Attributed to the Harrow Painter - Nick Twemlow (University of Iowa Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Attributed to the Harrow Painter.  Nick Twemlow.  Kuhl House Poets.  University of Iowa Press.  Iowa City, Iowa.  2017.

      "I must've eaten

       Ten clocks

       Waiting for you"

                               from - "Responding to my father's question"

Nick Twemlow has a section of poems near the end of Attributed to the Harrow Painter, ten of them, all titled "Responding to my father's question."  These poems seem to be a confessional primal scream of beautiful tone and duration.  Underlining every poem is long love letter to Twemlow's son Sacha.

Twemlow nails that lava hot emotional battlefield where families crash and burn or the relationships grow white/blue like tempered steel.

There are nine poems, groups of poems, making up Attributed to the Harrow Painter and they all have the same feel, a machine gun pace and the best bolognese temperament, proper burn.  Twemlow

is one of those whip-quick-smart poets.  His ideas come so quickly you can't figure them all out in one read.  These cats are dense, but man oh man, Twemlow can throw a line.

Mothland

All along you were Right, they were flanking our

house They Documented you taking off your clothes

every morning I requested these Documents & they

sent someone's Illicit hard drive I fucked with the

commandant Nothing that mattered Continued to

happen into the Nothing that made us laugh like Gas

does Most of us went WYSIWYG Which meant sand

kicked In our face &/or our Life was a fracking disgrace

I know you lived mostly Desirous of desolation A

kind of Interior branding a Lesbos of the Soul Let me

introduce you To my friends Who fry bacon & Spumoni

de Kooning cooling limbic An astral fryer. Thomas

Mann Spelling things out I exhausted I falling down

On my face the divorce Anything but legal Just shame

& egrets Shitting the windows I realm I record Life

begins to get in The way the life Of a novelist Which

I assume is not Only more comfortable The advance

is ridiculous But strident The perqs develop Their

own antiquities I always go back to my Preference

for medications that act swiftly I don't do time-lapse

So well I get hell I focus my gaze On Takashi Ito's

Structured vision Of the not this world But space is the

place Where we can mace the strangers walking into

our loathsome Into oblivion The usual I refuse My son

Wallows the smooth Tallows of the luxurious paradise

of Time to spinneret to Pearl the moustache I get that

You falsify Perfectly you stream experience Like a coin

you toss Into whatever Fountain I still Believe the

poem Delivers a brutal shrill lust for streaming Cusps

your romance With ecriture If my mother were To read

this How much shame Would envelope Her I'm sure

you assure us Reassured all of us Which might mean

Write out & out & out else Make this a god Or homeless

People to shine a light On a poem amending The title

Intended to circumscribe My mother's loneliness I am

thinking of My mother a lot These days which Pass 

in spasms In theory If we are anything If we have

nothing else uncommon My mother Finds comfort

in Planting bulbs each fall She left me a voicemail

Message for my birthday Several days late to which I

never responded I didn't Listen to it for months I can't

remember if I did listen to it. Fred told me he couldn't

Get over a line from the Poem I read in Chicago This

summer from a poem that shows up later in this book

"Look, I've loved my mother Most of my life."

