You Can't Be Serious - Ronald Wallace (Parallel Press/University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries)

Today's book of poetry:
You Can't Be Serious.  Ronald Wallace.  Parallel Press.  University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.  Madison, Wisconsin.  2015.

When I first read You Can't Be Serious back in December I avoided reading the Author's Note at the beginning of the book.  When I'm reading for the blog I always avoid introductions, notes or any other sort of preamble to the poems.  Today's book of poetry is never looking for prior context.  (Of course we always read these notes afterward).

So, I liked these poems a lot before I realized that the poems in You Can't Be Serious are all constructed in such a way that "the last words of each line of each poem, read vertically top to bottom, form a haiku by a classic Japanese master."

It's brilliant stuff.

When I read You Can't Be Serious again last night it was like each poem was a main course, the haiku an illuminating dessert.  This is the cue for Wallace to take a big bow.

The Wisdom of the Old

     after Basho

I thought when I got old that I'd be wise. Wearing

my vast learning lightly I'd find myself a

source of wisdom for others. If you looked in the paper,

you'd find me quoted on most any subject, the robe

of knowledge trailing from my shoulders. Even

my enemies would marvel at my sagacity. If

you had an insoluble problem, I'd solve it. It

would be a no-brainer. I'd be the sage who gets

to explain everything. Turns out, I was all wet.

The older I get the less I know. Here I am picking

through the alleyways of my memory looking for flowers

and finding only trash, a panhandler who, in

better days, had what passed for a brain, but now is the

wacky preacher who won't come in out of the rain.

...

Ronald Wallace is a "Wascally Wabbit" by every stretch of the imagination and as coy as he is clever. These poems roll off the tongue like you'd written them yourself, they go down as naturally as a drink of water.  These poems are ripe with moments that are familiar to us all.

Our morning read was a scream.  Milo, our head tech, read the poems and the Kathryn, our new intern, read the haiku.  The rest of us leisured at their feet as though we were in front of a warming fire in the hearth on a snowy night.  It was morning bliss.

You Can't Be Serious

      after Basho

A writer who can deal with murder, barbarity, horror--with

"tragic elements"--is the greater artist, said the young

Anthony Trollope, than the writer of the mundane. This leaves

me out. "The mild walks of everyday life" are what I

gravitate to. The neighbor's sudden dementia--would

that count as horror? Could barbarity be something like

mistakenly digging up my wife's favorite lemon verbena? To

poison the pesky chipmunks, to do my best to wipe

them out--would that be considered murder? I far and away

prefer the milder walks of the lesser art--the stroll in the

happy diurnal, the observable day-to-day. Tears

are plentiful enough in this life without me putting in

my own two cents. Tragically unambitious, I'm your

chronicler of the commonplace, a ramble in Trollope's eyes.

...

Today's book of poetry admires You Can't Be Serious very much.  As much as Wallace proclaims the anti-Trollope stance and trolls the quiet conventional corners, he has no problem at all taking on the big subjects like abortion, gay rights, politics, sexism, religion and so on.

The fact is You Can't Be Serious can be very serious indeed while remaining entirely Basho/Issa tongue in cheek.  Serious as a heart attack, serious as two grasshoppers can get.  That's when you know there is a master at work.

Bully for You, Mitt Romney

     after Issa

We held the gay boy down and cut his hair. Hey,

it was fifty years ago, and we didn't know, you

know, that he was gay. It was just a prank. There

is nothing more to it. He's dead by now, anyway. do

you think I'd do that today? We'll of course not!

Look at this smile. You can see it wouldn't swat

a flea. Let's have some other questions. Marriage? The

union of one man, one woman. We don't want to fly

in the face of sacred conventions. Abortion? It wrings

my heart to see an innocent fetus murdered, his

teenage mother bereft. Let's leave it in God's hands.

The elderly, the indigent? Give them work! If they're on

the dole, they'll never be useful. The gay boy? On bended

knee he came on to us. We gave him a knee.

...

It's a dreary grey Wednesday here in our nation's capital, spring is trying to come through the clouds and there may even be a bit of sun on the horizon.  It doesn't matter, You Can't Be Serious has already made our day.

