Poem About The Train - Ben Ladouceur (Apt.9 Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Poem About The Train.  Ben Ladouceur.  Apt.9 Press.  Ottawa, Ontario.  2014.

Poem About The Train is another impressive notch in the belt of the ever astonishing Ben Ladouceur. This marvelous chapbook-type folder is just another confirmation of what many of us have suspected. The young Mr. Ladouceur is one of the most exciting new voices in Canadian poetry.

I've met Ben, I think we may have even shared a drink one evening when he still lived in Ottawa.   But I don't know Ben Ladouceur.  So it can't be considered favouritism when I tell you that Ladouceur is that rare cat who really does have his feet on the ground and his head in the stratosphere.  He makes fine poetry.

Poem About The Train is an entirely lovely romp.  This long poem is printed on individual, loose leaf sheets the size of old train tickets.  They are numbered and assembled in a lovely pocket-sized folder. The ever-imaginative Apt.9 Press continues to impress with its' expanding repertoire of inventive ways to publish poetry.

from I

To hate a place forever, just get lost there once.
               Let greens give pause
to you, let hours flee like white dormice
after a sound occurs. The wild things eat
               hours up, pendulums
hanging from the damned mouths. You'll never come back

...

Poem About The Train is one longish poem about Ladouceur's observations from one train trip.  We can be grateful for whatever journey Ladouceur chooses to take.  He will illuminate it.  The adventure isn't the trip, it is his telling of it.

Today's book of poetry would want to read a Ladouceur poem if it were about drying paint.  He just has so much to share with us, and so far, it has all been golden.  Cherse as Spencer Tracy would say.

from II

Those were the best three cigarettes I've ever smoked.
               Every future
carcinogen will lie in three shadows.
I was grateful for the company, though.
               I know you didn't have
to leave your berth; it had a window, a view.

...

Ladouceur writes a great line, and then he does it again and again and again.

He's also a horny rake and that is in here too.  Read elegant rut.

Along with Queen Anne's Lace, osprey, eggshells and possums and beans.

Ladouceur harvests nature through the window of a moving train along the way to making his journey a somewhat epic adventure, certainly making for a fine read.

from VII

Where I'm off to, cats scavenge, throw their small-hearted
              game on the porch.
Their gifts bloat and develop seams through which
tenants take claim. They burrow in the fur
              and skin, bones and offal,
to find it. With their stingers, they can keep it.

I'll get there when the moon is halved. The dotage
              of these mountains
silhouetted to a percentage, still
cumbersome to a man like me: small, small
              of heart. From windows, herbs
will hang, and from bookcases, and from marquees.

A topless woman will come to the yard, and a
              second woman
will cut the first's brassy hair. Three geese will
chafe their endless necks with the lost trimmings.
              The first woman will take
the other's blouse and scissors and requite her.

The dogs crave heat, where I'm off to, back in sunbeams
              until the dusk,
at which point they bring you their fetching sticks.
Outlasting the simmering riptide of
              the summer, of the day.
Their coats half-moon-lit. Their coats, at least, half-lit.

...

 Poem About The Train is written in what Ladouceur has referred to as "syllabic verse heavily inspired by Marianne Moore".  At first my silly brain thought they were a form of sestina.  It is time for me to go back to school.  Whatever, the result is one of those magic tricks where form vanishes because it is used to perfection.

Today's book of poetry has nothing but jealous praise for the poems of Ben Ladouceur.

Coach House Books has just published Ladouceur's first full book of poetry, Otter, and bless their cotton socks, they sent me a copy.  It is magnificent and you will be hearing more about that here, anon.  It is, without doubt, one of the best books of poems I've read in a long, long time.

Ben Ladouceur

Photo: Pearl Pirie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Ladouceur is a writer originally from Ottawa, now based in Toronto. His work has been featured in Arc, The Malahat Review, PRISM international and The Walrus, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology. He was awarded the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013.

