The Man Under My Skin - Juliana Gray (River City Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
The Man Under My Skin.  Juliana Gray.  River City Poetry Series, Volume Five.  River City Publishing.  Montgomery, Alabama.  2005.

Today's book of poetry has never met Juliana Gray and knows next to nothing about her but we would bet serious money that Juliana Gray adores Carson McCullers almost as much as we do.  It could be entirely fanciful thinking on our dimwitted behalf but The Man Under My Skin could easily be a book the grown up Mick Kelly might have written after she walked out of McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.

These poems are the keenest sort of observational poems you can get, they look right through to cold hard truth. Juliana Gray navigates a romance in the Mississippian wilderness, sad poverty, the internal dialogue of a child-killer, and so on, always with an air of knowing grace/gravitas.

Skin

Hard to think of it as organ, mass

of tissue like the liver, lungs or heart,

a bodily machine performing tasks

designed to keep the world and flesh apart.

Its beauty is an accident, its gloss

and dimpled softness, pallor and heated rose--

this silken radiance comes at the loss

of spikes or armored scales. We're all exposed.

Yet like those other human engines, the skin

betrays itself with ailments, tailor-made

diseases, blights that turn the porcelain

complexion to a withered masquerade.

And like the heart, it suffers from too much

of what it lives on, dying to be touched.

...

Today's book of poetry felt at home with the poems in The Man Under My Skin, these are poems with characters that are familiars, some of them have their eye on the ball, some are doomed to worse fates.  Gray has a darkish sense of humour.  Today's book of poetry is convinced all good writers from the American South have a big old Gothic Devil/Angel dyad firmly on their shoulder.

Gray can be playful but she's the cat and you're the mouse.  These poems are intense and fully formed but they are never predictable.

To a Five-Cent Package of Writing Paper

All the children in my father's class

drew names, and all the kids but one -- the boy

who had drawn my father -- brought their gifts to the tree.

The teacher, realizing they were short,

rifled her desk for something a boy might like.

All she found was you. He fingered the band

that held you, the Christmas gift, together. Then

my third-grade father saw that he was poor.

My sister, and I were overcome with gifts

we could not name and which he loved to explain --

puzzles, boomerangs, a bamboo flute.

He told me his Christmas story one of those nights

when he felt he could trust me, a glass of scotch in his hand.

His gift to me: an inherited sense of shame,

history, the futility of wealth.

...

It was Grand Central Station in our offices this morning and it is continuing into the afternoon.  As a result our morning read was a somewhat condensed affair but that didn't stop Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, from knocking several of Juliana Gray's fine poems out of the proverbial park.

The Man Under My Skin reads like the kind of confession a slight fever can elicit, passionate and warm to the touch.

Wanton Soup

Don't think of it as misprint, a menu slip

of a Chinese tongue. In fact, don't think at all.

The silken waitress watches, reads our lips

sounding out desire in whispered drawls.

She calls to the kitchen for number sixty-nine

and chooses serving bowls of scarlet lacquer,

enamel chopsticks, spoons, two cups of wine,

a dish of chiles bright as firecrackers.

The wait's an agony of subtle touch,

a glance, a brush, the work of seeming chaste.

We bite our lips, holding back so much

desire, aching, dying for a taste.

At last we drink our bowls of piping broth,

unzip and grope beneath the tablecloth.

...

The Man Under My Skin was published in 2005.  More recently Juliana Gray has published a second book of poetry, Roleplay (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the 2010 Orphic Prize.

Today's book of poetry will continue to blog about "older" titles as well as the most recent releases as long as publishers will send them to us.  We are still convinced that until you read a book the first time it is going to be new to you.

 

Julian Gray

Photograph by poet Catherine Staples

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Alabama, Juliana Gray teaches at Auburn University. During the summers, she works on the staff of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is the author of the chapbook History in Bones, published in 2001 by Kent State University Press as part of its Wick Poetry Series. Her poems have been published in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Yalobusha Review, Sundog, Poetry East, The Formalist, The Louisville Review, Stories From the Blue Moon Café Volume III, and The Alumni Grill 2. Samples of her creative non-fiction can be found in River Teeth, and Cornbread Nation 2.

