Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting — Shivanee Ramlochan (Peepal Tree Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting.  Shivanee Ramlochan.  Peepal Tree Press.  Leeds, U.K.  2017.

"You tell him

I am the queen

the comeuppance

the hard heretic that nature intended."

                                                                                      from - Vivek Chooses Her Husband

Today's book of poetry is unsure of what to say about the flame content of these poems.  The poems in Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting come in heavy and hot.  Shivanee Ramlochan is singing in a new key, these poems, a new language - but familiar.  Ramlochan is "the hard heretic" and she's paid full price for the experience.

Shivanee Ramlochan's poetry almost does feel haunted.  Today's book of poetry thinks we understand the need for ghosts to do her bidding.  Like more women then we will ever know about, the heroine of these poems has been raped.  That Ramlochan can/does make poetry, art and beauty out of such horror renders these poems almost sacred.

Duenne Lara

If 

I write into you hard enough

the rumour murmurs that you'll come for me.

If

I scratch you through the water mirror, suck you under my talons,

will you knock & claim me? I keep

this one soft garden in my trachea vacant; I

stripped speech for split gourds, choking on seeds so you

might come and live in me, little

lover, come

claim these metatarsal prayers.

Everyone knows I am haunting.

Enact it again, you whisper, using mora and purpleheart to tell me.

Mourn me all over, cloister to caul.

Weep me upright in our wedding bower, my little bride, and I

do, I do,

I take the four rivers of the forest by throat and algal sinew,

pump the waters into my lungs. Come,

I'll christen you away from the devil's doorstep,

duenne suitor, duenne saviour, duenne dowry,

Duenne, you are mine

by sharp incense and pistol recoil, by moth fabric and mouth to mouth.

The wooden atlas delivers deeper rings in us

while the devil tries again to win your heart,

grinning.

Come here, she marrow-bites.

I have something for you, but it looks like torture.

She scrapes it from the ruins of the moonlight museum.

She smiles as it eats our national anthem from your tongue.

No one told you how it would hurt, to have your feet forced against

family hearth.

The mangroves stroked you taut while the devil cracked your bones right,

a blister body of devotion

a casket of cunning charms to stamp you for her service.

I will never make you walk again, if you will be mine.

...

Shivanee Ramlochan's women, clan after clan, embody strong and resilient characters of noble charm and wit.  You also know that they are willing to carry a sharp knife that no gentleman need ever see.  Ramlochan's women love other women.  And are willing to cut bad men.

Today's book of poetry admits that we had to go to the mattresses with Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting.  Generally we don't like to admit how many times we have to go to the dictionary to get through a poem (and usually that is a poem killer), but with Lady Shivanee we were willing to do whatever it took.  Once you are on certain rides you don't ever want them to stop.  Dame Shivanee Ramlochan is a beautiful monster poet.

Poem after poem in Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting had us sad, happy, angry, and often in the same poem.  We think it is because Duchess Ramlochan has a bad engine with only one setting, when her engine is on things are ready to burn, like only the best bad engines can.

1. On the Third Anniversary of the Rape

Don't say Tunapuna Police Station.

Say you found yourself in the cave of a minotaur, not

knowing how you got there, with a lap of red thread.

Don't say forced anal entry.

Say you learned that some flowers bloom and die

at night. Say you remember stamen, filament,

cross-pollination, say that hummingbirds are

vital to the process.

Give the minotaur time to write in the police ledger. Lap

the red thread

around the hummingbird vase.

Don't say I took out the garbage alone and he grabbed me by the waist

and he was handsome.

                  Say Shakespeare. Recite Macbeth for the tropics.

Lady MacBeth was the Queen of Carnival

and she stabbed Banquo with a vagrant's shiv during J'ouvert.

She danced a blood dingolay and gave her husband a Dimanche Gras

upbraiding.

I am in mud and glitter so far steeped that going back is not an option.

Don't say rapist.

Say engineer of aerosol deodorant because pepper spray is illegal,

anything is illegal

Fight back too hard, and it's illegal,

>your nails are illegal

Don't say you have a vagina, say

he stole your insurance policy/your bank boxes/your first car

downpayment

Say

he took something he'll be punished for taking,

not something you're punished for holding

like red thread between your thighs.

...

Our morning read was a full house sort of affair but it was the women who came out styling today.  None of the men on the Today's book of poetry staff had any of the angry sincerity that the women on our staff said was necessary.  For good reason.  None of the men on our staff have ever been the victim of generations of systemic sexism.

Rape is a mean bastard of a delicate topic and Shivanee Ramlochan has no trouble just kicking the crap right out of all previous tip-toeing.  These poems bear witness, frank and unforgiving.  And Today's book of poetry has nothing but respect for the strength in these poems — and the determination of the poet.  Regardless of the seriousness of the topic, the addressing of terror and male aggression, these poems are only successful if they work as poetry.

