Gloss - Rebecca Hazelton (University of Wisconsin Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Gloss.  Rebecca Hazelton.  University of Wisconsin Press.  Madison, Wisconsin.  2019.

Marcus Wicker calls the poems in Rebecca Hazelton's Gloss "wise, sexy, well-tuned language machines."  Now that is a line Today's book of poetry wishes we'd come up with ourselves.  

Today's book of poetry has visited Rebecca Hazelton's poetry movie before.  Back in March of 2014 Today's book of poetry was delighted to hit all you poetry monsters with a look at Hazelton's Bad Star (YesYes Books, 2013).  You can read that here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/03/bad-star-rebecca-hazelton.html

We were convinced that Hazelton could burn when we read Bad Star, but you have to get your hands on Gloss to see what she's cooking now.  Today's book of poetry liked Hazelton's Bad Star very much but Gloss is simply at another level.  A very splendid level.  

Gloss is precise, emotionally certain and feverishly honest.  These poems are so, so tasty.  These are adult poems, the more experience the reader has the more these precious-cut diamonds will shine.

Self-Portrait As A Very Good Day

Behind dark glasses I am enormously present

                                 wading in a pool of flickering light

                     algal at the edges

                                           like a sick green dream of California

where dragonflies dip and skim

           the surface of the lightly poisoned water

                                                         some of them

                                 coupling on the fly

                      as if sex weren't already awkward

when I fuck I hardly levitate at all

                                and when I dive

                                beneath the water

         I want to be detached

                    from the searing world above but how

                                         does one stop caring

when there are so many

                     voices calling

                                 where are you where are you

                      come up there are snacks

so I swim back

                     to frozen grapes and lemonade

           to the teenaged boys strolling by

                     with fishing poles and bait

while the young girls spin

          on tire swings and scream to go faster

as if there were some shortage in the world

                     of speed or disaster

💥💥💥

These poems work like a summer sunburn, forcing you to peel back a layer or two so that Hazelton can test her vocabulary on your tenderest skin.  Make no doubt about it, she is going after the real you - and she gets there.

Gloss comes at you from multiple directions but Hazelton is in every word, embrace, every heart rendered bleeding.  Today's book of poetry felt emotionally challenged with Hazelton's magic, we were forced to look closely at ourselves, our faults and our freedoms.  Gloss is all over the gender battle, but like most of us, our theories weaken when surrounded by lust.

Rebecca Hazelton goes there and sets that shit aflame, eloquently.  She writes about the heat of the blaze, the burn on the skin, the cold, black and wet ashes left behind.

When He Is A Woman

When he is a woman I set his hair,

                                the brown strands

                                exit the comb's teeth

                                gold, spill down his shoulders

       to a slender waist I put my hands around

                  when I want him to feel small.

                            When he is a woman I am a man

and as a man I am aware

            of how to make his breath catch as I touch

                                 one freckled breast,

            as I unbuckle

                        my buckle with a definitive air.

When he is a woman the love feels more

                                           real, his eyelashes more real, his mouth

                    like an unkissed girl's more real,

                                                   and I hold to the fiction

                               he's never known another's hand

        sliding up his thigh, not this way,

or another mouth

        speaking these words that glide up his thoughts

the way a man declares

        a land claimed, and then there's a flag.

When he is a woman

                     I feel optimistic,

                                          when he is in a dress that suits

         his small frame, when the heels

                                          he walks in put his round hips to sway,

all these things make the smoke hover

                     above my scotch

                               on the rocks.

In this, as in all things,

            I am traditional.

💥💥💥

Today's book of poetry has been sidetracked in recent months by human business, funerals and weddings, the weight of days, and so on.  Our intention is to return to our "every other day" format of posting blogs/reviews.  Of course Today's book of poetry would like to be taller and sing like Saint Marvin Gaye.  None the less we shall be after the gang to pick up the pace.

We can promise that our enthusiasm has not swayed.  Today's book of poetry has a bookcase full of new poetry joys that we are dying to share with you poetry monsters.

Rebecca Hazelton's Gloss is the 800th blog/review in the Today's book of poetry catalogue.  Who knew?  Today's book of poetry is lucky to have Hazelton.

Self-Portrait With Your Head

Between My Legs

Glazed in sweat, I'm in the hot tropics

        of Florida,

                   where the geckos Velcro across

         the bedroom window

on fine invisible hairs,

                  where a perfunctory promise

         hangs over us like a broken chandelier

too heavy

       to dismantle.