BLURBS

"The poems in The Man Under My Skin are fully imagined and keenly observant, funny and passionate, unpredictable and, in their formal poise, just right. Juliana Gray writes about fundamental issues of loving and being loved, of happiness or acceptance in the midst of loss, of community in the midst of isolation, or isolation in the midst of community. Her imagination is restless, big-hearted, mature, intense. Her wit is dry but never arid. A beautiful book in its own right, The Man Under My Skin marks the opening of a significant career."

     - Alan Shapiro

"The sights, smells, tastes, and touches of the South, my South, are everywhere present in Juliana Gray's poems. But most poignant are the measured rhythms, tonal modulations, and considered words -- all familiar sounds that echo here. Reading Gray brings to mind a summer evening on a front porch, the steady creaking of a comfortable rocker, the clink of ice cubes in a glass, and a voice -- warm, witty, wicked, and wise -- speaking from neighborly dark."

     - R.S. Gwynn

Juliana Gray

Roleplay Poetry Reading

Video: Alfred University Bergren Forum

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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.

Necessary Acts - Peter Huggins (River City Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
Necessary Acts.  Peter Huggins.  River City Publishing. Montgomery, Alabama. 2004.

If you follow Today's book of poetry you'll remember Peter Huggins, back in May of this year we took a look at Huggins excellent second book of poetry Blue Angels (River City Publishing, 2001). You can see that here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/05/blue-angels-peter-huggins-river-city.html 

We've made a promise to our publishers that we will happily read all of the books of poetry they send our way regardless of when they were published.  Although we do try to post blogs about recently published books first we believe all books of poetry are new until the reader opens them.

So today we're going to take a shot at Huggins third book of poems, 2004's Necessary Acts. Necessary Acts seemed a necessary inclusion.  Huggins is one polished poet, we've become very fond of the way he works through a poem.  These poems feel as fresh as new snow, clean too.  Huggins writes with focused breadth.  His poems free range from the deaths of little white rabbits to the unfortunate chain saw skills of grandfather and the readers feels that given time Huggins would artfully encompass the universe and render it in terms we could understand.

My Grandfather's Chain Saw

My grandfather thought flesh was like air,

Nothing sharp could hurt it. Or maybe

He was just careless, he dropped his tools--

Hammer or saw, level or plane--

Wherever he was and spent half his time

Looking for them under boards, in cabinets,

By sawhorses or on stairs. The right tool,

Never at hand, was always out of reach.

His chain saw, though, he found without trouble.

Eager for wood, it gobbled up limb,

Branch and trunk. Nothing slowed its drive

As it chewed the ring and middle fingers

Of his left hand, dusted the half-cut

Hickory with his blood, gave his flesh and bone

To the blue air, and left a space in hand

And hickory he never touched or cut again.

...

Today's book of poetry is convinced that Peter Huggins is building a poetry mansion and each of the poems from Blue Angels and Necessary Acts are a solid, beautiful and necessary stone, one after the other like a master mason.  It's like Huggins is preparing meals for a poetry feast.  If one succulent treat doesn't do the trick, turn the page,  Necessary Acts will rumble out another Cordon Bleu plate.

Necessary Acts was one of those books that Today's book of poetry wanted to slow down, read more slowly to get all that gravy.

The Man Who Thought He Was Dead

My friend Rick and I

Were fishing in my boat

On Logan Martin Lake

When it started to rain.

We went ashore and got under

A sweet gum. I thought the lightning,

When it hit the sweet gum,

Cut Rick's face off.

I heard Rick's voice.

His hands and then someone else's

Worked my chest like a pump.

I guess I was dead.

I didn't mind.

I was having a good time,

Floating around the ambulance,

Watching the paramedics

Try to shock me into life.

I felt good. I

Didn't want them to help me.

I wanted them to leave me dead.

Then I saw my body jump.

Sucked

Into myself, I

Woke up in the hospital

With a terrible headache.

Rick said it's strange

The same thing that killed me

Brought me back to life.

I told Rick

I'm damned if I know

What to make of being dead,

Or what to do with my life.

...

Today's morning read was a serious affair.  All of our readers were on the same reverent page, they'd all read Blue Angels so they had a good idea of what was coming.  Huggins aren't necessarily solemn but they sure do carry some weight.

Necessary Acts is Huggins third book of poetry, his fifth and most recent books of poems is Audubon's Engraver (Solomon & George Publishers, 2015) and Today's book of poetry feels confident they are Huggins gold, he doesn't seem to mine anything else.

Killing White Rabbits at Tulane Medical School

Not with poison or guns or traps.