That's why we are here.  Shivanee burns.

Camp Burn Down

You and me and the fires we used to keep each other alive.

The fire at Camp Balandra.

The fire at Fort George.

The fire at fuck my throat

while my mother's on the phone, and the island's flooding

so everyone's indoors

but you are the skinniest raft

not provided for by the government,

unlawful from her to Tobago

and back.

There are small welts on the backs

of your hands as you braid me

down to the campsite.

This is the camp of Sunday afters,

your father's car radio

melting our eardrums while you move in me.

This is the fort of no retracing, every

place on my body you touch

burned nova.

burned past recognition.

You burn me into an atlas

into a Form One geometry tin

gripped

inside a perfect's handspan,

cock to cock to cheap vaseline,

burning me something new in each fire.

Snow might come to Tunapuna,

and your father would still spill

my guts in front of the market.

There would be hail in the public library,

and your father's pig cutlass

opening my thigh. The weather could vomit itself,

turn the catalogues of gale and gust inside out,

and the biggest damage would be

what I've done to you.

Remember the camp at the edge of the island?

The white stones brining to nothing

as you nerve-ground them between thumb and tongue,

scattering the wet cremations on my forehead.

I bless you, you said, I bless you here.

Nothing touched us except the rest of the world.

...

Today's book of poetry will remember the name of Shivanee Ramlochan because we will be singing it from the rafters for the next little while.  If you get lucky enough to read Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting you will be unlikely to forget either.  Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting will tear your fricking heart out and give you hope all at the same time.  That's a rare ride, a rare human combination.

Shivanee Ramlochan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and book blogger. She is the Book Reviews Editor for Caribbean Beat Magazine. Shivanee also writes about books for the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the Anglophone Caribbean's largest literary festival, as well as Paper Based Bookshop, Trinidad and Tobago's oldest independent Caribbean specialty bookseller. She is the deputy editor of The Caribbean Review of Books. Her first book of poems, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, was published by Peepal Tree Press on October 3rd, 2017.

BLURBS

Ramlochan’s poetry slays whoever would force an ‘identity’ on it. It alchemizes the roles of grandmothers, abortionists, labourers, clerks, dancers, policemen, cousins, rapists into the greatest intensity of human. The world fucked the Caribbean archipelago, where European-derived shepherdesses and pre-Abrahamic Lilith now wander as peers among manifold beings. The music is consonantal, full of pleasure/pain. Rich as a García Márquez novel, these are uncompromising conversations, intimacy wrestling survival.

     —Vahni Capildeo, author of Measures of Expatriation.

This debut book is a subversive tour-de-force, a poetry of Holi powder and sarisilk drifting with beauty; of flayed predators, persistent hunger and thirst, broken bodies of daughters and sons; of cultural keep-down, wedding-weep, rape-ache, and the raw dreaming of rebel lovers; of abeer-streaked bodies’ sex-throb and split and Kali hex words brutally gleaming in the moonlit museum. These stunning poems fiercely and inventively wrestle language of beast, wolf, fishtail, and gods monstrous, singing firesongs of purification for the island dead and survival for the living. In these pages of la sangre viva, “spirit does linger.”
     —Loretta Collins Klobah, author of The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman.

These poems crackle with soucouyant ire and the voices of duennes in stanzas so bewitching you will not want to look away. Against a Hindu, Muslim, and Christian backdrop, abortionists, rapists, ancestors, and deities incarnate as grief. Surprise awaits in tightly wrought lines that are “no accidental shrine” to ancestry, femininity, and filial devotion. Always some darkness casts shadows against the beauty of love. Always the ghost of a story beckons the reader close.
     —Rajiv Mohabir, author of The Cowherd’s Son and The Taxidermist’s Cut.

In transgressive mode, Shivanee Ramlochan invokes gods, goddesses or demons to do what poetry should do–alarm and ignite us, surprise and blast us and tear at our heartstrings. Welcome to a challenging, unforgettable and courageous new voice.
     —Olive Senior, author of The Pain Tree.

Shivanee Ramlochan

reads three poems from 

Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting

at the Paper Based Bookshop

Video:  Shivanee Ramlochan

peepaltreepress.com 

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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

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY LIKES TO THROW IN AN UPDATE.  OUR READERSHIP JUST PASSED 400,000.  TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY HAS A LOT OF PEOPLE TO THANK FOR OUR ONGOING OPERATION.  ASIDE FROM OUR STAFF - WE COULDN'T DO A THING WITHOUT K.  THANK ALL OF YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT.

