Brooklyn, New York.  2017.

Yasmin Belkhyr's first poems hit you like a sequence of surrealist dreams — but in these dreams, enough is familiar to the reader that reasonable assumptions can be made.

Bone Light is where hearts get ripped out of your dreams.  Not romantic love-hearts; bloody muscles pulsing red, hot and wet.  Yasmin has seen the chicken clucking shortly before being introduced to the pot, the red meat walking by moments before hitting the grill.  These poems, in themselves, are not metaphor but fact.

Belkhyr's youthful persona is a presence in Bone Light as is a shimmering beginning to the first calls of sensuality.  But Belkhyr has a bigger purpose in mind.  These poems bridge continents and cultures; Morocco is in these poems, Yasmin is from Morocco, but so is America.

In these poems America represents both heaven and hell, escape and misfortune, Mecca and main street.  Bone Light fights against stereotypes but America is always going to be the promised land, always going to be an evil empire.

Interlude with Forgotten Myth, or,

Portrait of Ibrahim's Daughter

I have a recurring dream in which my father breaks the neck of every pigeon

in the park. I help: a good daughter. I snatch them from the air & tear out the

feathers. Bloody. In the stories, there was a king named Ibrahim & he loved

his god. No one calls me foreign but I know that's what they mean. In the

stories, girls like me sweat out the fevers, drop dirty guns in the trash chute.

We rip the rabbit's heart right out of its fucking chest. All the red-soaked

skin under our fingernails. All I do is think about stories. About history, or

his story, or her story, or my story. They're all the same story really. Someone

always ends up holding something mangled.

💫💫💫

"Someone always ends up holding something mangled."- Belkhyr

That's a line Today's book of poetry wants to remember.  Maybe even borrow.

Today's book of poetry loved how these short prose poems performed.  In concise form with a language collected from several shores Belkhyr dropped poetry bomb after poetry bomb until our score card ran out of spaces for check marks.  Yasmin Belkhyr reached blast velocity with the first poem in this splendid collection and never took her hand off of the throttle.

Yasmin Belkhyr has taken some of the titles in Bone Light from the sacred text of the Quran, others from the mouths of Moroccan women of experience.  Today's book of poetry sees no dogmatic pretense behind any of these slick poems.  Belkhyr makes her blind turns with her foot on the gas and a tight grip, fingers splayed, on the hand-brake.

Laylat Al-Qadr

I don't own any mirrors. In sleep, I scrape ticks off the windows. Once, a bird

startled itself into the apartment and I was alone. If I throw a nickel off the

bridge, I'm thinking about my niece. While the city slept, sound dripped slow

down the street. An unnatural thing. The festering mess to suddenly damped

and quiet. None of the wounded dogs moaned. None of the children woke

curled around ghosts. During the day, I wore a loose dress and bought pastries

from a bakery and thought of all the people I'd like to touch. At night, I 

imagined the ways I could sink. My little fears and aches, the stupid rust in

my chest. Define: daughter. Define: obligation. Define: heartless. I swear, I'd

be better if I could. The girl was named Rumisa and I read to her in English

and that's all you need to know.

💫💫💫

Today's morning read was a typical early Monday morning fiasco.  Thankfully Yasmin Belkhyr's taught and tender poems brought out the best in each of us.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, jumped to the lead and started assigning poems, which was perfect.  Someone has to light the fire.

Yasmin Belkhyr reminds Today's book of poetry how much we really do not know about Africa, Morocco, women.  Belkhyr and the other poets (Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Mary-Alice Daniel, Chekwebe O. Danladi, Len Bezawork Gronlund, Ashley Makue, Momtaza Mehri, Famia Nkansa, Ejiofor Ugwu, chimwemwe Undi) from The New Generation African Poets series are going to clear some of that up for us.

& We Have Never Owned Casablanca

It's hard to find work, a man on the train tells me. He asks if I am married,

if I have a boyfriend. I'm seeing someone, I lie. We are cramped together in

the doorway, late August, the train a bullet streaking to the airport. My

suitcases are between us, his mother sitting beside the door. Miles sweep by,

sea becoming country becoming city becoming sea again. Here, it all leads to

water. They're building a new city. Between Kenitra and Mehdia,he says. Piece

by piece, the cities reach for each other. The train jolts: he grabs my arm, steadies

me, horribly intimate. I could build, he says, but my hands are too soft. Outside

the window, a flash of children chase chickens in a grassless yard. Do you like

strong men? He has a stain on his shirt and moist palms. His mother smiles

at me, squeezes her son's arm. She offers me a warm date, a firm strawberry.

I think you are very beautiful, he says, What is your name? The train slows to a

stop: outside, the waves thrash against the rocks, beating them smooth.