A wrench, something to grip and swing,

To heft like an axe and bring down

With one sharp blow. In a white coat

I held the rabbits over the sink

While they yellowed their fur. Bob hit

The rabbits on the backs of their heads,

Then cut their throats, drained their blood,

Opened their chests and clipped

Their aortas with stainless steel scissors.

I wrapped the bodies in brown paper,

Put them in the freezer,

Cleaned the wooden dissecting board,

Watched the white aortas bubbling

In the medium I'd prepared earlier

That morning. All day I hoped

Our results tallied with yesterday's

And the days' before. Repeatable, confirmed.

Some days we used guinea pigs.

Bob kept them in his coat pocket

Until he was ready for them. They cried out

When he grabbed their hind legs

And flicked their bodies against the sink.

I wrapped the guineas in white paper

And stacked them in the freezer

Beside the rabbits. On Fridays

The guineas and rabbits were incinerated,

And I got paid. That job prepared me

For life and for work and I'm grateful.

...

Peter Huggins has quickly become a crowd/fan favourite here in our office.  Now if we can only get our hands on his other books...

Peter Huggins

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Huggins is the author of five books of poems, Audubon's Engraver (Solomon & George Publishers, 2015), South (Solomon & George Publishers, 2013), Necessary Acts, Blue Angels, (both from River City Publishing, 2004 and 2001), and Hard Facts (Livingston Press, 1998). Audubon's Engraver was shortlisted in 2016 for the International Rubery Book Award, and South was shortlisted for that same award in 2014. He has published over 300 poems in many journals and magazines, and was awarded a literature fellowship in poetry from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2006.
In the Company of Owls, a middle grade novel, appeared from NewSouth/Junebug Books in 2008. In addition, he has published a picture book, Trosclair and the Alligator (Star Bright Books, 2006), which has appeared on the PBS show Between the Lions, received a Mom's Choice Award, and been selected as a best book by the Bank Street College of Education and by the CCBC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has recently retired from teaching in the English Department at Auburn University where he served for thirty-one years, and he and his wife live in Auburn, Alabama.

BLURBS

"Necessary Acts is ripe with characters, from Dante to Sherlock Holmes to Elvis -- and ripe with poetical occasions, from a persona poem that converys the indignation of the animals Noah left behind to a narrative poem that recalls killing white rabbits at Tulane Medical School. Peter Huggins is unstoppable."

     - Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Tender Hooks

"Peter Huggins is a rarity - a poet who writes with the clarity of a silver bell."

     - Thomas Rabbitt, author of Prepositional Heaven

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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.

Blue Angels - Peter Huggins (River City Pubishing)

Today's book of poetry:
Blue Angels.  Peter Huggins.  River City Publishing.  Montgomery, Alabama.  2001.

Today's book of poetry is going back in time today.  River City Publishing from Montgomery, Alabama, sent us a herd of beautiful hardcover poetry titles and even though some of them were published a few years ago they are all new to me and I suspect they will be new to most of you as well.

Peter Huggins' Blue Angels is packed to the rafters with Angels of every colour.  There are also a few ghosts that need tending to in these continuously surprising and entertaining poems.  Blue Angels feels as southern as the beautifully melodious voice of Shelby Foote.  This isn't the south of the "stars and bars", although that's in here too, but this is the south where William Faulkner's home haunts the memory, where going home again to that old house Thomas Wolfe lived in might have you remembering his line  “I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.”

Randall Jarrell is one of the first poets I can remember reading, his poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" still rattles around in the cage that passes for my head and I read that poem over forty years ago.  So it was a multi-faceted pleasure/surprise to come across him roaming around in Peter Huggins Blue Angels.

For the Woman Who Struck
Randall Jarrell

It must have been an ordinary fall day
For her. She hung
On the line to dry in that warm,

Apple-scented air. Humming Telemann,
She swept the leaves off her porch,
Knowing she'd have to sweep it again

Before her day was through. No matter.
Her maple would be in glory soon.
She had the pleasure of its change.

What were a few leaves to her.
She had to pick up her son at school,
Then go to the grocery on the way home.

Traffic was heavy on the Chapel Hill
By-pass. She never saw the elegant-
Looking man who lunged into the road.

In all that noise she heard
The terrible thud of his body
Striking her car. She didn't want to,

But she screamed at him,
Lying on the road like the last
Prim leaf on her sugar maple.

...