Acceptable Time — Tom Moore (Ravenna Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Acceptable Time.  Tom Moore.  Ravenna Press.  Spokane, Washington.  2016.

Rock

The boulders are whispering in the sea heat.

It's the same sun they've known

for a million years, the same sea.

As we walk along the beach we might

think they're just

dumb stones

but they are merely slow.

It takes so long for their mouths

to open (and a single vowel ten-thousand

years to form) that we don't hear.

We don't sense the changes overcoming

these rocks

as they split themselves into speech

nor the language of minds so strange

we're blurs on a copper sun.

...

That's how you write a poem!  Is it just me? I had to read "Rock" two or three times before I absorbed it all, before it sunk in.  Sometimes I think my head is made out of rock.

When Tom Moore is on, and he is on like a freaking siren, he is electric.  And funny.  Dark funny — and all you regular readers of Today's book of poetry know that we like that best.

As one of our Today's book of poetry heroes, the great Charles Bukowski said, when asked about writing poems:  "they must be full of power, they must make you want to turn the page."  And Tom Moore is all over that.

Don't be distracted by the lazy Bukowski quote.  Today's book of poetry loves Buk, but to be clear, Tom Moore's poetry is nothing like Charles the B.  We used the quote because Moore not only has power, he knows how to use it, and yes, we want to turn the page.

Hunting Out of Season

Though it's not his habit to be contrite

he enter the forest cautiously

for this is the place where the light over-spills

frozen ponds

and flocks in the long grass gather.

After checking his compass to make

quite sure

he's lost

he starts

to sing mating songs—waits

for the deer girls to show.

Slowly, they spill

from the forest with

legs of careful stepping

and their heads held high—

so near

the whole herd

clatters through his brain.

The eyes of each are blessed

with the gift of

perfect trajectory

and his songs bore into their minds

like bullets

they can't hear.

...

Today's book of poetry had to get Max, our Sr. Editor, out of his private salon/saloon, and team him up with Milo, our head tech, to try and find out who this Tom Moore is.  No luck at all.  Nothing!  The only thing Today's book of poetry knows about Tom Moore is that he can burn.

If he were a boxer he'd be a champ and most of his opponents would later complain that they didn't see it coming.  Moore has the velvet glove with a big old anvil inside.

What Today's book of poetry most admired in Moore's Acceptable Time was the Moore never rushes anything.  Moore likes to play it sweet until just before the curtain, and it works.  These poems act like crisp fables, the lessons uncertain until the last line, last word.  That's how to make it sing.

Bulb

At first it stayed in the shoebox

in the closet

in the hall

and talked to itself about the dog

that once ran its tongue

along the lid of the box

that went away when it heard

a noise

and never came back.

In the spring it discovered

it could unlearn the night and its own

imperfections.

Now, it's summer

—stuffy, warm, and deep—

and still it lies in the shoebox.

A tendril has started to dig

through the floor

drawing its strength from

the rotten wood

driving its thin brain steadily

into the other side of consciousness.

If we listened, we might

hear its heaving

comically serious

                Bulgarian

weightlifter grunts—feel

the house slip.

...

Our morning read here at Today's book of poetry was a little quieter than normal.  It is an overcast Saturday morning here in Ottawa and some of our staff phoned in with the Friday night flu.  Today's book of poetry likes to think we are an understanding employer and have decided not to flog any of them.  But they will pay.

Tom Moore would understand.

I put India Arie on the box with her version of "The Creator Has A Master Plan," the Pharoah Sanders classic.  Everyone in the office knew it was time for business and gathered round.  When India finished I read Acceptable Time to the troops.  Even Max stayed for the duration.

Max's approval carries a lot of weight here and it certified my contention, Tom Moore impressed us all day long.

Elegy

Sometimes the body has done enough.

It's not that the flesh

doesn't care

what the soul might have wanted

or for those who've come

by thinking

they could help—

it's because of all the partial deaths

that have happened before that

the last's made almost

irrelevant.

If the flesh could talk to the soul, it might

ask why, with skin flaking off and the

breasts having out-lived

their usefulness

it should go on?

Yet the soul can't answer

these or any other questions.

After midnight

the halls quiet down—

even the bacteria yawn.

Perhaps she would have heard

the bags of fluid beeping

as the bodies were washed by hand

or from somewhere far away

the echo of a flood tide, booming.

When the end finally came the

details of her death must

have been quite

extraordinary

like the glint she saw on a

metal hinge, the 

railing as

the light descended.

...

Today's book of poetry played the full four poem Monty today because Mr. Moore earned it.  Acceptable Time is a remarkable little book that punches way above its weight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Moore is a Senior Instructor of Liberal Studies at Western Washington University.

ravennapress.com

691

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

Lady Lazarus Redux — Amanda Earl (above/ground press)

Today's book of poetry:
Lady Lazarus Redux.  Amanda Earl.  above/ground press.  Ottawa, Ontario.  2017.