💫💫💫

Yasmin Belkhyr can sound like she is treading carefully, walking softly, but that's just the invitation, the ticket in.  Once you are in Belkhyr world she will rattle your cage.  Bone Light is a delight for poetry addicts like Today's book of poetry.  We can't wait to see what she does next.

Yasmin Belkhyr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yasmin writes. She was born in Salé, Morocco, grew up in NYC, and now lives and studies in Amherst, Massachusetts. You can read some of her published poems here. Her chapbook Bone Light was published in 2017 by the African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books. In 2013, Yasmin founded Winter Tangerine, an independent literary and arts journal. She now acts as the Editor-in-Chief. She is also the founder and EIC of Honeysuckle Press.

BLURBS
"Across dreamscapes, across landscapes of Morocco and America, across layers of memory and emotion, Belkhyr deftly writes through complicated imagery and reflections.... In the compact space of a chapbook, Bone Light demonstrates Belkhyr as a bold and necessary voice."
     — Emily Corwin, Monstering Magazine

"What is delightful is how quickly the poet establishes her sense of layered narrative in the book and the effect it exerts on her poems. Throughout the book, Belkhyr influences through this kind of manipulation, which transforms her poems into vehicles that draw readers in, as water is attracted to travel through every crevice it ultimately passes."
     — Bruce Arlen Wasserman, New York Journal of Books 

Yasmin Belkhyr

2014 National Young Arts Week

Video: Young Arts

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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.

Becoming Trans-Parent - One Family's Journey of Gender Transition — Annette Langlois Grunseth (Finishing Line Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Becoming Trans-Parent - One Family's Journey of Gender Transition.  Annette Langlois Grunseth.  Finishing Line Press. Georgetown, Kentucky.  2017.

Here's the thing; these poems are the written record of Annette Langlois Grunseth coming to terms with the transition of her lovely son Eric into her lovely daughter Anna.

Brave, frank, unencumbered, direct, easy to digest, right out there, true blue, honest, fierce.  Yep, all of those apply to this journey and these poems.  Somehow Grunseth has fashioned Becoming Trans-Parent out of the upset and turmoil of a gender switch in her immediate family.  Grunseth never flinches and clearly some of that has rubbed off on her daughter.

You could, if you wanted, see these poems as an elegant exercise in empathy.  But Today's book of poetry would rather posit that Grunseth was enlightened by the experience of her daughter "coming out."  The experience was life and perception changing for everyone involved.

The Child I Carried

Kicks and turns danced in my belly

I fest certain of a daughter.

Dad and I sang lullabies through my stretched skin,

saw a foot crease along the equator of this miraculous globe.

Waiting, waiting, until that day,

when I labored and pushed you into waiting hands,

thrilled, yet surprised, to hear the doctor say,

You have a son.

You grew up a sensitive soul, asking philosophical questions.

As a teen you chose computers, math, science and sitting with the girls.

The boys teased you for giggling,

yet to us, you seemed more geek that girl.

Your womanhood stunned us,

but when I told you

I thought I had carried a girl

you looked like I had just given you the moon.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry believes that we recognize true love when we see it and clearly Annette Langlois Grunseth's poems are a loving gesture for her daughter.  But Today's book of poetry would only be interested in taking you into Becoming Trans-Parent if we liked the poems.  Today's book of poetry liked these poems very much.

There is a desperate need for the sort of reason, affirmation and love that Grunseth is pedalling.  Grunseth tells a good story, swings a good punch line.  There is a political agenda on every page of Becoming Trans-Parent and Today's book of poetry is just fine with that.  Today's book of poetry has always wanted to be a positive support to any/all members of the LBGTQIA citizens of the world.  We also realize that as we become more fully aware and informed we are better prepared.  

Today's book of poetry does want to be pro-LBGTQIA and we invited any of our loyal readers from these (or any other) communities to help inform our staff and monitor us if there is something we've missed.  Today's book of poetry wants to be more inclusive.

Annette Grunseth has blazed a trail unfamiliar to most of us and these poems show how she has managed it with grace and candor and love.

When Your Child Comes Out

I often think of the day you were born when

I held my sweet boy for the first time,

marveling where did you come from?

It's a lot to take in, when your child comes out.

As I go upstairs to bed I stare at old photos in the hall,

your short-cropped hair, striped shirt, toddler jeans,

that little-boy smile. I walk past you in a suit and tie for

graduation. At Christmas tears still well up as

my fingers trace the "old" name on the stocking.

It's a lot to take in, when your child comes out.

But now you walk with confidence,

meet new people with ease,

get together with women friends.

Your skin is soft like pink on a peach,

your blue eyes sparkle, your child-like humor has returned

and your familiar expressions are back.

You are the same person

only now that doubting discord is gone.

You live through yourself, instead of beside yourself.

You are the daughter I always wanted.