I hear Auden.  I hear France.  I hear you dancing in your underpants.  Today's book of poetry felt very much at home in Huggins world.  These poems are all built like old houses designed for the long haul, built to last.

A horse in a swimming pool is an image that is almost surreal except that now, in the Internet Age, we can all watch video of bears, moose or monkeys in someones backyard pool at whim.  Huggins gives us more than any video, he gives us a moment of horse-thought and then his understanding and gentle compassion.  Today's book of poetry is a big fan of kindness and that is a feeling that prevails in Blue Angels.  Poems celebrating kindness are thin on the ground these days but they are always welcome here.

Standing Mortality

A bad thunderstorm
Spooked my neighbor's
Horse last night.
This morning my neighbor
Found her in his swimming pool.
She looked surprised to be there.

Her tail floated behind her
Like a bed of kelp. When
I asked him how he was going
To get her out,
He walked into the pool,
Put blinders and a bridled on her,

Then led her up the steps
Of the shallow end.
She bunched the muscles
In her back and flicked her tail.
I wondered at the fear
That drove her into the pool.

I wondered at my neighbor's
Easy acceptance
Of her fear and her calm
As he led her back
To her stall in the barn.

I wondered that I thought
She looked like a prisoner
Going to execution,
With the hope and serene
Trust of the faithful.

...

Today's book of poetry was up in the air about today's third poem.  Two worthy contenders.  One, a poem about a child's bedtime monsters and the other about the needs of the dead.  There was much discussion at this morning's read.  Milo, our head tech, read both poems to us, twice.  Then Kathryn, our new intern, read them again.  One of the things Today's book of poetry liked about the poems in Blue Angels was their elasticity, their ability to stretch in several directions at once.  In the end our morning reading circle settled on 'monsters' - because who doesn't like those.

Monster Story

As soon as I tell my nephew
He doesn't have to worry about
Water buffalo men in Louisiana,
I know I'm in trouble.
He asks me if he has to worry
About them in Mississippi
Or in North Carolina. I tell him
He doesn't have to worry about them
At all. They don't exist, I say.

He doesn't believe me and I know
I've made a monster to trouble
His sleep. My uncle made
One to trouble my sleep when he said
I shouldn't go swimming at night.
The alligators, he said, would mistake
Me for a fish and eat me.

Try listening to that story
When you're five years old, lying
Flat on the floor, and you think
Water's sucking the pilings
Of your house out from under you.
Go swimming during the day or night
Without thinking your body's not
A sweet morsel of trout or bass
To a hungry jaw-heavy alligator.

Try not to think of white knights
Galloping through your uncle's bloodstream.
They are too late to save him.
Dragons, breathing fire
Into the sweet tissue of his lungs,
Take him down to pure clean bone.

...

Reading Peter Huggins's Blue Angels is a journey to Alabama, a meditation on living well, musings on vapour trails and some good hard lessons on how to be a good person.  In Today's book of poetry world that is a full dance card.

Peter Huggins has published five books of poetry.  Before Blue Angels there was Hard Facts.  Since publishing Blue Angels Huggins has followed with Necessary Acts, South and Audubon's Engraver.

Peter Huggins

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Huggins is the author of five books of poems, Audubon's Engraver (Solomon & George Publishers, 2015), South (Solomon & George Publishers, 2013), Necessary Acts, Blue Angels, (both from River City Publishing, 2004 and 2001), and Hard Facts (Livingston Press, 1998). South was shortlisted in 2014 for the International Rubery Book Award. He has published over 300 poems in many journals and magazines, and was awarded a literature fellowship in poetry from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2006.In the Company of Owls, a middle grade novel, appeared from NewSouth/Junebug Books in 2008. In addition, he has published a picture book, Trosclair and the Alligator (Star Bright Books, 2006), which has appeared on the PBS show Between the Lions, received a Mom's Choice Award, and been selected as a best book by the Bank Street College of Education and by the CCBC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches in the English Department at Auburn University, and he and his wife live in Auburn, Alabama.

BLURBS

"These poems variously marvel at, meditate on, and grieve over significant moments in life. In clear, straightforward, but often surprising lines, Peter Huggins offers his take on a world in which loss and salvation are next-door neighbors, and angels turn up in the strangest places."