Ronald Wallace

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ron Wallace is the author of twenty previous books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction and criticism. He co-directs the creative writing program at the UW-Madison, and serves as editor of the UW Press Poetry Series which he founded in 1985.

He is currently Halls-Bascom Professor of English and Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry and the recipient of three distinguished teaching awards, and prizes from his previous poetry collections from The Council for Wisconsin Writers, The Society of Midland Authors, and the Wisconsin Library Association. In 2005 he was awarded the first George Garrett Prize of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs for his service to writers and writing.

Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he has been a Wisconsin resident since 1972, dividing his time between Madison and a forty-acre farm in Richland County’s Bear Valley.

parallelpress.library.wisc.edu

448

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.

Harvest the Dirt - Wil Gibson (Great Weather for MEDIA)

Today's book of poetry:
Harvest the Dirt.   Wil Gibson.  Great Weather for MEDIA.  New York, New York, 2015.

Spend some very enjoyable time reading Harvest the Dirt by Wil Gibson and you might be inclined to think that he is one dark and rough piece of bark.  

That is until you read his terribly tender ode to Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "So It Goes."  There is almost always an exception to the rule.

Gibson's rules might run along the lines of the "drink 'em, smoke 'em, crank 'em when you've got them" school.  These poems describe a difficult life of great turmoil and torment, a road full of bad turns and bad choices.

So how does Gibson turn this into such bittersweet poetry?

What  I should've said to the older gentleman

who happened into the bar during a poetry

reading and stayed for the duration:

I saw you nod in approval with the first bent heart poem you

heard. Was that the first time you heard someone else speak your

mind? I saw that you dropped a twenty dollar bill in the passed

hat payday, so I assume the open wounds on stage were enough

for you. I saw my Granddaddy nod the same way the first time I

read him a poem. He knew the poem was about him and smiled

a struck match to burn away the lost cause from the dust bowl

lump in my throat. In your open mind I saw Granddad's pride. In

your accidently art-filled evening you gave back to me a reason for

writing I thought I had lost or forgotten.

...

Gibson is a romantic, no doubt about that, but he doesn't give in to it easily.  It's all kicking and screaming, coming across the finishing line on fire sort of stuff.  

Harvest the Dirt is earthy stuff, an eight-ball, dime bag, bobo huffing earthy stuff that hits the nail, repeatedly, right on its big flat head.  Gibson is almost polymorphous in his range of romantic follies. He is affectionate about: certain country singers, Tom Waits, Bobbie Gentry, his family, the American South, meth labs...

Last Man Standing

I refused to smoke or snort meth the first time I did it. The more

experienced tweakers put it in toilet paper and told me to swallow

it. When my stomach acid dissolved the thin wood pulp, the

explosion of crank into my system burned a hole from my hips to

my mouth. Each organ etched its name into my skin with a cattle

prod. Lightning shot through my intestines.

I ran to the bathroom and shit out everything I had ever eaten in

my entire life. I shit out my mother's breast milk, and the amniotic

fluid I floated in for nine months. I shit out things I thought about

eating. I shit our everything I had seen other people eat and all the

food in all the commercials I had ever seen. I vowed to never do

this horrible drug ever again.

Twenty minutes later I had a straw to my nose and was being

passed a freshly packed light bulb to smoke from. I inhaled the

sweet smell of impending snow and hot chemicals. My head

spun like the world around me. I didn't eat, sleep, or do anything

remotely sane for the next fifty-three hours.

The next seven years were facsimile nights and carbon paper days.

Everything was broken light bulbs, broken promises, broken

promises, broken promises, broken hearts, and full-blown crazy.

Most things were broken. I lived awake and died in my dreams

every rare time I slept. I still have trouble sleeping.

...

Wil Gibson's Harvest the Dirt is the meat section of the grocery store, pure bloody protein.

Today's book of poetry's morning read was raucous to say the least.  Milo has seemingly overcome any trace of his previous shyness.  He can't wait to get up in front of us and read and he has become quite good at it.  Many mornings now we simply let him read to the rest of us.  Today everyone wanted to get in on it.  Kathryn insisted on reading the Vonnegut poem, twice.