💫💫💫

Our morning read was dedicated to the memory of our old friend Erica Rutherford (1923-2008).  Erica was an accomplished artist.  We weren't close friends, but we shared a few meals.  Erica, when I met her, was quietly blazing trails for transgender folk, and that was almost forty years ago.  That sort of bravery was a rare commodity in rural PEI back in the 80's but Erica pulled it out of her hat like she were both Penn and Teller.

Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, and Maggie, our new intern, took the lead with this morning's read.  Becoming Trans-Parent - One Family's Journey of Gender Transition is a mother's story, a daughter's story and it is all of our stories if we are to continue with reason.

Becoming Trans-Parent calls for simple understanding, simple acceptance, for that most human of feelings; the joy to be who you are.  The freedom to find out.

The First Time I Enter a Ladies Restroom with My Daughter

When you were three years old, I knocked on the men's room door,

and taking your hand, opened the door cautiously.

I'd never been in a men's room before.

Urinal against the wall, a small white cake

of air freshener down in the porcelain,

only one stall with a door,

stainless steel, no pink wallpaper,

no silk flowers in a vase on the vanity.

I felt awkward, while you felt proud to go on your own,

still needing help right there in the men's room.

Thirty years later, you have transformed into a beautiful woman

with long curly hair touching your shoulders,

a hint of blush on high cheek bones, pink lips,

a necklace of crystal beads resting on your collarbones.

After lunch you don't think twice when we head to the ladies room.

I wonder — do you feel tentative like I did long ago in the men's room?

But you look like you know where you are going.

I scan the room to see if other women are looking at you, at us.

Surely, someone will notice. But they don't.

Ladies keep fixing their hair, check their teeth for lipstick,

fumble for lip gloss in their purses.

We wash and dry our hands, fluff our hair,

you tuck in your blouse, we reach for the door,

I re-enter the world with my daughter.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry looks to poetry like this to help us all see our way in this troubled world.  Becoming Trans-Parent may just show us how to be better people along the way.

Annette Langlois Grunseth

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annette L. Grunseth, Green Bay, WI, a graduate of University of Wisconsin - Madison, has been a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets since 1988. She is a retired Marketing and Public Relations professional in the field of healthcare communications and marketing. Her poems have appeared in Wisconsin Academy Review, Midwest Prairie Review, Peninsula Pulse, The Door Voice, Free Verse, Blue Heron Review, SOUNDINGS: Door County in Poetry, Ariel Anthology, Fox Cry Review, The Poetry of Cold, Touchstone, annual calendar books of WFOP. She has won honorable mention awards with Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Triad and Muse Prize contests.

BLURBS

The poems in Annette Grunseth’s chapbook, Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family’s Journey of Gender Transition, are frank, informative, full of feeling and love. From the family’s time-stopped shock to mother and daughter sharing clothes, a mother’s fierce defense of her daughter to those who exclude her, and advocacy for all in her daughter’s situation, Grunseth underscores the need for the family to make the journey too:
Truth is, 41 percent of transgender people lose hope, and attempt to end their lives
unless they get love (the unconditional kind), she says in “Gender Dysphoria.” These are fine poems that every one of us can learn from.
     –Robin Chapman, Professor emerita of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of               Wisconsin-Madison, Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and poet,         author of Six True Things.

Annette Grunseth’s book of poems, Becoming Trans-Parent, is a guidebook for the heart…at once exquisitely personal and tenderly universal. The questions are clear, the answers are not so transparent, regarding pronouns, restrooms, dress, dignity, health issues and social justice. These poems are about transformation and love and love and transformation. Thank you, Annette, I am a better person for having read Becoming Trans-Parent.
      –Bruce Dethlefsen, Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2011-2012)

Annette Grunseth is an advocate, a poet, and a mother. The advocate in her conveys information: what words mean – words like safety, and dignity. The poet in her asks us to consider the milkweed pod, the Monarch, chrysalis & transformation. As a mother, she wants us to know her daughter is her inspiration, editor and reader. And as human beings, with our own loves & stories & shared bonds, how can we not listen?
Poets name things – it’s what we do. In one of my favorite poems in the collection, Grunseth asks us to consider naming. Her daughter selects her new name, “derived from your mother-roots” and this gift, the power of this choice is palpable in the poem; but the poet doesn’t let the reader off here (or herself). In this poem, titled “Naming My Grief,” the poet admits, “yet the day you told us the court approved your female name, / I cried that night in bed.” Moving from one identity to another, whatever the context, requires some loss, some grief. A loving parent, whatever the context, grieves this moment, and celebrates the child’s casting off of the past self & moving on to the future. Over and over and over in Becoming Trans-Parent we are reminded what it means to love, to learn, to be honest with ourselves, to be human.
     –C.Kubasta, author of Of Covenants and All Beautiful & Useless

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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.

Stereoblind — Emma Healey (House of Anansi Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Stereoblind.  Emma Healey.  House of Anansi Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2018.