Gwendolyn MacEwen, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.  

Amanda Earl has gone to the source, the deep pool, and come up smoking.  Today's book of poetry won't bother explaining how and what Earl borrowed from these giants, Earl explains it clearly enough in an "Afterword."  The technique doesn't matter that much to Today's book of poetry although it is an amazing and diligent feat, all that matters to us is what Earl does with the tools she has manufactured.  

Amanda Earl's Lady Lazarus Redux burns.

Today's book of poetry is relatively familiar with some of Amanda Earl's earlier works, we had Milo, our head tech, go into the stacks and he brought back Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014), I Owe Saint Hildegard the Light (unarmed chapbooks, no date), and 48 Bowls (le Temps des cerises/an Angel House Press Imprint, 2013).  Of course Milo now knows he has to add a few Amanda Earl titles to our ongoing list of poetry titles we are in search mode for.

Today's book of poetry is familiar enough with Earl to know that unlike the rest of us, Earl is willing to spread her net wide.  Amanda Earl isn't dedicated to a particular voice, a particular style, instead she tries new styles on like intellectual hats.  The poems in Lady Lazarus Redux employ a more narrative hook and Earl is happy to step on the gas, she is willing and able to stretch her bad engine into a higher gear.

Part Ten: The Same, Identical Woman

I am exhausted. I am exhausted.

Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.

                         Sylvia Plath, The Bee Meeting

1

Another messy wake up at four thirty a.m. against my will. I sip water, try to

dehydrate so I won't be clumsy but all the ghosts are here. They won't let me

breathe.

2

Silence makes its painstaking way into the day's carnival. Tap screech. Fridge

moan. I am unaccustomed to strangers. Dawn is my sleep's enemy. I want to make

a mansion out of my bed. Exhausted by eight p.m., I become thin as glass.

3

Winter is smooth. I crave the burr of spring, its exotic tricks of light, shadow

dancing. I avoid crowds, put on a velvet demeanour, tile my worries as limestone

shale on Ashburnham Hill. My goal is translucence.

4

What's the etiquette for I don't give a fuck! I choose a white card. My hands are

dry. I'd steal moisture from the moon, but that's time-consuming. The moon

despises me. We are rivals.

5

I am an exile in a colourful fish pond. I swim in the wrong direction, if I swim at

all. I am neglected with the sodden lilies and lazy bullfrogs, my outsider pals. I

unravel the seams of my gills to reveal my scars. I am graceless. Most days I fake it.

6

In public I don another mask, made of leaves that never turn or die. I am the

overripe thorn never the flower. I have outstayed my welcome. I have teeth. I am

sharp. I can sting. I bristle. There is no gentle here.

7

My hair is silver. I refuse to dye. I let it grow. It curtains the dark. I am

embarrassed not noble. A roll of sorrow overcomes.

8

I've never paid attention to omens. I choose a blue card. Blue for melancholy, for

medicine in the form of small pills. Yellow for Valium. I shred portents. I cry.

Fountains overflow. Here's an obsolete penny. Make a wish.

9

Fear is lamp black, impenetrable. I drown in my unadulterated contradictions. I

poison the light with humid passion when I'm supposed to be dried up. See me

smile to camouflage the sorrow, blond as flaxen, smooth as linseed. Spin me into

cool material.

10

I am monstrous, a whore, I confess reluctantly to eager suitors. They wear out

their purity. I canvas misery. I am a beautiful liar, n'est-ce pas? It's an affliction. A

siren with a head of silver years. Men swagger. I indulge them. I am fond of the

ingenue, but I don't want to guide him, I just want to be a witness.

...

In Lady Lazarus Redux Amanda Earl is almost always quoting someone in her single project based matrix, one of the four, MacEwen,Rich, Sexton or Plath.  But the language is always Earl.  But when Earl quotes Plath she is starting up the engine.

     "I am terrified by the dark thing

      That sleeps inside me."

                                      Sylvia Plath, Elm

Earl starts one of the her ten dynamos that appear in Lady Lazarus Redux with this great Plath quote and Today's book of poetry is pretty sure that Earl realizes that most of us have "dark things" that come in the night, but very few of us are capable of making music out of the dark.  Discord is a big black raven that sweeps above and around Earl's poems, that is until she grabs the beast and starts plucking it's long feathers.

Earl leans on the dark and pulls it taut.  Men aren't secondary in these poems, but they are barely present, barely necessary.  Earl is speaking from a place that seeks no approval.  This is a type of reporting for the new poetry news.