Whole. South. Side.

Dust bunnies scratched weak scream claw marks down

the hallway.

No milk in a new house,

third this year, another cupboard empty.

June is a terrible month to move,

made easier when you lack clothes and furniture.

The new cockroaches were smaller.

The new neighbors mutter "poor white trash"

under their breath, never to our faces.

They don't mean it as hurtful or angry,

they only mean we were pitiful.

They smile with sad eyes and treat us like

a man whose wife cheats on him.

There is no way to tell someone they have been forgotten.

...

Gibson takes it all on in Harvest the Dirt - poverty, race, violence, drugs, country music and so on.   He does it with the slow grace of a poetic Richard Pryor.  Saint Richard of Pryor never passed a pipe he didn't like and was the best straight-up stand-up there has ever been.  We here at Today's book of poetry like to make big proclamations just to see who is listening.

Wil Gibson is a slap and a caress, not always in equal portions.  Poetry like this can make you squirm in your seat and that is a good thing.  A damned good thing.

Wil Gibson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wil Gibson was born from a good idea and a bottle of bourbon and raised in some of the poorest communities northern Illinois and eastern Arkansas have to offer. He is a proud, mistake-prone, father of four.

BLURBS

Harvest the Dirt is the fuck-you-listen-to-me reminder that life is real, and raw, and constantly in a state of push and pull and break. Gibson doesn’t need metaphors to talk about drugs and despair and life. There’s no hidden meaning. This is not a collection of self-help pieces. He’s not going to tell you that anything will ever be better. What Gibson will do though is craft a guide of real-world, worst-case scenarios, so that maybe you’ll give a damn about yourself, or the world around you, or art, or whatever it is to which you yearn to cling. This is Jim Carroll and William Burroughs meets George Carlin and Sam Kinison in a dark alley for an I’ll-raise-you-a-story kind of raw. This is not a book of poetry; this is an experience.—Chris Margolin, The Poetry Question

Harvest the Dirt is a gritty, relentless testament to the survival song that is Wil Gibson. Each poem is a bloody ride out of the city that birthed you; a psalm in the name of recovery; an open window on a stormy day somewhere in the middle of this country. This book is filled with a man’s truth and, while it isn’t always pretty, that truth never apologizes.—Carrie Rudzinski, author of The Shotgun Speaks and The History of Silence

Here, now, in 2015, there is an eye on race, southern culture, and the relationship between the two that is as focused as I remember it being. That eye is large, and general. Wil Gibson’s Harvest the Dirtis specific, and on the street. But no less large. Harvest the Dirt is proof that country music doesn’t need a fiddle, a pedal steel, or even sounds at all. All country music needs is a heart breaking or a heart trying to mend, and a bent ear. Enjoy the listen.—Justin Wells, singer / songwriter

Full of should-have-saids and self portraits, Wil Gibson’s newest collection gives a vivid look at the life he has lead. It is harsh. It is visceral. Most importantly, it is truth. Harvest the Dirt captures the purest of moments and the most honest of self-reflections through remembrances and images of an universal truth about the America we live in. It is an insightful read of contemporary poetry in an unrestricted and accessible tongue.—Katrina K. Guarascio, Swimming with Elephants Publications

Wil Gibson

"Stories"

(NPS 2015)

video: Button Poetry

greatweatherformedia.com 

448

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.

But For Now - Gordon Johnston (McGill-Queen's University Press)

Today's book of poetry:
But For Now.  Gordon Johnston.  The Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series.  McGill-Queen's University Press.  Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca.  2013.

At the heart of it Gordon Johnston's But For Now is a celebration of each new day, each new breath. Johnson's But For Now is a declaration of faith and hope.

Johnston has many questions about faith, about the very existence of God,  that counterbalance the certainty of his own belief, yet underneath it all the reader can see that Johnston's God is omnipresent.

A New Psalm, of Uncertainty

How shall we speak of you, O God?

  Is the thunder crack your angry voice?