"these are the kinds of things you own when you cannot control your own future."

"everywhere in this city of the future, people walk arm in arm, discussing their childhoods."

                                                                                                               — Emma Healey

Everything I am about to tell you is true.

Everything that happens in Emma Healey's diaphanous Stereoblind is true.

Everything that happens in Emma Healey's deuteronomously delightful Stereoblind may be dreamspeak.

Every dream Emma Healey lets you/us in on, in fact, may be a real event and all real events may be dreams.  And so on.

And already Today's book of poetry is misleading you about Stereoblind.  It is not as deliberately complex or confusing as our comments suggest.  In fact, when you are reading Stereoblind, and once you start it is hard to stop, Stereoblind has both it's own gravity and it's own centrifugal force.  You get pull, pulllled, pullllllllled into Healey's stream of unconsciousness, all the while marvelling at how comfortably at home you are in these poems.

There are short poems that flit across your eyes like a swift in flight, skittering across your line of sight just long enough to marvel and then there are longer prose poems that spiral through the air, the connections vaporous and ethereal, the white noise between dreams.  Yet Healey makes it all work as simply as tic tac toe.

Stereoblind works wonderfully well.  The reader doesn't browse these poems, you are compelled forward like a new convert being introduced to a new holy text.  Healey simply pulls you forward and off of your feet before you know what has poetry slapped you.

from Forced Swim

Sometimes the question of what is made inside or outside
the body feels pressing. I'll be out in the world by myself,
among others—at the gym, running on the treadmill, or in
the grocery store, staring up at a punishing multiplicity of
hummus—and all of a sudden I know something endless
and dark wants its way through me, wants to take my
bones out one by one, to swallow and dissolve. In these
moments, the world drops away and I stand there
forever—my face strange, my fists tiny and strange—
sweating under the fluorescents. In these moments, I can
feel the things it's already claimed, aching just outside my
reach, like phantom limbs.

💫💫💫

Emma Healey isn't content with re-arranging our understanding of dreamworld, she manages to throw in footnotes, sudden shifts in light, direction and volume, and it works.  These poems move the reader forward with an unsuspected weight, they have a hidden velocity.

All of this happening in poems tenderly disguised as an odyssey in modern living.  Healey plays it all out on a canvas only accessible through Stereoblind.

Our morning read was held in an almost empty office.  The Today's book of poetry minions are all away on holiday or attending to personal issues.  None the less we managed to give Healey's Stereoblind around the office and the results were surprising.  Stereoblind lent an air of cool calm to the office, and in the face of many impediments.  We're usually blasting some sort of jazz through the speakers but Radiohead seemed called for this morning.

Ontario Today

The guy wants to know if he can prune his spruce himself;
he's worried about wind. How big exactly is this tree? asks
Ed, his cadence level, tone bemused. I can't fit my arms
around it, goes the guy. Which, look: kitchen table, chairs,
dog, sink, weak sunlight, radio, your front lawn in the
bruise and split of sunrise, kids and wife asleep. The spruce
predicting shadows in the driveway, how it croons and
keens against the night in the key of future, denting,
vantage, glass outside your bedroom. How insurance is a
prayer misfiring, how deep green makes your tongue taste
rust for weeks. How you can't but gaze into a pool of water,
Ed, without a spray of needles shattering the edges. How
the air can do you violence, speaking skips against the
present, reference fails and fails again. Maybe we have to
do it this way—voice and air and wires and distance. Trust.
Maybe the only metric is attempt: what can be held by you.
What you can stand to hold.

💫💫💫

Nothing Today's book of poetry is going to say will do justice to the "in the kitchen" level of comfort you are going to feel when you walk in to Stereoblind.  And as soon as you settle in there, Healey shifts quiet gears and you are in a Joni Mitchell "dreamland, dreamland, dreamland."  These are splendid places to be.

Today's book of poetry enjoyed Emma Healey's Stereoblind the way you enjoy an afternoon matinee during the blistering dog days of August.  A cool calm somewhere just east of dreamland, dreamland, dreamland.

Beautiful Boys

Pink silk jackets. Feathered hair, impeccable skateboards,
liquid jawlines, triplicate. Thin hands gripping thin
forearms, in a pyramid in order the Beautiful Boys
doppling down your street like a snake, or the dream you
had about a snake. Taken together they sing like distant
pavement in a heat wave, colour warbling at the edges like
a melted VHS, craft beer dying in the backs of all their
throats like a bad secret. Eyes like wrenches. Skin like
petals. Wheels that whisper to the pavement as they pass
under your window: please yes please yes please yes please

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry regrets that we've been sporadic of late, there have been some absences in our office and so on.  But we are terribly happy to present Emma Healey and her splendid Stereoblind.  This is the book of poetry you need to buy today.