Ben Ladouceur

Tree Reading Series

April 26, 2011

Video:  Tree Reading Series

apt9press.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
Today's book of poetry is a one-man operation, my staff, typists, interns, etc, are all fictional.  But I do have a secret weapon.  Frequently, just after I've posted my blog, my dear old friend, compatriot, mentor, piano-playing poet wizard and lost big brother pain in the ass buddy Ward Maxwell writes me to correct my constant spelling/typing errors.  He bats almost perfect because of all those years of editing.

All of that to say that when my blog is without error it is almost certainly because of Ward's help.
When it is full of errors - that is also his fault.  He just isn't aware of it yet.

Today's book of poetry owes an enormous and on-going debt to the thankless efforts of my pal Ward who has no idea of how much I appreciate it.  Today's book of poetry give an official hat-doffing to Mr. Maxwell, my own private Art Tatum.

You can see some of what Ward Maxwell gets up to here:
http://wardmaxwell.com/

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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.

On The Altar of Greece - Donna J. Gelagotis Lee (Gival Press)

Today's book of poetry:
On The Altar Of Greece.  Donna J. Gelagotis Lee.  Gival Press.  Arlington, Virginia.  2006.

WINNER OF THE GIVAL PRESS POETRY AWARD

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee's On The Altar Of Greece is a series of Polaroid camera shots of the blue-sky blue-sea wonder of Greece.  Lee turns living in Greece into a poetical travelogue - but do not think white beaches and late night ouzo.

Lee is a full commitment type poet.

She inhabits Greece like it is a marriage between her and the land itself.  Every day she learns some new thing about custom, tradition, language, feral cats, filia/"friendship", the way of things in Greece and the way of things in the rest of the world.

Not Another Ordinary Day

The pots clang against
          the outdoor sink -- the water runs.
It's morning -- these are its sounds.
         Voices from the footpath. The sea breeze
carrying the donkey's bray and farmer's call
          of the day's produce --
melitzanes, maroulia, tomates, lemonia.
          The milkmaid greets me
in the hallway -- her wide girth takes up
          the space between me and my mother-in-law,
but her smile relates the news of a story --
          ehis megalo mouni*
I'm struck by the translation, thinking
          I misunderstood, but her face
reveals the truth. And I wonder,
          How does she know?
Her eyes never leave me and then
          she touches my arm,
as if to verify what she already knew,
          her familiarity almost violative,
but the ease of these women checks
          any ill feeling, and I brush it away, as I do
the hair on my face -- a simple
          act, though the words remain.
And I begin to wonder how this woman
          who milks goats knows about vaginas--
I eye my husband with slight suspicion,
          then quickly erase the thought. The intimacy
of the women of the village has surprised me--
          they reveal their sex lives
as casually as they would
          a daily routine -- and sex
often is, a neighbor explains, routine,
          obligatory. Gamos, as one young Greek man
told me, means wedding,
          and the slang word gamo, to screw.
Having children, the milkmaid explains,
          makes a woman's life worthwhile.
Big teat, lots of milk: big vagina,
          lots of babies? Nice to know I meet her approval,
as I am still childless -- this justification
          proffered, that I would have a good mouni.


* You have a big vagina (mouni: slang for vulva, vagina, female genitalia).

...

Sometimes Lee learns more than she bargained for, more than she wants to know.  But she shares.   As a fearless woman and poet, Lee walks that jagged shore as sure-footed as a barefoot Helena, born to the rocks and sea.

Many of the poems explore the quiet work of woman.  Through these poems Lee sees and shares the essential labour of community and how so much of it comes from the uncelebrated labour, the worn hands of women and girls.

It would have been helpful to know

that winters on the island
seize the breath and hurl it
over the sea, which
sends it back again to lodge
in the throat. It would have
been helpful to understand
bitter autumn, its fruit laboring
on the tree, fat, black-
blue, the strange green of spring
still lingering. In the fields women
curl, down on their knees,
combing the earth for olives,
branches swaying overhead
from force, the arms of men,
the arms of trees, all strength
and heaving. It would have been
helpful to know summer's
undertow and the tenuousness
of the black sea urchin,
only its needles moving with the waves
but ready to release. While I ate,
iodine-red stained my fingers,
the caviar of the sea urchin
rolled on my tongue like clear
words, raw antiseptic. I
scooped them out. It would have
been helpful to know
how to hold the probing
needles back, to keep them
from stinging.