     - Jennifer Horne

"Peter Huggins is a rarity - a poet who writes with the clarity of a silver bell. The poems of his new collection allow the reader to see through their surfaces, to go beyond the simplicities, the sweetness and light, to the dark matter of the mind and heart. This book demonstrates a generosity of spirit hardly to be found in today's serious poetry."

     - Thomas Rabbitt

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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.

A World Without End - Matthew Graham (River City Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
A World Without End.  Matthew Graham.  River City Poetry Series, Vol. Six. River City Publishing.  Montgomery, Alabama.  2005.

Today's book of poetry is ready to fire our entire research staff.  Try as they might, they came up short and almost empty-handed on Matthew Graham.  We know that A World Without End was his third book of poetry.  We will now send out our poetry swat-team to find those two early volumes.   Today's book of poetry sincerely hopes there are other, newer books by Mr. Graham because we need more poets like him.

These poems read like an Edward Hopper painting, you know exactly what you are seeing because the narrative is right in front of you, nothing abstract about it.  You also know, right away, that somehow you are the wiser for it.  Same thing with Graham.  These poems are never sermons (some of our wisest poets fall for that), but he certainly is leading a lesson.

Graham also has a finely tuned sense of humour.  When I read "When I Was a Kid" to K last night she almost fell out of our bed.  If I really want to know if something is good I read it to K, she has the best poetry barometer going.

When I Was a Kid

I thought pubic hair was public

And the perils of Tarzan were his pearls.

I'm still liable to dial 119.

In the late 1950's they didn't know from dyslexia.

You were just stupid

And got your head slammed against the blackboard.

I'm not complaining.

It made me humble and afraid to write.

It made me a quiet person on paper.

And forget about foreign words.

Once in Germany I ordered a pocketbook of coffee

And in a bar, told a Polish guy

I was a female professor.

Yes it all comes back to language,

That evil little dog at the door --

That brief flash we get

And translate as best we can.

Or as a French friends once said

To our boring host after an opulent dinner,

"Thank you. Thank you so much

For your hostility."

...

The cover art for A World Without End is a painting titled Before The Storm by Graham's wife, the painter Kathryn Waters and it is stunning.

Our intern Kathryn said that she'd happily kill our office techno-wizard Milo for that painting.  The rest of us thought of the painting as forbiddingly tender, much like many of these excellent poems.

What It Comes Down To

It happened in the spring,

A false spring, true, Still,

Birth seemed almost possible

In that shifting season.

Then blood, and starlight

Slipped away from a very small star.

I even had, secretively, names

I liked. One was Tess,

The others don't matter.

Later

My wife cried on her hands and knees

On the kitchen floor.

Suddenly the whole world came down

To a woman crying.

...

Today's book of poetry was a hopeless romantic mess when reading some of Graham's poetry.  His eulogical poem "News",  dedicated to the late Richard V. Hyatt, misted up my glasses something good.

Matthew Graham's poems make the reader trust the poet.  In a "lead, follow or get out of the way" world Graham is someone you'd happily follow.  He's not shouting directions, his poems simply exude confidence, clarity and wisdom.  Who wouldn't follow that guy.

The Sadness of Summer

Another summer gone,

The clapboard cottage swept clean.

Dust rises and falls along the back roads

Of September. Remember

The bouquets of Queen Anne's lace gracing the breakfast table

Beneath the sheer curtains of June?

There are no boats on the water today.

And as I looked at you in the yard

From the upstairs window, as I saw you bend

And clip the last of the wild daisies

And saw my own reflection,

I thought of all the years quietly gone

That we have touched together

And of the life that we have made

And worn

And have become together.

...

Today's book of poetry sometimes feels that my selection of three poems is inadequate and today is one of those days.  I have to confess that the three poems I've chosen are not the best three poems from A World Without End.  The three I choose today spoke directly to me and I loved them too much not to share.  It happens.

Andrew Hudgins is a poet I greatly admire and he is the editor for this series of the River City Poetry Series.  Here is what he had to say on the front cover flap about Matthew Graham's A World Without End:

     "A thoughtful, elegiac voice pervades Matthew Graham's A World Without End,

     his new book and best book yet. A small sense of mourning arises even in his

     celebration of deep and continuing love because he knows that love, in the 

     fullness of time, inevitably ends, even if the lovers never falter in their loving.

     That doubled understanding moves him to the richest music in a life's work

     rich in music and meditation. A World Without End is stately without stiffness,

     thoughtful without pretense, humorous without indecorousness, clear without

     simplicity. It offers a pleasure in every line and a fresh moment of insight and

     understanding on every page."