    Are we children huddled under a blanket of faith?

We are needy, O God, and we need to tell you so.

  We need plants to grow, and come to grain or fruit.

    We need animals to offer their milk, and themselves.

We need a roof or tarpaulin, a blanket, a cup.

  How shall we speak to you, O God?

    If we beg, do you listen to us?

Hear us, O God, in our neediness and fear,

  And in our uncertainty, here,

    In our threadbare faith.

...

These are careful poems, each of them constructed with some inner musical ear that gives them all a quiet power.  Johnston tempers his certainty with a gentle and experienced knowledge that questions his own belief.

Johnston is suggesting that the way we look at God and faith may need to be rethought and he is doing it with charming eloquence.  But For Now is never proselytizing, which is a good thing for this heathen, he is always on topic and that means he is always searching for a better understanding of our time on this mortal coil.  Johnston is never trying to muddy the water, quite the contrary, But For Now is Johnston distilling faith into reason with music.

Factorem Caeli

from CREDO

Most days don't need heaven; here's enough.

Don't even like the sound of it, what I've heard:

all those people, and me not good in crowds.

Why would anyone want to be immortal?

What would you do every day all day, if they call it

day there? And rest eternal sounds the same, but night.

When I dream of reaching to hold you, my arms go through

   you;

I hear your voice, but it comes from too great a distance;

you appear in a crazy story, then you vanish.

What I want heaven for, more than anything,

is to see you again. I need to see you again.

In heaven I want to hear you, and see you, and hold you.

...

Factorem Caeli translates as "maker of heaven".

Reading But For Now was a treat, underneath everything is a feeling of quiet certainty that exudes a calming joy.  Johnston has finessed faith into a questioning beauty with this work and the resulting poems have a tight logic that is all their own.

When I tell you that there is a lightness to these poems do not think I mean they are slight, rather that they are illuminated from within by Johnston's hope.  Too much?  Today's book of poetry stands on every word -- you won't be able to read But For Now without experiencing it.

Finally The End of Poetry

Finally,

  the end

    of poetry.

No more

  poems, or

    the need for them.

We shall write to each

  other now

    from the heart

with the best

  words we

    can find

in the full light

  of everything we know.

...

At least one of our staff had the pleasure of being a student in a Gordon Johnston poetry class at Trent University, and look at where we are now.  Today's book of poetry was honoured to read But For Now and sends a big dip of our hat to its author.

Gordon Johnston

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gordon Johnston lives in Peterborough where he taught poetry for forty years at Trent University.

mqup.ca

447

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.

Floating is Everything - Sheryda Warrener (Nightwood Editions)

Today's book of poetry:
Floating is Everything.  Sheryda Warrener.  Nightwood Editions.  Gibsons, British Columbia.  2015.

Sheryda Warrener's second book of poetry, Floating is Everything, is seasoned with a quirky optimism that Today's book of poetry finds very satisfying.  You start off thinking that these poems are going to do particular things but then when you least expect it -- ghosts.  There are traces of them everywhere.

Warrener also has a suitably dark sense of humour and Today's book of poetry is always a sucker for that.

from Trace Object

Patterns loosen, collapse. Floating gold and black diamonds

shimmer unhinged from their place in the world's effortless

pattern. Fill in with new. Shortly after he died, she sat on

the corner sofa watching Wheel of Fortune. Turned toward

the nothing that was once her husband and said, Hello Love.

There's an underside to everything! She's sure he called

from his cellphone, and when she slid open the patio door

he was there at the corner of the lawn looking back at her.

Into his phone he saying, I know what you did. Meaning

he watched her get rid of all his shoes and he's not happy

about it.

...

At this morning's reading Milo teared up when he read "Oh, Yoko" and then Kathryn looked at him like he was made of gold and dipped in honey.

The rest of us tried not to intrude on the blue sparks that ensued.

Warrener's Floating is Everything pulls off the difficult yet charming trick of sounding sweet while being serious as a heart attack.  Warrener is able to look at some difficult horizons and still come out shining because she has procured the goods to remain hopeful.

That, and there's ghosts.