Part Four: The Paperweight

The world is blood-hot and personal

                                  Sylvia Plath, Totem

1

Dread follows a siege of cravings and aversions. As if my plasma is pleading for 

iron, a backbone, resilience.

2

The leaf of my temper unfurls and fiery bells of fury clang in my skull. I stumble

with the weight of hot iron. I am charred. I boil. I am a danger zone. Now

emotions are snow-feathered, delicate. I tremble, so brittle, I splinter.

3

This blood rust scent of myself incites burnt ocher dreams: cars on fire, sirens

wailing, the howl of nameless creatures in the hot dark. Gardens are luminous with

flame. I cannot surface.

4

Saints cry out to me in nightmares. The sheets are stained. I press my finger

against my clit. In the morning I wake with dried blood on my palm.

5

Treat this body as a numb castle with the drawbridge up. Do not attempt to 

rescue the princess. She is seated at her doom, doing nervous needlework, pricking

her finger. She is cursed.

6

Thoughts shear through my mind. Dread is an icicle that stabs into calm. Ice turns 

to brick. This is not alchemy, it is anxiety, a muddy recognition. Flat, unpercussive

despair.

7

It doesn't matter if I cross a thousand cold rivers, hug an icepack in my sleep, eat

an ice cream cone while wandering in January with my coat open, stand naked at

the window on a wintry night, the serpent of heat licks flame at my skin until I am

soaked in sweat.

8

Dear moon, a gesture would be nice. You're always so regular. I have a calendar

that tells me when you wax and wane. I envy your predictability. Bright wolf of

silvery gibbons while my uterus clenches blankly.

9

I am not made of iron. I seethe and sob. The earth turns from day to night and I

from dark to light. My bounce against infinity is no more than an ephemeral

quiver.

10

This lust is carried on scorched winds. When I touch a pencil, it turns to ash. I stay

away on purpose. Internalize my fervour. I am no gallery of calm. I am a 

connoisseur of carnality. A heat-seeker, a bomb.

...

The women here at Today's book of poetry are all big fans of Amanda Earl.  As Kathyrn, our Jr. Editor said this morning:  "She will say the thing!"  No fear.

In an effort for full disclosure Today's book of poetry does know Amanda Earl, we have one of her hand-made bowls sitting beside the desk in our office.  Today's book of poetry would go so far as to say that we are friends with Ms. Earl — but our circles don't intersect all that often.

Our morning read was smooth as glass.  Maggie, our new intern, took over the reins and laser pointed us home.  A Ms. Birney (yes, an honest to goodness, real life, relative of the late Saint Earle of Birney) joined us for this morning's reading.  The gang rose to the challenge and waltzed Amanda Earl around our offices and into the beautiful spring morning.  Ms. Birney brought a friend, Lucy, who was new to us all but made she made friends of us all quickly, joined in the reading. Lucy chose this last poem

Part Eight: The Cat

Love is a shadow.

How you lie and cry after it.

                       Sylvia Plath, Elm

1

Opening childproof extra strength sinus medication, plastic pantyliner bags, jars of

nuts, wine sealed with corks has become increasingly difficult with age. Will alone

isn't enough. I aspire to be enriched. I end up a restless paces of the night, all

packages destroyed by my teeth, my head pounding and stains in my underpants.

2

Age inscribes its sophistry on my body. This flesh was never holy but decadent

and real. I caress my scars.

3

My senses incinerate order, but I am no fan of chaos. The surface is rapacious and

dull. I want to delve, not to police my actions. I try to get hold of myself.

4

My emotions roar. My anxieties sear me. I am clinging as hard as I can to the

balustrade of optimism. I have two sides at least, odd and even. Odd usually wins.

5

I am an actor in the torchlight, making unidentifiable shadow puppets on the wall.

I do not envy youth. I am an arsonist of memory. I set each reminiscence on fire

and watch the remnants curl as it burns. I wake up sweating. My father tried to

possess me. Sometimes I believe he succeeded. And we are in hell together.

6

Here is a recollection. It is Christmas Eve. My father is into the whiskey again. I

am upstairs in my bedroom, but the shouts of my parents' battle reach my ears.

There is sudden movement. Screams. Something crashes.  I hide underneath my 

bed. I piss my pajamas because I am too afraid to leave the room to go to the

toilet.

7

Nightmares have anchors. This ship doesn't move. Holidays weigh me down. Bing

Crosby is singing White Christmas. I love the red cardinals on the cards strung

across the silver garlands in the living room. But a black bird caws in the sun and

the sky darkens once again.

8

Flights of fancy got me through childhood. My stories, my imaginary friends, the 

willow tree fairies, standing still on the railroad tracks, imagining the train would

take me away, escapes to cool creeks, tadpoles in a bucket, surprise frogs. I

remember that little girl. I wish I could be her guardian angel.