...

On The Altar Of Greece alternates between lovely and breathtaking technicolour moments of a tourist's island journey and a seat of the pants, black dressed, olive permeated daughter of Greece.

Lee has, as much as possible, made herself a natural citizen of her adopted land.

On The Altar Of Greece is probably one the more honest/honed/heartfelt portrayals of real life in Greece that we are likely to see in poetry for a while.  Lee adorns absolutely nothing -- but she does fine and share beauty in the most tranquil and human places.

Woman in Ano Glyfada

Kerchiefed. Tendrils
of silver
touch her face;
she hauls firewood
on her back, lifts
bricks to fill
the shadows
at the base
of her whitewashed home.

Wooden clothespins
wedge my fingers.
Wind hurls sea spray
up the mountain. The sun
places it
on my cheek.

She hesitates,
breeze catching the grape vines
of the trellis, peaches
threatening to fall.
Her eyes
quickly
keep their silence
and traverse the boughs
of her tree
where its pears ripen
over
my balcony.
Doulia, doulia.
Ti na Kanoume?*

Her lips reach back
into a smile,
the weight
of a fallen axe
on the words
I no longer need
to translate.

* Work, work. / What can we do?

...

Today's book of poetry really liked the hard work Lee did here.  This is a different appreciation of Greece, a different conversation.  This is a conversation that celebrates women, looks at the world they take care of while the rest of us spin around outside, but controlled by the gravity within.  It is likely as close as I will get to a Greek kitchen even though I was transported back to our happy days in Samos and Paros.

I remember watching two cats fighting in an alley behind our room in Samos.  I sat on the porch, in the shade, and drank ice-cold white wine that I had poured out of a 2 litre plastic pop bottle.  There was a little wine shop right at the bottom of our stairs (all of Samos, the city, is on hills around the harbour), where I could get a plastic pop bottle filled for about fifty cents.  A local retsina, crisp and clear, like pine-honey.  I watched those two cats fight, drank the local, saw that blue sea under that blue sky.

Se parakalo - if you please.

On The Altar Of Greece won the 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category.

It was nominated for:
2007 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry/Literary Criticism
2007 Independent Publisher Book Award for Poetry
2007 Writers Notes Book Award for Art: Poetry
2007 Levis Reading Prize
2006 Pushcart Prize
2006 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award for Poetry
Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry
2006 National Book Award for Poetry

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

Photo by Alicia Kozikowski (Pryde Brown Photographs)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee earned a B.A., cum laude, in English and creative writing from Sweet Briar College, where she was a Davison-Foreman scholar. She lived in Athens, Greece, for many years. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary and scholarly publications, including CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, The Midwest Quarterly, the Seattle Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. 

Lee was a finalist for the 2007 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize for her poem "Docking at Limnos" (Calyxpress.org). Her poem "The pines" (published inTerrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments) was nominated by Simmons B. Buntin, editor and publisher of Terrain.org, for the Best of the Net 2007 anthology by Sundress Publications.