Oh, Yoko

Imagine on repeat on the record player,

Front cover, a polaroid of a man's head inside

a cloud. Back cover, a photograph taken by

a woman whose husband will wrap his body around her body

in the famous picture by Leibovitz circa 1981

wearing a black sweater and jeans while he's naked

just hours before he's shot, and still no one knows

what to think about it. In Tokyo, a red rotary telephone

floats on a plinth in the middle of the exhibit space.

The label on the wall reads. At any moment, Ms. Ono

might call. When the phone rings, if the phone rings,

what would her voice sound like? A cloud wrung

inside out, a cloud with her husband's face inside.

Vibrations travelling thousands of miles

through wire, frequencies transmitted without

our knowing, only to arrive. I pull on 

a black sweater and jeans in solidarity.

My son, three, wants "Oh Yoko!" again, makes a performance

of singing along. There are things he does

and doesn't understand. His voice lags a little behind,

but in the early morning dark he's got that hopeful

human feeling right.

...

How sweet is that!  Warrener does that, hits sweet and completely avoids saccharine.

Floating is Everything takes us to outer-space and back again with Yuri Gagarin and Warrener quotes Elizabeth Bachinsky (author of The Hottest Summer in Recorded History, Bachinsky has round table status here at Today's book of poetry).  Warrener is giving us a little taste of the best of heaven and earth.

These poems range dramatically in subject matter, everything from the air quality in Reykjavik to the hair quality on the chest of Steven Morrissey (The Smiths) is up for discussion.  Everything gets the same intelligent discourse - and then there are ghosts.

Pools in Florida

       After Ginger Shore, Causeway Inn, Tampa, Florida, November 17, 1977

                   by Stephen Shore

Never mind that it's November and there's a woman to her

waist in it. We can't see the woman's face or maybe it's a

girl. Her aquamarine suit ties at the shoulders. Miniature

wet bows. The frame of the photograph makes a triangle of

ledge and railing. She's looking past the sun chairs reclin-

ing toward the natural bay. The pool water is cheerful, no

one's arguing against that. The auburn of the girl's hair and

skin makes for great proximity effect. Does she feel lonely?

Dusty rose of the bay in the distance, bright sunburst pat-

tern on the surface of the pool. Yes, she's longing to be else-

where. Just past the sun deck there's something invisible

worth having.

...

Sheryda Warrener's poems can carry a sense of suspense like the promise of a delicate dessert and they can be earthy like the smell of your backyard after rain.  that is a knock out combination any day.

Today's book of poetry, Milo and Kathryn, we all liked Floating is Everything very much.

Sheryda Warrener

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sheryda Warrener is the author of two poetry collections, including her debut Hard Feelings (Snare/Invisible, 2010). Her work has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Arc Magazine Poem of the Year, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, and was a runner-up for Lemon Hound’s inaugural poetry contest. She lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia.

BLURB

"So much of measurement / is the pleasure of going / by feel..." suggests Sheryda Warrener in Floating is Everything. And there is great pleasure to be found in her whip-smart poems, in their cunning associative leaps. Elsewhere she writes, "When seeking a pattern, subvert the pattern." Whether tracing the inward depths of memory and relationship or the outer realms of place and space, Warrener's boldly imaginative poems take this as their credo. By the light of her generous and ranging intellect, readers see the world anew. Here is a collection that strives to get that "hopeful, human feeling right."

      - Sheri Benning

nightwoodeditions.com

445

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 Genome Rhapsodies - Anna George Meek (The Ashland Poetry Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Genome Rhapsodies.  Anna George Meek.  The Ashland Poetry Press.  Ashland, Ohio.  2015.

Winner of the Richard Snyder Publication Prize

bri·co·lage

ˌbrēkōˈläZH,ˌbrikə-/

noun

1. (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.

   "the chaotic bricolage of the novel is brought together in a unifying gesture"

   • something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things.

     "bricolages of painted junk"

   
   

   Anna George Meek's The Genome Rhapsodies are a series of delightfully curious bricolage. She draws together the oddest coupling of sources and distills them with beautiful alchemy until they become epiphany.
   