I watch the ceiling

                     for cracks, a water stain

and try to imagine the happy

                                kingdom,

          as if I could punch my own ticket

                                just by wishing harder

but the princess sleeps and sleeps.

Say peach, say plum, say typical

                       to split the velvet nap

                                with a clumsy thumb:

so much depends on

                      the idea of breakfast in bed

                                versus the sloppy practice.

💥💥💥

Rebecca Hazelton's Gloss is just the ticket to get Today's book of poetry back on track.  Gloss has everything you want from poetry.  If you get inside Gloss it will teach you something about yourself.  How often can Today's book of poetry claim that?

Hazelton's Gloss is as intimate as a kiss, as memorable as a crisp slap in the face.

Rebecca Hazelton

ABOUT THE POET

Rebecca Hazelton is the author of Fair Copy, Vow, and the chapbook Bad Star, and the coeditor of The Manifesto Project. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. A two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she is an assistant professor of English at North Central College.

BLURBS

“A masquerade ball of velvety self-portraiture and a subversive parade of cultural norms recast as light kink. This book playacts its anxieties—gender roles and group texts, suburban mansions and contractual commitments—until the violence that underpins them is spotlighted on stage.”
      —Emilia Phillips, author of Empty Clip
“Funny, irreverent, and searingly honest, Hazelton dares to explore the obligations that we have with one another and with ourselves. And who wouldn’t want to trust the speaker of these poems? In prickly, worldly, and intimate poems, Hazelton’s wit and wisdom urge us to understand beauty in our complicated lives.”
      —Oliver de la Paz, author of Post Subject: A Fable
“These poems are wise, sexy, well-tuned language machines, full of stinging humor and quick-witted swagger, interrogating the highs and lows of cohabitation and maturation. Simply put, Gloss is masterful—a knockout collection I will continue to read, teach, and learn from for years to come.”
      —Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer

uwpress.wisc.edu

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DISCLAIMER

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.

What Weaponry a novel in prose poems - Elizabeth J. Colen (Black Lawrence Press)

Today's book of poetry:
What Weaponry - a novel in prose poems.   
Elizabeth J. Colen.  Black Lawrence Press.  Pittsburgh, PA.  2016.

What Weaponry - a novel in prose poems saunters into the room like a tattooed lady in a perky summer dress with a pistol in her purse and a smear of lipstick still tasty on her lips.  Elizabeth J. Colen is not new to this game and her characters are all body and soul, just like a jazz song, tattered and somehow still hopeful on the battered field of love.

These beautiful assaults are instant karma and sad fate.  Colen has access to instantaneous emotional intensity with her wide open heart channeling all the dreams of her wounded heroes.

This poetry novel burns.

We Are Only Animals Furred

And Undone

In this land time stops, white bird hovering in the

pre-dawn. Unseen fawns high step the wet grass.

And we, feet and shin bathed in shallows seas of

scrub, marvel at the complete dark.  "There's

nothing," you whisper, and then say nothing more. I

know you mean the world has closed its doors.

We haven't slept but tired's come back to wild elation

the way all things circle back to meet their opposites.

The way I sometimes become you again. And

through bare toes feeling for the towpath, and that

stab of electric light moved on by our motion, we

find the neighbor's barn door. No light in neighbor's

kitchen, no horse sounds from the yard. Only the

crickets and your breathing, pale face posed, the

gun still in your hand.

...

Today's book of poetry was gobsmacked by What Weaponry and pleasantly so.  Every time I begin to waver another poet comes along to give us hope.  Today's hope is supplied by these electric jolts from Colen's stun gun.  Elizabeth J. Colen is a talent to celebrate.  

We have heard all these stories before, in one version or another, after all, how many stories are there?  But Colen has found the right traction to make her startlingly lived-in/innocent voice unique.

Today's book of poetry had some extra help this morning.  Before everyone else arrived I was sitting in the shade at the front of our building and rereading What Weaponry and enjoying the quiet street, the occasional cardinal whistle, the sun coming through the large trees down the road.  Our friend Pistol dropped by with his pal Thomas.  When they sat down I handed What Weaponry over to Pistol and asked him to take a peek.  Pistol started reading, he always opens a book of poetry at a random page and starts in there, and the first time he raised his head he was smiling and said "well, that was okay."  And of course he meant much more.  