What he said.

Matthew Graham

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

(PLEASE NOTE THIS INFORMATION IS FROM 2005)

MATTHEW GRAHAM is the author of two books of poems, New World Architecture (Galileo Press, 1985) and 1946 (Galileo Press, 1991), and the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Indiana Arts Commission, Pushcart, and the Vermont Studio Center.
His poems have appeared in Harvard Magazine, River Styx, and Crab Orchard Review, among many others. He directs the creative writing program at the University of Southern Indiana, where he co-directs the RopeWalk Writers Retreat, and is poetry editor of the Southern Indiana Review.
Graham lives in Evansville, Indiana, and is married to the painter Katie Waters.

BLURBS

"A World Without End is masterful. The pitch of these poems is nearly perfect -- in the way that the poems of Weldon Kees and Donald Justice (two elegant and dour muses hovering behind this book) are nearly perfect. A reader feels that nothing is missing and that there is not a single extraneous syllable. More than this, I admire the maturity and intelligence with which Matthew Graham treats his book's subject: history and its failures, cruelties, oppressions. Beneath the beautifully modulated images, beneath the insouciance which is Graham's brand of stoicism, the bottom has fallen out of the world and the serpents of history hiss. In poem after poem, one is lulled by the beauty and surprised by the brutality. This is a quietly remarkable book."

     - Lynn Emanuel, author of Then, Suddenly, and Hotel Fiesta

"Matthew Graham has been one of the best and the most indispensable poets in America, about America: the dogs of America, the people, the weather, our possessions and our places, the vast matter of what we can and what we cannot afford. In a world where you can hear James Wright singing back-up with Hank Williams, Matthew Graham has a light, tender and elegiac touch that is all his own. Every fine poem here forks over a little wound, and we are better for having had the heard and wit to absorb it."

     - Liam Rector, author of American Prodigal and The Executive Director of the Fallen World

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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.

Ready To Eat The Sky - Kevin Pilkington (River City Publishing)

Today's book of poetry:
Ready To Eat The Sky.  Volume Four - The River City Poetry Series.  Kevin Pilkington.  River City Publishing.  Montgomery, Alabama.  2004.

Ready To Eat The Sky by Kevin Pilkington was published in 2004 but it only arrived on our desks here at Today's book of poetry recently.  I figure it was stuck in the mail somewhere between the continental divide and Swansea, Wales or Carmathenshire.

Pilkington is a Dylan Thomas fan and devotee.  If that's where you're going to set the bar you are dancing in pretty high cotton, you are going to have to be ready to burn.  Kevin Pilkington is up to the task and does some pretty sweet cooking in Ready To Eat The Sky.

Now I know Pilkington loves Thomas because I read it somewhere, you'd never see it in the poems, although it is certainly there.  Pilkington loves language like birds love sky.

These poems sound and feel like anecdotal narrative poems but that's a trick.  What they really are is emotional Venus-fly-traps.  Pilkington gets right into your bloodstream.

Grilled Fish

We had lunch
in a local trattoria
built into coastal rock,
picked a table on the deck
a few feet above water
that looked like the last
good novel I dove into.

A waiter came over
leaning on two metal canes.
He walked like stone
and his English was a coastline
of jagged rock. His smile
brought the sun closer,
and we said grazie
to things the sea didn't
need that day.

Another waiter brought
a pitcher of wine
with a round gold peach,
a tiny moon you can peel,
resting on the bottom.
We drank it with a salad
and tomatoes so sweet
and red the church should
make Satan blue.

Our main dish was grilled
fish who hadn't lost
their heads to the chef's knife,
or over the wrong woman
the way I did a while back.
We didn't recognize them
either. They might have been
French, swam down here
for the day, then were tricked
by hook or net.

They tasted as rich
as the sun resting
on waves filled
with every gold coin
from every ship that sank
since Caesar and kept
rolling towards shore.

...

Pilkington's golden tongue skirts the sweet edge of revealing too much, he's almost always on the verge of giving it all away.  He's a tease.  Once he gets you hooked he just starts reeling you in as easily as the big Hem on a Cuban fishing boat.

The sweetness doesn't hurt a bit and there is always just a pinch of tart when you need it.