9

When I left home I took the Red Rose tea figurines with me. The owl and the

duck, the foxes and deer, the cats and dogs, the fish, the monkeys, we fled. I

wrapped them in tissue paper to keep them whole.

10

The little girl is made of glass. Despair causes cracks in her psyche that can't quite

be repaired. Now she reflects the light. So many colours in the prism of her life

reflected back as shards of memory and a love of the broken.

...

"...and a love of the broken."  That damned line broke Today's book of poetry's heart the first time we read it, and the second and the third.

Today's book of poetry was very happy to write about Amanda Earl's most recent chapbook Lady Lazarus Redux.  Amanda Earl is a poet of large appetites, Today's book of poetry is certain we will see more from Earl.

Amanda Earl

Photo: Charles Earl

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Earl is an Ottawa writer, publisher and visual poet. She's the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress.  More information is available at AmandaEarl.com.

Amanda Earl

Tree reading series

Video: Tree Reading Series

abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

690

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

       

Nelson — Dag T. Straumsvåg (Proper Tales Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Nelson.  Dag T. Straumsvåg.  Proper Tales Press.  Cobourg, Ontario.  2017.

Not that Today's book of poetry won't/can't take responsibility, but I do have to tell you that Milo, our head tech and digital Prince, isn't in the office this morning.  That I was able to take a photo of Dag T. Straumsvåg's Nelson is an accomplishment.  I had help.  Odin, our former head of security, returned for a visit this morning and we were so damned happy to see him that we felt drunk.  All of that before mumbling out an apology to Dag, Today's book of poetry is sorry our cover photo is sideways.  Damned Commodore 16.

As any of our regular readers knows — Today's book of poetry is a big fan of the Canadian poet Nelson Ball.  Nelson is the current champion of doing the most with the least, but his lean poetry is never sparse.  Today's book of poetry is not alone in our admiration (we have written about Nelson Ball several times over the years) of Sir Admiral Nelson Ball.

Norwegian poet Dag T. Straumsvåg wrote Nelson with his Highness Mr. Ball in mind, a tribute to be sure, but Dag wasn't intending to mimic Ball's style.  And he doesn't, Straumsvåg is a little closer in style to Stuart Ross, the irrepressible poet/publisher and all around mensch.

Dag T. Straumsvåg does capture Nelson Ball's whimsy though, a bit of his clear light.  These poems fall like a light rain but every image acts like a seed.

Winter Morning

Coldest

day

of the year.

The fly

on

the windowsill

rubs

its front

legs 

together,

trying

to make 

fire.

...

Old Dag T. had a dark hue to his sense of humour, just the way we like it.  Today's book of poetry wanted to ask him about the Death Metal scene in the Botswana of his memory.  Now there's a poem that packs a Kung-Fu poetry punch.  

For such a small press Proper Tales Press continuously ups the ante with the breadth of their titles and authors.  Regular readers of this blog will know that Proper Tales Press publisher Stuart Ross (who we have written about several times on our blog) is a close friend of Today's book of poetry.  Our guest room is named after the man.

Mr. Ross casts an awfully wide net and it shows.  Proper Tales Press has a long and consistent record of original voices and Dag T. Straumsvåg joins an excellent chorus.

Many of the poems in this collection were written in English, those that were translated from Nynorsk read like they were written in English as well.  Invisible.

At The Bar

you'd better leave now

the waitress says in a friendly voice to the man

she points toward the door and the grainy dark outside

you'd better leave now

...

Our morning read was flat out zany.  Odin was back in the fold for the day and that brought a tear to my eye that I wanted no one to see.  I pretended I was sneezing when I pulled out my big hanky.  Thomas was happy to see Odin as well, Odin taught him what he knows.  So we let Odin lead the show.  These short poems were worth reading slowly.  This little collection left a big impression on us all.

Sometimes poems just seem to fit into your head space,  Dag T. Straumsvåg seems to have whittled his work down to fine, smooth projectile that always finds its mark.

Options

We're offered amnesia

and we accept.

We can make good friends

out of blue clay.

We can count

the buttons on our shirts,

make history.

Our sleep is calm, roaming

with darkness in the hills,

learning to whistle.

...

Today's book of poetry hopes that every time someone reads Dag T. Straumsvåg's Nelson the poetry Gods nod a little more gently in Nelson Ball's way.  Nelson won't barge in uninvited, remains polite and well behaved.  That sly Nelson.  That sly Dag T. Straumsvåg.