Its permission to admit why the anxiety Over mother

love Why depict spiders skittering All over our dreams

I didn't mean I didn't always Love my mother her Name

is Robyn same As my wife When Oedipus says I get the

feeling his dumb Luck is his fortune Is his is Oedipus

Reminds us to behave Better in the future Which his

motherwife Reminds us is unknowable Every memory

I have Or choose to have Of my mother saturated In

the blues of a Dusky sky I should Cry I should inhabit

The cliches entrusted to me To exhibit A lonely boy

ill Treated defeated before Birth exiled from Chance

When I Remember my mother Crying I don't remember

Her ever crying She loved me I'm certain As she loved

her Spring tulips not unconditionally But with proper

proportion Unhappy that I cannot heave My heart into

my mouth I Love your majesty According to my Bond

no more nor less the man standing Next to me inside of

me in Permanent ecstasy the cyphers Scuttling under

passing cars Unable to find A shadow to Dissolve Into

The barrel Of a gun twists Back at me I lard The scene

with A company of C's I see the scene in every Register

but time-lapse returns No favor The mother coma The

mother coma The various strobing Or phasing The 

clock dial is a riot Planning itself Years in advance Go

quietly address The vending machine Snip wires Stare

at Pictures of you Jolted twenty feet back onto The hood

Of a viper Flicking its Capital relentlessly At the brine

of these new centuries Erupting like nothing You or I

know I pick at a scab I develop A hankering for Insta for

gratification A door that slides Shut just As invasion

of talk Of jetties & molly & away to Somalia As if

you could evade The glistening Of your Fund which

powers up In a shadow Enciphered this cruel media

this papering Over & proxy servers & Anonymous

nerve Tapping to allocate resource Assuaging Assange

Buffering Beyonce Journos Copping a feel in Ferguson

ecstasy of Entering the Gilgamesh Dying 'neath the

heath Hammered to a tinsel thin Instance of justice

You don't belong To tribe always acting as Leering

at The contents of the mirror Mirroring the Warhol

Insistence on or the Basquiat Keith Haring! Nauman

walks in a square that Occludes race & class Privilege

preening or Peacocking Queer Theory rasterized

Resisting salve of Semiotics Your brother arches His

eyebrow Thought This true & u spend so much of

yourself Spending credit scores & fantasy The vale

we Vulture in our waking dread Waxing what You

examine with your niggling X-ray You my standing

Camino All the world's nostrils flare & Zenith & zeroes

shiver Me back into my car & I Drive home totally

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry would like to apologize to both Nick Twemlow and to the University of Iowa Press.  In its original form, in the book, this poem is justified on both sides, hence it appears as a monolith.  Idiots that we are here we haven't figured out how to do it.  Imagine.  Of course we are still posting these blogs/reviews with a Commodore 16, steam and coal powered.

Today's book of poetry had David Bowie's "Young Americans" on the box this morning.  Today's book of poetry finds "Young Americans" always takes us back to our cab-driving days, 6 pm - 6 am.  Mr. Bowie helped us get through more than once long night.  Today if feels a right companion to Attributed to the Harrow Painter.  Controlled mayhem meeting precision, Twemlow and Bowie are similar smart cats.  These poems go to your brain before they force their way to your heart.

Today's book of poetry would want to suggest Nick Twemlow plays with his readers, but he is a poet at play.

Responding to my father's question

I square dark spaces

In the places where

I'm an addict. I rinse &

Delete on repeat.

The addict

In me charms the

Awful offal, where

The memories (of you) collide

In stride, the memories

Of you glitch through.

Like tiny flashbacks

Flashing back your priors.

Now you tell me.

You think you're going

To hell. I look forward

To your review of the place.

The mild discomfort you'll

Feel is my two year old

Self wondering why

Mum looks so

Peaked & wearing

Hospital gown. She could

Barely look at me the one

Visit I remember taking.

There was an inner

Courtyard teeming with

Plants. She seemed to prefer

Being in there than being

Anywhere else. If you feel

Anything for her. If you

Can't stand all the

Involuntary

Redress. You've spent

Most of your life

Listening to the berserk

Among us spit our

Holiness at you. That'd

Kill most of you, which

It did. I can't come this

Weekend. I'm grilling

For three these days.

As my friend said when

She was pregnant with

Her only child, at brunch,

"Bacon wants sausage."

💫💫💫

Attributed to the Harrow Painter leaves marks.  By the time you've hammered your way through to the end you'll have notes all over the place, painters to look up, other new poems/poets to read.  Twemlow provides us with new areas of study.  He also heats the place up.

Our morning read was held in some summer sauna hot offices.  We have a couple of old aircraft sized propellers hooked up to two large fans.  They create enough to wind to lift my desk off of the floor so no loose paper in the office today.  You have to lean into the fans to get to the bathroom.  Unfortunately they're only pushing hot air around.  How ironic is that for us here at Today's book of poetry?

Champagne Dawn

Cassandra wrote

To tell me

That my 

"Problem

With chicks

Is over,"

& I jumped out of

My chair

& ran

To the picture

Window

In the living

Room,

Threw open

The curtains,

& saw

My neighbor

Hacking

His rake

At the still-

Fluttering

Body

Of a 

Barred

Owl.

💫💫💫

Reading Nick Twemlow was a new thrill for Today's book of poetry - so of course we sent Milo, our head tech, a note asking him to add Nick Twemlow to our list of "must find poets."  Attributed to the Harrow Painter has weight when you read it and a splendid aftertaste when you're done.

Today's book of poetry gets such pleasure out of introducing you to books like Attributed to the Harrow Painter, we can confidently promise "no regret" reading.

Nick Twemlow

ABOUT THE POET

Nick Twemlow’s work includes Palm Trees, and his poems have appeared in Court Green, jubilat, Lana Turner, and the Paris Review. He coedits Canarium Books, and is a senior editor at the Iowa Review. He teaches at Coe College and lives in Iowa City, Iowa. 

BLURB

“Meandering around the edges of the beginning of someone’s mid-life, Attributed to the Harrow Painter dips back to lost teenage friends, traumas, accommodations, pleasures and losses and forward as the father of a young child, to the inevitable future. There’s the New York diaspora, and there are the blue jays 
and backyards of skull-fuck cold Kansas. Where are you most alive? Like Dana Ward and Ariana Reines, Nick Twemlow writes brainy poetry that’s as dispersed as real life without losing heart. I found the book very moving, and will read it again.”

     —Chris Kraus, author, I Love Dick and Summer of Hate 

Power in Poetry - Nick Twemlow Interview

Video:  Skylor Andrews

uipress.uiowa.edu 

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