BLUBS:

"Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s On the Altar of Greece actually does place its reader before, or on, an elevated place where the ceremony of everyday sublime life in Greece plays out. Without resorting to prefabricated classical references we’ve already heard to the nth, she includes us totally in everything she experiences and sharply senses there, the orange-turned-yellow air, corners of walls, the shaded grove of stone men, the dark beach, a thread through looped thread, Poseidon cracking a wave, goat bells, 'the speech unfolding / that flung dice against the white walls / until they wore eyes.' Then, as important, there’s the undertow of her subtle and deft suggestions of how the people in these scenes relate, and of the intriguingly close connection she herself has to them. Ms. Lee shows us a new, vivid, freshly layered world inside an ancient and long-known one. With her eyes, strong mind and solidly classical style of picturing in new terms this historical place turned myth turned real again, the journey of our time at this altar offers us a striking, immense set of views of a world we thought we knew, and still, wonderfully, do know in much richer ways by the end."
—Don Berger, Judge of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award, Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of Quality Hill and The Cream-Filled Muse

"Award-winning poet and longtime resident of Greece Donna J. Gelagotis Lee presents On the Altar of Greece, a free-verse poetry collection that explores the majesty, venerable history, and wonder of Greece from an American woman's perspective. Poems contemplate mundane aspects of daily life such as food preparation or the relationship between neighbors, as well as holiday celebrations and the taste of simply experiencing a different way of life. An evocative and memorable tribute. Remembering You: 'Gamma, epsilon... / Slowly your name spells itself / to me, my tongue catching the letters / along the contours, bulging through / interior openings that flip the letters / onto their backs. And I have / forgotten what they said to me. / I have forgotten the taste of your alphabet.'"
—Susan Bethany, Midwest Book Review, March 2007

givalpress.com

336


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.

The Fissures of Our Throats - Edward Nixon (Guernica Editions/Essential Poetry Series 227)

Today's book of poetry:
The Fissures of Our Throats.  Edward Nixon.  Guernica Editions/Essential Poetry Series 227.  Toronto-Buffalo-Lancaster(UK).  2014.

Edward Nixon is rewriting the history of time in The Fissures of Our Throats.  Or at least telling a pretty good yarn about an imagined journey through our past.

These poems have a unique sense of time and place and timing, and in fact may be the historical record of another dimension that closely resembles our own.

Nixon employs a beautiful vocabulary that opens up his options to something grand.

We are the benefactors.

we told stories as we ran

There was no particular that set things apart.
Ice vaporized when subjected to heat,
peaches would resist when unripe,

sarcasm worked more or less with most.
The main thing, if it can be said there was,
and it cannot be or could not then have been,

as it was not yet in our eyes like the dawn star,
when she appears proximate the moon,
or like why birds talk to the night:

meanings were not simply to be given easy.
And that was maybe like the new,
staining us with haphazard wanting.

We could have strained together, but
wonder was reserved as we deciphered,
tossed it around, argued bone, sang stone.

It came that we understood repetitive marks,
which was handy for the next part;
though some furrowed with objective worry.

You could have formed factions, but why?
We had been give the scouring wind.
When it was retold, most nodded with ease.

No one saw it all together, or mashed in one-
leaves crushed under bitter rock to make tea.
The young took time to make a theory here,

or stare at parts of the sky on a dare.
There was thought of claiming that or this,
but we'd walked from the receiving of names.

So the hunt was blood-breath in green distance,
our chatter - sound chasing after absent game.
On the plain we ran on with a dangerous joy.

...

Today's book of poetry is impressed by how Nixon can write a tight, almost alchemical poem and then turn around and loose the hounds.

There is humour to be found in The Fissures of Our Throats but it is not doled out lightly.  Every time I try to type The Fissures of Our Throats I have to erase The Fissures of Our Hearts.

cariboo ghost town

We found the fall-down cabins
leant against a predicate.
The arrangement suggested a rough consensus,
fell in with circles and doors facing their agreement.
Now a village fraction in moss decline
quarter mile from the claim.

Gold was in the ground and much was said about it.
Reliable studies contest this scrap of turf:
A rusted-shovel Utopia?
An outpost of imperial commerce?

We see their piss-house ruin,
the wildflowered fire-pit.
grasses, tumbleweed, an alkaline pond,
milled and nailed wood in slow rot.

You write notes as I take in pictures,
argue footnotes the hour back to 100 Mile House.
At the motel room you exhale on the pillow
in a damp accent I can't recover.

...