Photo: Kapitonova

 Dag T. Straumsvåg 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dag T. Straumsvåg was born in 1964 and grew up on the west coast of Norway. He is the author and translator of four books of poetry, most recently The Lure-Maker from Posio (Red Dragonfly Press, 2011), translated by Robert Hedin and Louis Jenkins. A selection of his poems is included in Robert Hedin: At the Great Door of Morning—Selected Poems and Translations (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in numerous journals in Norway and North America. He lives in Trondheim.

"June"

A poem by  Dag T. Straumsvåg 

Video: Motionpoems

propertalespress@gmail.com

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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

Celadon — Ian Haight (Unicorn Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Celadon.  Ian Haight.  Unicorn Press.  Greenboro, North Carolina.  2017.

Unicorn Press First Book Award Winner, 2016-2017

Ian Haight's Celadon could easily be three different books of poetry.  When Today's book of poetry read Celadon the first time it knocked us off our feet, three times.

Celadon refers to an imagined paradise, a real enough area in Korea where potters, of a certain skill, made/make fine pottery with a pale green glaze.

Haight imagines a Utopian place where the earth slows down enough for contemplation.  But Haight is nothing if not a realist, these poems come from someone who has experienced the machines of industry and commerce.  Haight knows the price paid for anyone who steps outside the lines.

Stamping Parts

1.

I said no to summer

at the company's private

park, no to my own

lakeside trailer, tending

deer paths, picking up

garbage, and women my age

on a beach. Dad reclined in his 

re-upholstered La-Z-Boy—

the back, already sunfaded—

and looked out over the

front hill's lawn from our

living room picture window.

Ketchup stained the chest of

his long underwear—the flannel

plaid shirt, unbuttoned to near

his navel. He dragged slow on

a cigarette, flicked ashes

in a gold glass ashtray.

Behind him on the fireplace,

the hundred-year-old grandfather

clock ticked. Red leather

steel-toed work boots

slouched by the hearth's iron

candlestick. Through his wire-

framed glasses, Dad stared

at the TV, though the child-

sized Buddha statue bought at

a roadside flea market

lounged in meditation

close to the channel dials.

It's not easy for summer

help to get that job, he

said. I looked down at the

brick-brown sofa's seat

cushions, fibers unraveling

at the edges, mold-yellow

plastic exposed. The oak

coffee table's top

corners paled on the sides,

worn from soles of work-

boot scuff marks. I rested

my foot on the wear. Dreaming

of 13 dollars an hour

running steel machines

I said, But I can get

overtime in the factory.

He put his Diet Coke

on a coaster, let the air

sink out of his chest, and said,

Ok.

       Outside

the lifetime-old, cinder-

red brick factories,

a sign declares, "162

days since any injury."

At the rollforms, high-roofed,

empty-air spaces above 

machines as long as the building—

the machines smash steel sheets

into lengths for IBM's

office furniture panel

frames.

             Too young for steel

press work at seventeen,

with a bucket of turpentine,

I mop a conveyor line's

dribbled paint for the factory's

minimum hourly pay.

Workers do pushups

between passing parts, read

Principles of Accounting

or Gone with the Wind.

                                       Lunch

at half past midnight,

the break room filled with Penthouse

and Hustler, bathrooms busy

with washing hands; trash bins

full of paper towels.

Volunteering for overtime

means cleaning anodizing

vaults. A gas mask, if you're

a wuss, and middle-aged toothless

people, their hair near gone.

There's no union here

'cause the pay's so good.

On the first floor, men run

presses as big as houses,

drink cherry brandy between

loads, tell me their children's

names. The men say they majored

in English, and warn, Whatever

you do, don't come here

when you finish. Steve

makes sixty grand—enough

for most at our plant—but he drives

on old white Regal, rust-

holed, tansy-streaked from oxidizing

metal under the paint.

Al monitors the paint

gun lines. Every few

hours he replenishes

a hose with a full drum.

What do you do all day?

I ask. Not a damn thing.

Best job in the plant.

My eyes water from fumes;

Al doesn't wear a mask.

No cigarette packs,

so I ask, Do you smoke? No

way, the whole place'd blow

up—you can't smoke down

here. Besides, that stuff

is bad for your lungs. How

long have you been doin'

this? Fifteen years. They'll

have to drag me out.

He shows me his house, oil

pumping rig on a hill,

a tray of chessmen he's

painted with real gold.

Why do you work? I ask.

Where else is someone

going to pay me to sit

around all day? Besides,

it get me out of the house,

you know, gives me something

to do.

...

Today's book of poetry had to hold the reins a little tight at a couple of different points in our reading of Celadon.  One minute we were union obsessed and remembering our time on the motor-line, working for Ford in Windsor.  Then we were Buddha buddy happy in rural Korea and are negotiating our presence with the local population.  Questions arise about being  in a culture that embraces the past and the future with equal reverence.  But let me be clear, Ian Haight, is crystal.