   Meek provides her sources for some of the poems and they range from odd Wikipedia finds to Sigmund the Freud, Harlequin novels to patent applications. Even when the sources aren't listed you know Meek is distilling something that is going to turn into fascination.
   
   Meek tackles some big issues with her diverse range, the struggle families endure coming to terms with ailing and aging parents as senility and time steal their voice and reason. Meek travels back and forth in time to reach for the connections to her family that will make her continued existence possible, reasonable and palatable.
   
   Heirloom

I inhabit lace, and delicate folds.
On my wedding day, I wear my father's
Swedish blond and shy face, and the skin
of my mother's dress. And she, years before,

in her mother's, and her mother's. The body fits
against heavy silk faille, horsehair crinoline, gores
and flares. Corset of bone. Before the bobbin,
before the vote. In my adulthood, I have been given
the shape of women I've never known.

A terrible force gathers in Germany, the year
my young grandmother holds lilacs to her hip.
From her honeymoon balcony, she leans over the parade

to spit into Hitler's hair. Startling
and translucent stuff, in half-story's half-light. The drape
of weighty public event under family memory's
inscrutable lace: these are hems that touch those

who still live, and must care for them. I have yet to clean
the stains from the old dress, my wedding now years
behind me. But it's impossible. When Brahms dies,

my great-grandmother marries, and the electron
is discovered. Suddenly,
atoms fill her skirts, and the second symphony
becomes the sepulcher of a man. Consequences of fabric

and accumulation. Women collect in the dress
the alterations of their various body sizes;
I know precisely where I stop short of my mother.
And how her shape becomes me.

...

Today's book of poetry is impressed by the range Meek has at the end of her magical fingertips. This poem about her wedding dress, "Heirloom," tells the stories of several generations in one elegant swoop, and we get some spittle directed to towards that terrible man. Beauty.

Many of the poems in this collection are labelled as "Bricolage" but all of them draw on a rich well filled with vast resources.

Muscle Memory
My husband is bathing our baby
in the clawfoot tub. She rides its pleasures;
the porcelain ocean swirls and slaps.

Not water alone, uterine longing, such glistening
muscle; in my daughter, a nautilus
where mind lives. Its chambers open
deep, each quiet curl of her neurons. Her body
rocks and leans into the silver underworld.

From the next room, I watch her
as I play the violin; its music wanders
the hall, the bath, where my daughter
doesn't realize she listens. I study
the curious ventriloquism of my hands/
Their fingers strike down like diving birds.

No longer able to speak, my father listens
to the music, eyes closed, and swaying.
Under his lashes, tears brim. He cannot remember
my name from my daughter's, yet always,

when he embraces me, his hands fall just so
between my shoulder blades.

I can hear my father's breath lifting and falling;
hear the pads of my husband's fingers
massaging the baby's skull. One day her body
will remember his hands, just so, and who I may be,

no matter. For a moment,
I lift the bow from the strings; sound
dissipates; rosin atoms spin away in clouds as they will.

...

Today's book of poetry is breaking our own three poem rule today simply because we couldn't decide which poems not to use. There was heated debate in the TBOP offices and it was only after I agreed to use all four poems that cooler heads prevailed.

I couldn't not use "Dracula's Housecat" which you will see in a moment. Milo insisted on "Muscle Memory" because he has a soft, soft heart under all those black clothes. Kathryn insisted on "Heirloom", she read it twice during this morning's reading. "Haunted House" found its own way to the table.

Dracula's Housecat
More lithe I am, and living,
than he who also hunts by night.
We whisper the fields where titmice quiver;
we sip black water from the kills.
I leap the grass blades, the air unsheathed,
moon the shape of my eye. He's quick
for a little bat, but I feast first:
mortality coils in my haunches.
I eat and bare my belly in bloodroot
to tease the lean eagles who desire me.
And still, the bat is suckling his corpse.
I would rip off his wings and roll his soul
immortality between my paws,
but he alone lets me in before dawn
to climb the castle drapes. Later,
I rapture in sunlight while he sleeps
in his box--which I have only once
misused. I love my warm body thrumming.
I love my delicious short life.