He buried his head in What Weaponry again and when he came up for air he was a convert.  Pistol doesn't like all that much, I show him poetry whenever I can, but when he does like it I know I've hit on something special, splendid.

Wife Beater

There's a tattooed girl at the counter in the bread

shop and she's thin and she's tough and she's scarred

and you start talking about what her life must be

like. Tank top, wife beater, fresh bruise on her chin.

You wonder if she's somebody's wife. And the shirt

doesn't come all the way down to her pants, which

are low, which are black, which are ripped at the

knee. And the shirt is a little dirty around the

middle like she'd rubbed up against some dirty

truck. And I see your eyes turn down and you look

at her waist and you whisper something about

stretch marks. I tell you you have no business

speculating about the nature of those. Was she fat,

you said, but you decided it was babies. And how

many. You give her seven babies, but she's probably

only twenty-three and just looks forty-four. She

hasn't had time, I say and you say, she looks like the

world, this girl, she looks like the whole damn world

has been sitting right in her lap.

...

There's a dark engine revving hard and running the show in Colen's wheelhouse and the poems in What Weaponry are often bracing as a result.  But Colen is wall-papering her sad confines with jewels.  No matter how darkly set these gems glisten with revealing light.

Today's book of poetry found Colen's mastery of the prose poem invigorating.  Each of these poems ends up bigger than the sum of it's parts.  These are screenplays.  Colen seasons each page with an intoxicating mix of tender, tawdry (in the best possible way) and tired.

When Today's book of poetry says "tired" we are talking about that bone-funking weariness that too much experience welds onto your face like ritual scars.

Last Meal Of Gin

What it took: two days to get used to. The break-off,

lesion to touch, legion. And where were you when?

And then admitting that dream. What breaches.

What I would have made up, but didn't. From there,

dories everywhere, talk of unicorns, what horns,

whatever, the red birds that did not alight on my

arms: there was no going back. Everything right

now is about you. Standing in the dim kitchen,

knee-deep in me. Standing in the living room, the

lights clicking off. Timers. I can't see the face for the

face, can't see the place for the what if. We were a

mob of lost parts, a wreckage of history. Weekends

are tiny models of the world, what weeks want to be.

Sometimes what years. Might contain all electric, all

thought. Which way we went. A tug on the hair and

the clock shakes, pulling you forward by bangs,

waking up bruised. Waking with loss everywhere.

...

Elizabeth J. Colen's What Weaponry is exactly what Today's book of poetry wants to see when we open a book of poems.  We want to see sparks fly, stick around and find out what is buried in the ashes.

Colen made a fan out of our friend Pistol this morning and that's a difficult get.  Today's book of poetry was already convinced.

Elizabeth J. Colen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and Waiting Up for the End of the World (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011), long poem / lyric essay hybrid The Green Condition (Ricochet Editions, 2014), and Your Sick (Jellyfish Highway, 2016), co-written with Carol Guess and Kelly Magee. She teaches at Western Washington University.

BLURBS

• Handsomely forged like the best scenes of the best art films, Elizabeth Colen’s What Weaponry moves between expansive seashores and claustrophobic interiors to illuminate or exorcise the emotional interstices we all inhabit. Such violence and tenderness rubbing up against each other! It’s impossible to look away. And if, as Colen insists, 'There is no mystery here,' it’s because she has exposed the beautiful ugly subcutaneous.
       —Debra Di Blasi
In What Weaponry, Elizabeth J. Colen has done something much more challenging, much more nimble than write a book of prose poems. She has created a wonder, a linear circularity – “We haven’t slept but tired’s come back to wild elation the way all things circle back to meet their opposites,” – she has embedded a book of poems inside a book of prose. “Say you didn’t say his name. Say you sang it.” So I won’t. I will. I just have to follow her. Let her make music with the stories she puts in my mouth. Let her wake me.
    —TC Tolbert

The vortex of bold words that whip through Elizabeth Colen's What Weaponry are messages fully articulating a new form of body. A new sense of love. Radiant and containing "all electric, all thought," the language found in Colen's latest book generously provide a jittery syntactical jolt. What is constant in these dazzling lyrical vignettes is the desire for intimacy in the throes of love's changing face. What Weaponry swerves, plumbs, sears and burns for that which eludes but is right before us. It's a remarkable book.
     —Oliver de la Paz

blacklawrencepress.com 

583

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.