When I did the office poll the vote was 9 to 1 for going with Pilkington today.  Our typesetter, Milo, doesn't like a damned thing, he tells us daily, yells at us in fact, "that there hasn't been a poet worth his/her salt (he puts in that slash with a wild gesticulation of his little spindly spiny spider white arms) since Ezra lost his gamble!"  We tolerate Milo because he can bake.

Dogs

My brother and his wife
bought a hunting dog.
It's white with black patches.
There's one that's shaped
like Rhode Island, a small state
that isn't too heavy for a three-
month-old puppy to carry
around on his back. As
he gets older, stronger and puts
on weight, it will stretch
into Texas.

They have already taught
him to sit but he is still
too young to learn about Jesus,
so when they took him
to the beach, he tried walking
on water, fell in then turned
and attacked a wave,
ripping it to shreds.

A mound of cookie dough
on a plate is how he sleeps
on a round mattress and
dreams of rabbits or grouse.
For now a tennis ball
is enough to hunt down,
and sheets flying like ghosts
over rose bushes from
a neighbor's clothesline
is what makes him bark.

My brother and I take him
out on the lawn, throw
his a stick into tall grass.
He runs after it, his ears
that will never be trained
bounce and flap like a loose
shirt. He comes back
with the stick in his mouth
and every dog we ever
had as kids following him.
We can't believe how many
years have gone by since
we've seen them. Then we sit
down on the grass, smile
and watch all our dogs
running.

...

Come on!!  A poem about puppies.  Give us a freaking break!!  But, but, but, I love this poem, and almost every other single poem in this great collection.  Pilkington could probably amuse me with a poem about the phonebook.  Probably get a tear in my eye as well.

Today's book of poetry was charmed, charmed, charmed by the elastic wit Pilkington uses as an emotional tightrope.  These poems are constructed like the pyramids.  One solid block on another. And so on.

I read these poems like eating dessert, they were such a pleasure to devour.

The Last Saint

Even too much wine
can't stop all the hurt
you packed, but thought
Customs would never let
you bring into the country.
When they asked if you
had anything to declare,
you said the last ten years.

Somehow you can still
walk past the medieval
tower tonight is just
how the Amalfi coastline
gets a hard-on for water,
cars, moon or anything
that moves. So you sit
on a bench.

Low tide rubbing against
rock is how a song finds
a way out of your throat.
And to think you couldn't
speak a word of Italian
when the night began.
But since English never
made any sense and makes
even less now, you decide
never to speak it again.

A couple is standing in
front of you. The man looks
Polish enough to be the pope
and the woman with him
is so large they must rub
her thighs down with olive oil
to squeeze her into Rome.
They are laughing but since
it's a joke you know the punch
line to, you laugh even louder.

Then they are gone and there
is a church like the one
in Sorrento where Christ
is stone. Before you think
about converting to concrete,
you are in an alley leaning
against a building older
than Octavian. A woman
is kneeling in front of you
opening your belt. And
this is where it happens,
the very moment when
you become the last saint
on the face of the earth
who doesn't have a prayer.

...

Kevin Pilkington has made my day.  Ready To Eat The Sky is a simply delicious book.  Find it.

Kevin Pilkington

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Pilkington ​​​​​​​​​​is a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of six collections: his collection Spare Change was the La Jolla Poets Press National Book Award winner and his chapbook won the Ledge Poetry Prize. His collection entitled Ready to Eat the Sky was a finalist for an Independent Publishers Books Award. A collection entitled In the Eyes of a Dog was published in September 2009 and won the 2011 New York Book Festival Award. Another collection entitled The Unemployed Man Who Became a Tree was recently published. His poetry has appeared in many anthologies including Birthday Poems: A Celebration, Western Wind, and Contemporary Poetry of New England. Over the years, he has been nominated for four Pushcarts and has appeared in Verse Daily. His poems and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including: The Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Boston Review, Yankee, Hayden’s Ferry, Columbia, North American Review, etc. His debut novel entitled Summer Shares was published in June 2012. 

BLURB
"In Ready to Eat the Sky the reader encounters a poet of extraordinary fineness of vision, one whose language adheres to the surface of realities with an elegance and simplicity rare in today's poetry. There is humility and grace of being in these poems, which stand before the world openmouthed, hat in hand, heart on sleeve. I take guilty pleasure in the poems of Kevin Pilkington, and consider him an essential voice in contemporary poetry."
     -- Jay Parini, author of Why Poetry Matters

Kevin Pilkington

2012 Burlington Book Festival

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