There is an Ezra Pound/John Robert Columbo type cultural up-date, report on the nation, implore the future type long poem called "nights in the city of the dead" that calls on Edward Said, Albert Camus, The Demics, Osgoode Hall, Kensington Market, Boite a Chansons pretentions, Sandy Stagg, the artist co-op known as 'General Idea', the Beverley Tavern, Christ, Peter Pan, ancient railway porters, the Ritz, Marshall McLuhan, the Clash, the Virgin Birth, the Twilight Zone, Handsome Ned, Pranksters, the NFB, Garcia Lorca, the Carpathians and Comrade K before it winds its way to a merry conclusion.

Edward Nixon's brain is a literary YouTube of endlessly entertaining poetry.

film theory or i miss the way you kiss

       The magical power that is attributed to taboo is based on
       the capacity for arousing temptation...
           - Sigmund Freud

We killed a lot of gutter,
took hectares of blank space,
chopped up the I and you.
There wasn't much between X and Y,
just a lucky line that waggled through
crisp points on a reasoned grid.

Like poison's cure,
a ready-made story arc-
as if garlands of rose petals
redecorated the script
devolving from a set of probable causes
to a lazy desire for order,

razor ribbon fencing a glade
where lutes play, the prince reclines,
IEDs pop, blood-splatter browns
the long grass.

She says: "The days tasted of almonds."
He says: "Like smoked trout on a salted cracker."

Jump-cut to credits write in jerky white:
the gun         ma blonde
the car          mon chum

...

In his first full collections of poetry Edward Nixon makes a firm case for himself.  The Fissures of Our Throats is accomplished poetry, smart at every turn.  Crisp.

Today's book of poetry thinks that The Fissures of Our Throats is a hell of a ride, a thoroughly enjoyable roughed up ride.

Edward Nixon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Nixon was born and grew up in British Columbia. Since 1984 he has lived in Toronto and is the proud father of a 19-year-old son. Having stumbled inconclusively in the thorny woods of academe, Edward currently toils in the private sector as the founder and Managing Partner of EN Consulting Group, a boutique public outreach consultancy located at the Centre for Social Innovation in downtown Toronto. He has hosted and curated the monthly Toronto reading series Livewords since 2008. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks – Nights in the City of the Dead, Arguments for Breath, Free Translation, and Instructions for Pen and Ink. The Fissures of Our Throats is his first full collection.

BLURB

"Versions of the poems in The Fissures of Our Throats have debuted in small magazines and chapbooks, at readings both public and private. It's how you know they're true - eschewing easy answers with an authenticity that's imbued with patience and experience. As such, Edward Nixon's first full collections is a rare event in Canadian letters - it's a book that's pitch perfect, singing with a fully formed voice."

     -  Jim Johnstone

Edward Nixon

reading "Proceed in an Orderly Fashion"

at the Art Bar Poetry Series/Clinton's Tavern

Video: Edward Nixon

guernicaeditions.com 

335

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.

Rabbit Punch - Greg Santos (Punchy Poetry/DC Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Rabbit Punch.  Greg Santos.  Punchy Poetry/DC Books.  Montreal, Quebec.  2014.

Greg Santos is one skilled cat.  You might think he is a sprinter at first, these poems race by so fast with their jet-speed alacrity.

You could also make a good argument that Santos could be a stand-up comic of a particular type of brilliance -- throwing out poems so quick, so deft, so off-the-cuff, that they could easily be mistaken for one-liners but in fact, this a feast of punch lines.

Punches coming at you so fast and furious you'll be punch-drunk in no time.

The Prodigal Son

That feeling the executioner has
when he hangs up his mask at the end of the work day,
I have that right now.
Like a rabbit punch out of the blue.
I feel on kilter and that worries me.
But I'm not complaining.
I'm just singing a requiem for all decent centaurs
    everywhere.
The digital photo frames of the present
do not compare to the daguerreotypes of the past.
Take a bayonet to the face
and you regret it for the rest of your life.
It's best not to dwell.
I say it's better to pack one's bindle
and hobo it down to the freight yard.
That way you won't feel like a permanent intern
and that elephant you've had on your back all your life
will be off scratching its back on a tree in some open field.
Skulking back into the village
long after they've forgotten they tarred and feathered you,
the prodigal son will be welcomed home with loving arms.