...

Meek strongly believes in the interconnectedness of all things, it's apparent in the operatic range of her curiosity. Anna George Meek is questioning more than she is answering in The Genome Rhapsodies but they are such interesting questions. She wants to understand where language comes from and where language goes when her father can no longer make words.

Meek takes it all on, the good and the bad and she makes good music out of it. As a result our morning read here in the office was a spirited affair.

Haunted House
The last owner of this body
still creaks the floorboards,
makes books and dishes fly
and smash against the walls.
She turns the lights on and off
at odd hours of the night.
I wish I knew what she wanted,
wish she would show herself,
and then I would understand her
slow destruction
of the place.

...

Too good.

Today's book of poetry has to confess that some of the poems in The Genome Rhapsodies were above my pay grade, they made my research staff a little testy and caused us to open a few unopened pages of our dictionary. Yes, here at Today's book of poetry we still look stuff up in books.

But we don't mind being challenged and were enthralled from the the start. Anna George Meek has some serious poetry chops.

Anna George Meek

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna George Meek has published in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Seneca Review, The Missouri Review (where she was awarded the Tom McAfee Discovery Prize), Water~Stone, Crazyhorse, and dozens of other national journals. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, two Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships, and an Academy of American Poetry Prize. She has also been a finalist for the National Poetry Series (three times), the Minnesota Book Award, and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her first book, Acts of Contortion, won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; her chapbook Engraved won the Snowbound Chapbook Competition and was published fall 2013. Meek lives with her husband and daughter where she sings professionally with the Vocal Essence Ensemble Singers, and is a professor of English in the Twin Cities.

BLURB

"The Genome Rhapsodies opens with Gregor Mendel’s question: 'What is inherited, and how?' Like strands of DNA, the syntax in these brilliant and moving poems intertwines with the infinitely recombinant moments and utterances that comprise our lives, revealing that what we inherit, first and finally, is language itself. … 'Try to Remember Before Language,' one poem urges us, but of course we can’t. These poems re-member us in language and reveal how the past becomes us, in every sense of the word; they are gorgeous, unforgettable works of art.”

     — Angie Estes, 2014 Snyder Prize Judge

"There are moments in our lives when a veil seems lifted and the interconnectedness of the world is revealed. The Genome Rhapsodies seems born from these epiphanic flashes. Lacing her own poetic voice together with a disparate array of voices and texts through bricolage, Meek’s poems explore the many forms of inheritance. As her poem built from her father’s lines, 'The Voice That is Mine and Not Mine,' points out: we become the words poured into us. Where we begin and end is not easily definable, after all, 'The boundaries of an organism are nearly always disputable.'"
    —- Matt Rasmussen, author of Black Aperture, National Book Award finalist

"What makes Anna George Meek’s The Genome Rhapsodies so impressive is its honesty about and alertness to everyday experience: 'Dear sachet, dear cherished household hooks / and torch and toys, I am coming back a stranger / to the materials of being alive.' Her musician’s ear is particularly keyed to the bare-boned contradictions of life, such as nature vs. nurture, and joy vs. grief. American poetry could use a good dose of her tenacity, wit, and spirit. Meek is that rare poet who wears her heart on both sleeves."
     — David Roderick, author of The Americans and winner of the APR/Honickman Prize.

"In Genome Rhapsodies we consider the basic components of the human body, the notes that make familiar music, and single memories composing the whole of memory itself. As the collection builds toward rhapsody, it is at first many other fine things: “The script/for an ancient story,” the verbal virtuosity and “dumb throbbing” of “derivations of grief” in violent times. Most often, Genome Rhapsodies is a linguistic bricolage in which meticulous focus on the micro juxtaposes with the macro to move us toward the hugeness of union. Anna Meek’s tone is intimate, erotic, and intellectual at once. Each body flows, she shows us, into the next body like “a plate of honey” both “sweet, and ominous.” We touch one another, whether we want to touch or not."
     — Heid E. Erdrich, author of Cell Traffic, New and Selected Poems

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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.

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