Haight's poems are all aimed at understanding the social construct around human behaviour.  What people do in their efforts to get through a day.  Haight looks at the reconciliations we make with ourselves at the end of the day — the stories we tell ourselves to tie up the loose ends of our lives.  

This is one of those times when Today's book of poetry feels that we lack the skills to adequately express the pleasure we had reading Celadon.  We were certainly engaged from page one, Celadon

compels the reader with pace, from the factory floor to the rice fields, Haight's straight forward narration is always rich with the right detail.

All Haight is looking for is a safe place to land.  Like most of us, his search is for peace, for all, a reasonable world, a secure life, no unreasonable ask.

Peacock Meditation at a Thai Nunnery

     A rusted iron cage has a sterile sand floor covered with fern

seeds. Inside, a peacock half-spreads fronds of wispy tail feathers as

big as its cage, promenading.

     Chanting mantras, a nun bows to a gold-leaf wooden Buddha

statue, bows to a white granite pool. She walks into the pool as if it

has no temperature, stops when water touches her vulva—bows and

prays. She whirls in water, shifts her mudra hands, glides from lotus

meditation to flat on her back, the wideness of soles of her feet and

toes white—prays to Buddhas of ten directions. Arms extended,

she floats vertical over the pool's rock rim. She rises, bows to the statue,

walks to a far off house.

      In the shade of trees, dogs saunter behind monks of the temple.

The peacocks sit silent in their cages.

...

Haight isn't shy about bringing in some reinforcements, he pin points moments in time using keys like Penthouse Magazine to grab you by the nose.  But what he's really after is calling out the Gods of Industry who don't care who they crawl over in the name of progress.  The Gods of Industry who breath greenbucks and bury the evidence of the misdeeds in caves.

Celadon is highly polished, with a beautiful green glaze over it all.  Over the death of Detroit with its empty factories and empty homes and nary a dream in sight.  Over the gravel and mud of rural Korea, Japan and Tibet.  Haight is swinging a big broom but he's awfully sweet with the details.  Haight remains devoted, he is constantly misadventuring himself towards some bigger truth.

At Otter Creek, Florida

She said she wanted

to talk about love.

We hold hands and walk.

The tusk of a baor, half-

sunk in humus, gray

below an acacia's shade.

A manx once pawed

our bedroom window

beneath a full moon.

Vapors mist near lobes

of calyx. Loam sinks

under our steps.

Like leopards caged

in a cement summer zoo,

we pant. Growling moans

through mimosa,

Jaguarundis eat cardinals.

A spring-fed pool floats

mayla petals; we disrobe

and dive, dissolving

under specks of light.

...

To say that Today's book of poetry enjoyed frolicking through Celadon just doesn't cut it.  Whatever tools Haight employed, Today's book of poetry was hook, line and sinker.  Ian Haight says it all quietly and without ado.

You don't see the punch coming at all.

Ian Haight

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

IAN HAIGHT was a co-organizer and translator for the UN’s global poetry readings held annually in Pusan, Korea, from 2002-4. He is the editor of Zen Questions and Answers from Korea, and with T’ae-yong Ho, he is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Ho and Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim—listed as a 2013 Notable Book in Translation by World Literature Today and finalist for the American Literary Translators Association’s Lucien Stryk Prize. He is the recipient of Ninth Letter’s Literature in Translation prize and five translation grants from the Daesan Foundation, Korea Literature Translation Institute, and Baroboin Buddhist Foundation for the translation, editing, promotion, and publication of Korean literature. His poems, translations, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, and Writer’s Chronicle, among other publications.

BLURBS

“Ian Haight writes wisdom-in-verse. He understands the mise en abyme of the abyss within the abyss within the mind, and he knows how to make meaning of it all. The poems of Celadon move fluidly from the spiritual to the commonplace to the vulgar. We encounter blue-collar workers and Korean Buddhist proverbs, Aristophanes and military pilots, Isaac Asimov and an assortment of human failures—and in Haight&rsuqo;s deft poetry, these marvelously varied elements form a coherent and utterly human whole. This volume marks the emergence of a new and remarkable talent.”
     —OKLA ELLIOTT, Judge, 2016-2017 Unicorn Press First Book Competition

“The large amount of geographical territory that is covered in this collection is distinctive and one of its great strengths. Ian’s work in these poems shows an attentive kindness . . . and the poems do not risk appropriation or indulge in privileged guilt.”
     —JULIANA SPAHR, author of Well Then There Now

"Magnolia & Lotus" by Hyesm

translated by Ian Haight & Tae-Young Ho

Video: Brad Havens

unicorn@unicorn-press.org

688

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