...

A rabbit punch is a dangerous punch to the back of the head or neck that can lead to serious injury and it is heavily penalized.  The term comes from the short, sharp punch gamekeepers use to kill rabbits - quick short shot to the back of the head - so as to not spoil the pelt.

Greg Santos is unlikely to kill anyone with Rabbit Punch but the title is apt.  These poems hit a bit like a well timed punch.  You don't necessarily go down - but the boxer/poet certainly wins your undivided attention.

Tree Frogs

In the summer we caught
frogs while they burped
at the edge of ponds,
their spawn bubbling,
shimmering in the sun.

We were fast,
grabbed them
with bare hands,
squeezed until
they stopped squirming.

Tied string around their bodies
hung them on pine trees,
left them dangling
all through summer and fall,
waiting for winter to come.

In December
wearing boots, heavy jackets,
we trudged through
clean snow
till we reached the pines

where we proudly
showed off our
homemade christmas ornaments:
tiny skeletons,
bones tinkling in the wind.

...

Today's book of poetry could not give a higher/better recommendation for a book of poetry. Seriously.  Almost every page is gold of the purest kind.

I hope Santos had half as much fun writing Rabbit Punch as the reader gets mining this delicious ore.

Everything Santos writes is true-sounding, his left jab winnows out any chaff, his crisp right cross - always on the button.

It occurs to us here at Today's book of poetry that "This Poem Wants You to Trust it" might in fact be a manifesto.  It certainly is a treat.

This Poem Wants You to Trust it

Not right away but gradually over time.
It wants to hold hands for a while before getting serious.
It is very patient and understanding that way.
It enjoys making mixtapes to help you get through the
   work day.
It likes Renaissance fairs, prancing, and enchantment.
It wants to be a guest speaker in your high school gym.
It will come dressed completely covered in glitter.
It will shake itself like a dog and sprinkle its wonderment
   all over the audience.
It will charm the pants off the crowd.
Some of them will even consider becoming poems
   themselves when they grow up.
That's just how this poem rolls.
It encourages you to follow the rainbow.
It is the leprechaun of poems.
No, actually it is more like the unicorn of poems.
This poem can only be read
By the pure of heart,
by you.

...

Truer words never hissed out from between a boxer's bruised lips.

You, the reader, better be in good shape, Greg Santos' Rabbit Punch is not fooling around.

Stunningly good poetry.

Greg Santos

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg Santos is the author of The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in Manhattan. Greg is a poetry editor for carte blanche and teaches the art of verse to at-risk youth. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two children.

BLURBS

“Rabbit Punch! breaks the neck of poetry and stuffs it in a bag and trudges with it through the forest and spills it out onto the kitchen table, where Tara Reid and John Ashbery dig in. This is a funny, creepy, reverent, irreverent and insolent collection. And likely the only one in the history of literature to mention Tara Reid on the back cover.”

 – Stuart Ross

"Greg Santos' poems are so quick on their feet, and fly by so fast, and are so pleasurable, I almost forgot that they are poems. Of course they are, and are as literary as they are entertaining:  New York School by way of Paul Violi. But even tradition deserves a jab or two. Santos packs a whole lot of enchantment in each of his rabbit punches. Getting knocked out has never been such fun.

 -David Trinidad

Greg Santos

Reads poems for harold and kumar 2 USTREAM

August 25, 2011 - hosted by Johnny Vulpine

Video by Greg Santos

dcbooks.ca

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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.

The Vigil - Shelley Chernin (Crisis Chronicles #24 - Crisis Chronicles Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Vigil.  Shelley Chernin.  Crisis Chronicles #24 - Crisis Chronicles Press.  Elyria, Ohio.  2012.