Emma Healey

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EMMA HEALEY’s first book of poems, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by ARP Books in 2012. Her poems and essays have been featured in places like the Los Angeles Review of Books, the FADER, the Hairpin, Real Life, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Walrus, Toronto Life, and Canadian Art. She was poetry critic at the Globe and Mail (2014–2016) and is a regular contributor to the music blog Said the Gramophone. She was the recipient of the Irving Layton Award for Creative Writing in both 2010 and 2013, a National Magazine Award nominee in 2015, and a finalist for the K.M. Hunter award in 2016.

BLURBS

PRAISE FOR BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND: 
“Who needs a tightrope to stroll across Niagara Falls when you have the prose poem — pliable, surreal, infinitely hackable. These poems from Emma Healey signal the arrival of an exciting, nimble, new voice.” 

     — Sina Queyras

“Healey’s work operates close to the edges of contemporary poetic discourse — and sometimes beyond them . . . but [it] is also concerned with the experience of life lived in the personal present. A poet well-versed in critical and theoretical discourse but who also has a keen eye for the everyday and the real.” 

     — Philip Coleman, Penny Dreadful (Ireland)

“A bit confessional, a bit surrealist, a bit Miranda July, and very New Sincerity . . . These poems dance and ramble, propelled by an earnestness that can’t help but charm.” 

     — Nico Mara McKay, Broken Pencil

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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

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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.

Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern — Kristofer Collins (Hyacinth Girl Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern.  Kristofer Collins.  Hyacinth Girl Press.  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  2017.

Today's book of poetry can flatter himself by thinking that perhaps it is because Kristofer Collins hits so close to our own poetry senses, but Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern comes roaring out of the gate fully formed and shooting from both hips.  If these poems were dancers they'd be killers and the rest of us would have to clear the floor.

Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern runs a little warmer than most.  Whatever the cause, we were some pleased.

Our friend Pistol dropped by early this morning and I had to leave him untended in my office for a few moments.  Instead of having him ransack my desk, as he does, given half a chance, I left him with Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern and told him I'd want a book report.  Pistol still isn't house-broken but he does have skills and I respect his judgment in some areas.  He doesn't write poetry but he is a fine painter and when he gives an opinion it is a considered one.

All of that to say that Today's book of poetry think we got the Pistol seal of approval for Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern.  Collins is much like our associate Pistol, good sense of humour, good sense of timing and not much concerned with propriety.  

Can't say anything about Mr. Collins because we've never met but when we say Pistol has a sense of timing we mean he knows when to throw a pass.  As far as clocks go, and being on time, Pistol is from another planet.  He showed up at the office this morning for a meeting we were to have yesterday.  

Today's book of poetry is quite sure Kristofer Collins can burn.

This Is Work

Like chipping away at the world's first

glacier with your tiny black ax; or

collecting canines from all the mouths

of all the beasts who chased their meat

across the dusty African veldt; or stacking

plate after dirty plate in your family's

first apartment until the ceiling buckles

and the stars finally take notice; or harder

still, writing one true thing.

💫💫💫

Pistol's assessment was that he thought Collins wrote somewhat like Today's book of poetry.  I don't see it, this kid is quicker, cleaner, tighter, leaner.  But I do like the way he swaggers down a page.

These poems are simple but not simplistic.  They brim with real life just the way we live it, real love just the way we lose it, a real world.  Kristofer Collins has his eyes open.

A Belated Pœm For My Wife's 30th Birthday

O Christ how I want to write a poem without sputtering

in defeat only eight lines deep like some asthmatic jackhammer.

Surely it's lovely somewhere still

and isn't that remarkable enough?

Are these days unworthy of mention simply because they feel so similar?

When I say last Monday it's clear I could also mean Tuesday three months ago.

If I didn't have to pay the water bill I wouldn't know the 25th had come and gone.

But we will always have your birthday to set our watches by.

And I know Five Easy Pieces is 98 minutes long

and The 400 Blows is 99.

And somewhere in all that time unspooling a life can be lived.

That last time we sat together and talked in a movie theater,

as couples came and went around us,

you said you would come to where I worked just to look at me,

to watch me move and talk to people I appeared to know,

and sometimes act stand-offish or cruel.

You thought you could love a man like that.

And never before have you wanted to call a stranger sweetheart more.

But time passes and here we are.

And what's strange is we used to sleep in different beds in different houses.

And isn't this worth the effort of commemoration?

Isn't this worth all the time we have remaining?

Here in the dark quietly together.

💫💫💫

Our morning read was a dam-buster of a thing.  Everyone on our staff caught the Collins vibe and we ripped through Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern as though we were evangelists who had just seen the light.  These poems roll off of the tongue so easily because they feel so read and true.  

Just like Banjo Patterson had his hero say, Mr. Collins, "you're welcome at my fire anytime."