The Vigil by Shelley Chernin is an enthralling and all too brief little chapbook.

Lord Buddha attains enlightenment near a mining school in India, the Sago Baptist Church is founded and men the world over flounder away in the dark, dark misery of a life below ground in Shelley Chernin's universe.

3

Rutajit studies mining engineering at ISM, plays
cricket on collegiate fields. His stomach growls
on fasting days; he snacks on sabudana khichdi

made from sago, pith of cycas revoluta, pearls of flour
leached of natural toxins. The recipe is simple:
Soak the sago overnight, melt ghee, brown chiles

and cumin seeds and maybe potatoes too, add soaked sago,
cook until crisp. Garnish with coconut and cilantro.
Do not cover the pan or the sago conglomerates

into one lump. Sago thickens like tapioca and plots.
Despite popular myths, white sago is no purer
than the light cream variety. Rutajit feels full.

...

Mining and dining.

Chernin uses a voice that is at one time documentarian, historian and myth-making story-teller.
These poems are a connected narrative with a distant, dark underbelly.

Chernin's voice is very exact, precise.  We here at Today's book of poetry very much like the way Chernin talks.

The Vigil is a quick study that reads like a much more grandiose project.  Today's book of poetry would pay good money to see/read the entire broadcast.

In some ways The Vigil feels like a tease because Chernin promises so much in each of these short poems.

5

Rutajit's name means "Conqueror of Truth." Hindus permit
debate on the existence of God. His parents congratulate
their future mine safety expert. A "mining accident"

is any accident that happens in a mine. If five or more
people die, the accident is called a "mining disaster."
Rutajit loves science and his girlfriend, not words. His heart

pounds, but he does not pray the first time
his class enters Bagdigi Mine, Twenty-nine men died
in a flood there in 2001, he learns. Inside the mine are signs

of concern: Coal dust hai kahtray ki naani, is mein chheeto
hardam paani. (Coal dust is the grandmother of all dangers,
always sprinkle water on it.) Dust and ashes

are cognate. If footprints are visible on the mine floor,
fine particles can explode, produce 200 mile per hour winds,
dispersing additional dust from walls and overhead

beams. There can be secondary explosions, fires. Anything
that can burn in bulk can explode when powdered
and mixed with air. Coal, wood. Churches.

...

In books of poetry, as in real life, many things don't get resolved.  Shelley Chernin has her way with the reader with The Vigil.  There is enough in each poem to make it a success, more than, but there is also the promise of much more.

These enticing poems make the reader feel underground empathy.

7

In the month after the Sago disaster, four more
miners died in mining accidents in West Virginia.
Like miscooked sago, the flow of names congeals.

Rutajit knows a story. On May 28, 1965, an explosion
and fire in the Dhori Colliery in Dhanbad killed
more than 400 miners. Deep inside, heat blasted the mine

to darkness, blew off eyeglasses, burned off brows. The air
coagulated. The men died in denseness, unable to see
their own hands. Thick in prayer.

...

Shelley Chernin

Photo by John Burroughs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shelley Chernin is a 57-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared inScrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, theHeights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum's New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Yes, of course, she plays the ukulele. Who doesn't?

BLURB

"It's an astounding work. I knew as soon as I started reading it that I wasn't going to put it down, and that's pretty rare for me. It is just good on so many levels. Regardless of what one's faith relationship is, the work says something about faith that is irrefutable. Rather the metaphor, the mining and its inherent disasters and conditions, was so powerfully drawn that one walks away, whether one wants to or not, with a new reality concerning faith. I'm not a great judge and I don't keep up with award winning and prize winning, grant winning poetry standards, but I could see this book grabbing a big one. Remarkable.... It was like reading a sinking hole. The book collapses right in your hands."

 - Cat Listening.

 Shelley Chernin

"Rise and Shine"

2nd place - 2011 Hessler Poetry Competition

May 11, 2011 at Mac's Backs Books 

Video by John Burroughs

press.crisischronicles.com

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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.