Today's book of poetry loved the tempo and loved the feeling every time Kristofer Collins stepped on the gas and revved Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern up.

Pimlico

At the track

the serious gamblers

lug fat binders

full of stats

& equine genealogies,

grumble confidently

over spiked coffee

about sires & photo finishes

now distant in time

while I'm equipped

with a half-eaten bag of Cheetos,

the nub of a pencil

liberated from the public library,

and the absolute certainty

any horse named

after Elvis Presley

is a sure thing.

💫💫💫

Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern is the first chapbook Today's book of poetry has seen from Pittsburgh's Hyacinth Girl Press.  Today's book of poetry is here to tell you that Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern is the best thing to come out of Pittsburgh since Sid last raised the cup.

It's also worth nothing that Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern is a very snappy dresser, Today's book of poetry loved the design, the funky end papers and snazzy cover, and the orange pinking-sheared ribbon binding.  It is all an over-the-top success.

Kristofer Collins

(and if this is not Mr. Collins, Today's book of poetry

apologizes.  A conversation will be held with our

research department.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristofer Collins lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their three cats.

HyacinthGirlPress.com 

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 Art of Dying — Sarah Tolmie (McGill-Queens University Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Art of Dying.  Sarah Tolmie.  McGill-Queens University Press.  Montreal & Kingston·London·Chicago.  2018.

Before you read a word of Sarah Tolmie's transcendent The Art of Dying, you need to listen to Sir Ralph Stanley's harrowing rendition of his classic "O Death", which you can hear here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xmRWj7gJEU 

If you're still standing you might be ready for what Sarah Tolmie has cooked up for us.  Today's book of poetry sits in awe listening to Mr. Stanley bargain it all down and Tolmie has the same glaze of class and integrity.  The same deathly grit.

The Art of Dying tackles death with a capital D.  Tolmie takes on every experience death has to offer.  If you listen closely enough you might even come to think that Sarah Tolmie loved death.

Tolmie has plenty to say to the "poets" and their lofty ideals, she knows full well that death is waiting for them too, and tells them so.  There are eighty-nine numbered poems in The Art of Dying, Today's book of poetry had a field day because we could have shared, happily, any of them.  Tolmie doesn't tolerate any weak siblings, she has no dead weight allowed.

2

Poets no longer rate so high

In the consolation industry.

We've been fools.

TV has usurped our role:

Zombies, vampires, doctors, priests

Tell us our deaths need not be.

Our friends spam us from the internet

With the final selfie that death photobombed.

Truth is becalmed.

💫💫💫

The Art of Dying tickles the poetry funny bone with whimsy and some wacky rhymes, but it is all for amusement, to calm the dying, for giggles.  Tolmie has laser vision, night-goggle vision, into our deepest fears, our deepest fear, the last one: death.

Sarah Tolmie runs a tight ship.  Each of these untitled pronouncements rings precisely, clearly and then precariously, all taking on death, all dying.

It's not like of this comes as too much of a surprise for Today's book of poetry.  Any of our regular readers will remember that Sarah Tolmie is a two-time Today's book of poetry star.  The Art of Dying is Tolmie's third appearance here.  Back in May of 2015 Today's book of poetry was delighted to write about Tolmie's Sonnets in a Blue Dress and Other Poems (Baseline Press, 2014).  Then in November of the same year we were lucky enough to get our hands on Tolmie's Trio (McGill-Queens University Press, 2015).  Both of those can be seen here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2015/05/sonnets-in-blue-dress-and-other-poems.html 

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2015/11/trio-sarah-tolmie-mcgill-queens.html 

Today's book of poetry has come to believe that Sarah Tolmie is as dependable a poet as you can imagine, we know that when we pick up a Sarah Tolmie book that it will be full of riches.

37

Michael Jackson had a Lazarus fail.

He always did thing on the grand scale,

Having himself euthanized nightly.

Finally it stuck.

The doc went out to smoke or make a call

And he never woke-up.

Widespread woe, tributes, lawsuits ensued

but one thing everybody knew

Was all his wealth did him no good.

This is counterintuitive

And makes us slightly pleased

At the death of celebrities.

💫💫💫

Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, took control of the morning reading and rolled out our copies of Trio and Sonnet in a Blue Dress and Other Poems to accompany The Art of Dying.  Tomas and Frieda, two old friends of Today's book of poetry, dropped by this morning and of course Kathryn made them read as well.  Tomas and Frieda added some spice and some enthusiasm to our core group.  And of course whenever we have visitors the staff are inspired to reach for their better poetry selves.

Reading The Art of Dying is a little like skipping and hop-scotch:  you read the first poem and get you a poetry smile/high going and then gravity, momentum, and other unseen forces of nature compel you forward.  Curiosity kisses one side of your cheek and death kisses the other.  This is Chef type burning.

Today's book of poetry would be remiss if we didn't mention the spectacular killer cover of The Art of Dying.  David Drummond designed it and we are convinced he is a Devilchild.  But the cover is hard-core cool and worthy of the fine poems enclosed within.

64

The present American horror show

May yet be remembered by a single poem.

People get tired of video.

I've seen this poem a dozen times

About just one guy who died.

Otherwise it's all the same.

Make no mistake that a news report,

Whatever that is in this day and age,

Whoever protests, whoever pays,

Lasts a single minute. Holinshed's lists

Of aristocrats who died for this and that

Come over slowly from Calais

On parchment strips, those will remain

While all things fade

From the digital consciousness.

Eric Garner. That was the name.

Let it be carried in the world mainframe

Until the canticle for Leibowitz.

💫💫💫

As previously stated, Today's book of poetry is now an official Sarah Tolmie fan.  With The Art of Dying Tolmie enters the rare "threepeat" territory on our pages.

Today's book of poetry now knows Tolmie is gold and burning.  I guess we've known it all along.

Sarah Tolmie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Tolmie is associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her poetry collection Trio was shortlisted for the 2016 Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

BLURB

“There is astute compassion in discussions of assisted suicide, the fleeting life of an imaginary friend, and the confusion of hospital stays that deftly turn daily incidences into larger existential considerations … In these direct, personal brushes with death, Tolmie is at her most clear-sighted, stripping away the rubble of euphemism we use as a salve against the enigma of death.”

    — Montreal Review of Books

mqup.ca

710

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.

Pressed Against All That Nothing — Cody Deitz (Yak Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Pressed Against All That Nothing.  Cody Deitz.
Number One - Native Blossom Chapbook Series Two.  Yak Press.  Littlerock, California.  2015.

Take note, if Today's book of poetry gave out stars, today we would have to give them all to Cody Deitz.  Pressed Against All That Nothing is nothing short of extraordinary.  

Cody Deitz does a bunch of things in this marvelous book, but mostly Today's book of poetry thinks Deitz shows his brother true love and devotion.

These poems don't just "give sorrow words," as Maryse Holder would have said, they are both a vivid poetry accounting of harrowing personal losses, and a lovingly detailed account of the strength of a brother's love.  Deitz writes both about his brother's addictions and his incarceration but always from a loving and accepting terra firma.

Joshua Trees (Yucca brevifolia)

               for my brother, and R.G.

In the great expanse of sky

                                        and nothing,

we pass cigarettes back and forth:

the only holy incense we know,

timid offerings to the teenage gods of rebellion and getting lucky,

each sacramental stick carried

out into the desert—where else do sacraments belong?

Brothers, we share apathy,

exhaled through the nose,

                                 staining clothes and fingertips vanilla.

From the depths of our chests,

each streak of smoke flies off

like a pale crow.

I'm nostalgic for a past that doesn't exist

in a town that was never real,

and though it's still years to come,

                                                 and now, we're still in this together—

I can already see me getting out of this place and you standing alone

out in the Joshua trees, pressed against all that nothing.

💫💫💫

Deitz never loses hope for the reappearance of his lost brother and he understands that this battle doesn't always have a victor.  The emotionally fraught landscape of these poems is one where the family of an addict endure, suffer, wait.  

The canvas Pressed Against All That Nothing appears on is mined with dangers both unseen and predicted.  And as much as Deitz fears his brother may never return from his abyss, Deitz never loses hope or faith.

Cody Deitz is one hell of a marksman because every single poem in Pressed Against All That Nothing hits the target right in its blood-red centre.  Today's book of poetry is here to tell you that Deitz is more than a fine marksman, he consistently hits targets that only moments ago were invisible.

Hindsight In Six Parts

— 

July evening, mid-summer drought

                                      like always, and windy.

A red-tailed hawk updrafts foothills nearby,

                                                      just hunting for mice,

and you're not sober yet—the leaves wait to turn

and let gravity take them, the earth waiting—

But you haven't yet lost your sense of being alive, either,

                                                     the shudder and cringe of it,

as you wait again for a car to drive you into the night.

—

You have yet to be left in the desert

while mom and dad fly off—

the tired nest finally pulled out from under you.

Your room is still your own, a cluttered installation:

video games, tissue boxes, cheap watches that hold their breath—

                                            things not yet sold for Vicodin and rum.

The floor strewn with empty Marlboro packs,

                                                         their many tiny gaping mouths.

—

You have yet to be picked up in the night,

pulled from that red-eyed neighborhood,

                                              your freedom left on the roadside.

Your car emptied of plastic bottles, pinhead knot of resin,

glass pieces with bowls like small translucent moons:

                                         small catalog of municipal reckoning.

It will sit empty in the weeds for months,

mechanical ghost

              of your leaving.

—

You've yet to be bussed downtown

and left in Men's Central,

locked away for months in psychiatric,

        (How will you keep warm in that heat-sink,

          angry architecture?)

where you will freeze in your powerlessness,

its democratic pain.

The prison windows are tall, narrow eyes

                                             that look out into nothing.

—

You have yet to learn in rehab you've carried sickness for years,

an illegible letter, chicken-scratch diagnosis.

You haven't stood beneath the streetlight amber,

                                             watched the smoke rise

from the coffee-can ashtray, carcinogen bloom,

cigarette butts wrinkled petals wedged

into that strange bouquet nobody sent.

—

Now you stop your car on 65th street,

sleeping houses on one side,

                    tumbleweeds and dark on the other.

You load a bowl and look out, considering all that grows

                                                                  without sustenance:

Joshua trees and juniper amazingly green without a breath

of water for weeks, their heads tall and stoic in the desert chill—

you read once, of their root structures,

                         everything connected so nothing slips past.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry has been behind the wheel of car for six of the last seven days and still feels the wind whipping past.  As a result, we aren't moving very much, or very quickly, today.  But Today's book of poetry was so taken by Deitz's Pressed Against All That Nothing that today's office reading was a solo shot.  The entire staff sat stone silent while I whipped through Pressed Against All That Nothing as though it were something of my own creation.  I should be so lucky.

These poems felt so tight I could barely get the pages apart.  These poems were so ripped with magic Today's book of poetry didn't know whether to spit or wind my watch, they just worked.  Cody Deitz is in Master Chef territory, he's so good in the poetry kitchen you can smell his burn from every direction.

Habit Of The World

          Don't take it personal, they said;

          but I did, I took it all quite personal

                        -Tony Hoagland

The jacaranda tree at the end of my street

has been losing itself all week,

dropping its amethyst and lavender

all over the sidewalk, while spring burns off like fog

                                       and the sky looks blue and determined.

It's easy to take it personal—this undermining of permanence,

                                                                   this habit of the world.

💫💫💫

Cody Deitz gives his brother every opportunity to come home again but as Thomas the Wolfe so aptly told us, you can never do that again.  

Today's book of poetry fell in love with how far Deitz was willing to go in his brother's name.  As it turns out Deitz is willing to go as far as it takes, these poems are a full-fledged love song to his flawed and beautiful sibling.

Deitz knows that being straight is a good thing but it is not the only thing.  Some of us have other dreams.

Cody Deitz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cody Deitz, a California native, now resides in North Dakota where he is pursuing his PhD. in English at the University of North Dakota. He is fascinated with poetry of place, and how geography informs individual experience, seeking in his work to explore this connection and the insights it affords.

BLURBS

Cody Deitz understands something about interiority—that ‘the subconscious is always a terrain’—and he fluidly moves between the psychic space of the shared dark and that brighter horizon where ‘the sun becomes the symbol it always wanted to be, / that slippery metaphor for god, shooting into the well’s eye.’ These are poems of addiction, recovery, fraternal love, and a Ginsberg-like faith that there is salvation in poetry. The genius of Cody Deitz is in his intimate, meditative act of witness, far-seeing yet detailed. He offers an undeniably unifying force of human spirit where we learn the pain and possibility of ‘unmaking. . .the terrible.’ Like the ‘steel refrigerator / with its cord buried in dirt,’ these poems, too, seem ‘plugged. . .into the world.’ ”

     ~ Leilani Hall, author of Swimming the Witch  

“Cody Deitz’s collection documents a brother’s disappearance into addiction, a black hole around which the family spins. After stints in prison, psych care, and rehab, he reemerges barely recognizable — a figure that, like Zeno’s paradox, the speaker can never fully reach, ‘the idea of progress // suddenly unfathomable.’ These events are embodied and presented in vivid, resonant details: Joshua trees, shoe prints in desert sand, the mouths of empty Marlboro packs, the crackle of a prison telephone. In his precise and yet discursive verse, Deitz’s poetic attention is ‘More than turning on a light—it’s becoming // the bulb and the switch and the finger. . .’ ”

     ~ Heidi Czerwiec, author of Self-Portrait as Bettie Page and A is for A-ké, The Chinese Monster 

“Cody Deitz’ work is a live wire snaking over the asphalt of lyrical poetry, though the hum of his words never rises above the electric din: instead, it is the reader who reverberates with recognition in the mechanical ghost Deitz creates out of his stark architecture. The invisible cord of his words will become a nightlight in a forever-darkening sky, will conduct electricity against this fleeting urban solitude. His poetry is a voice that both reassures from the hallway and echoes back to you in a strange rhythm, as you lay safe and pressed against all that nothing.”

     ~ Gina Alexandra, MFA candidate, UCSD

Cody Deitz

reads from

Pressed Against All That Nothing

Video:  YakPress

yakpress.com 

709

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