tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6303765881236877112024-03-13T16:08:32.023-07:00Sugar House ReviewSugar House Review is an independent poetry magazine based out of Utah.Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-35155715301303106582017-06-01T17:48:00.000-07:002017-06-06T14:27:22.732-07:00ALICIA MOUNTAIN, "HEROIC CROWN: QUEER SONNETS"<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/324936957&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br />
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HEROIC CROWN: QUEER SONNETS<br />
<br />
<i> after Beyoncé's </i>Lemonade</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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1.<br />
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In a winter dream, months ago</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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she came. The queen, braided and <o:p></o:p></div>
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furred, promising a betrayal song when <o:p></o:p></div>
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the time was most right, promising <o:p></o:p></div>
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your betrothal would only bend a season<o:p></o:p></div>
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for me. This train town has a howling <o:p></o:p></div>
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in the night. It is a beehive alive with <o:p></o:p></div>
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honeysuckle whispers, sweet stinging.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Your maps don’t stray like I do, <o:p></o:p></div>
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but we were both drawn to scale,<o:p></o:p></div>
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traced by your fingers for a path,<o:p></o:p></div>
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we both fold small for safekeeping.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Her prophesy said, run from your want— <o:p></o:p></div>
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whatever <i>most right</i> was, it waited.<br />
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2.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whatever <i>most right</i> was, it waited<o:p></o:p></div>
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until I skipped town south to sink in,<o:p></o:p></div>
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to get me sprung on spring-heavy air<o:p></o:p></div>
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like breath against neck, like my long<o:p></o:p></div>
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white girl hair sticking to your sweat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Daytime bathroom belt buckle betrayal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bodies inside bodies love, your hands. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now all I have here is Virginia, weeks <o:p></o:p></div>
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and weeks of alone, in breathy Virginia.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When we were in love, men would ask <o:p></o:p></div>
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if we were sisters. What a wicked way <o:p></o:p></div>
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to deny what was already buried and plain. <o:p></o:p></div>
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How I set a snare for the life they saw<o:p></o:p></div>
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between us, held tight like too much hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
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3.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Between us, held tight like too much hope,<o:p></o:p></div>
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and thunder sounds spanking the hills,<o:p></o:p></div>
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all year was a racket. House party borrowed <o:p></o:p></div>
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bass beats and cheap tequila with no chaser, <o:p></o:p></div>
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jumping in aqueducts, down on my knees <o:p></o:p></div>
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in the locker room shower, shoved up against <o:p></o:p></div>
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locked office doors with you. Landlock <o:p></o:p></div>
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that wouldn’t hold. Drive me to the stolen <o:p></o:p></div>
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land, lake big enough to be an ocean. He can <o:p></o:p></div>
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come—he who’s in here too, to whom you <o:p></o:p></div>
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are promised, the smoke dozing in your <o:p></o:p></div>
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rafters. He can sleep in the backseat if you <o:p></o:p></div>
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give me directions. Some rough-faced boy<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would never try to steal you from. <o:p></o:p></div>
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4.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I would never try to steal you from <o:p></o:p></div>
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the hills so steep I lose my breath, <o:p></o:p></div>
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where I breathe you to keep going.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen tells me not to drink the <o:p></o:p></div>
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tidal push and pull from some mug <o:p></o:p></div>
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left on your bedside. Who mouthed it <o:p></o:p></div>
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last? What solemnity and grace did<o:p></o:p></div>
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they avow? To what am I entitled? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Did you name your book <i>volcano</i>?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen promises an overripe <o:p></o:p></div>
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rupture, full-court press. The most<o:p></o:p></div>
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I can say is no one’s too old for<o:p></o:p></div>
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high tops, the high-water mark, <o:p></o:p></div>
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the shore I couldn’t start to see. <o:p></o:p></div>
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5.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The shore I couldn’t start to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The storm I couldn’t feel until it had <o:p></o:p></div>
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soaked me through, wrung me out. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let my pink water-wrinkled hands lift you <o:p></o:p></div>
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onto the countertop. I write to you <o:p></o:p></div>
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from the counter at the Waffle House<o:p></o:p></div>
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closest to the Jefferson Plantation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I watch myself on a security monitor<o:p></o:p></div>
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swiveling, my hat turned backwards. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think I will always look like a child <o:p></o:p></div>
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when I am alone. The nearest train, <o:p></o:p></div>
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whose tracks I can’t find, stops sinister at<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lynchburg—named after a man. Hard to <o:p></o:p></div>
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believe the less terrible, even when it’s true. <o:p></o:p></div>
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6.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Believe the less terrible. Even when it’s true<o:p></o:p></div>
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that I have been sweating everyday, <o:p></o:p></div>
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shrinking a little, drinking a little less.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even then, I wonder if my body is more <o:p></o:p></div>
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possessive of you than of itself. At the<o:p></o:p></div>
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gym I drink watered-down lemonade.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To start the stair master’s churning, <o:p></o:p></div>
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I choose a setting called Life Quest and <o:p></o:p></div>
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level 5 because what am I trying to win? <o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen in my ear doesn’t need me to bow <o:p></o:p></div>
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my head to her. The stairs collapse and <o:p></o:p></div>
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collapse beneath me. Does he build rough<o:p></o:p></div>
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hills to climb for you? Do you recognize<o:p></o:p></div>
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this book is a monument to touch? <o:p></o:p></div>
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7.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This book is a monument to touch <o:p></o:p></div>
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even with its hands in its pockets.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even with your hair in your eyes as <o:p></o:p></div>
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disguise, there is no making public <o:p></o:p></div>
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how we push and pull in dark corners.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The beehive whispers when it sees our <o:p></o:p></div>
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hands touch, the train town howls and<o:p></o:p></div>
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howls. The rough face smiles beside yours. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lick my teeth in the daylight. Still no <o:p></o:p></div>
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chaser. Still no closer to extinguishing <o:p></o:p></div>
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the bolt of my lightning you hold captive. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I have held the bright storm of you <o:p></o:p></div>
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hot in my hands. I would do it again,<o:p></o:p></div>
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however quick, however long it lasts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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8.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However quick, however long it lasts,<o:p></o:p></div>
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this hot breath season is for growing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Have you cut your hair at all? Have you<o:p></o:p></div>
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turned his rough jeans into cutoffs you wear<o:p></o:p></div>
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on weekends? Is any day not a weekend<o:p></o:p></div>
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for you when the high desert burns off<o:p></o:p></div>
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its chill by lunchtime? I offer to trade you<o:p></o:p></div>
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a poem for the story of the place we pressed<o:p></o:p></div>
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our bodies together. We’ll write twin books <o:p></o:p></div>
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to outlast this. We’ll press them cover to cover.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I will tell my book that it was once in love,<o:p></o:p></div>
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even if it doesn’t remember fitting against <o:p></o:p></div>
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you as it slept. I don’t think many people <o:p></o:p></div>
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remember my body, the folded map of it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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9. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember my body. The folded map of it<o:p></o:p></div>
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spread out on the floor at your mother’s<o:p></o:p></div>
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house. Remember the winding road to <o:p></o:p></div>
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the rose garden and just going slow together, <o:p></o:p></div>
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stopping to smell sunscreen on my neck. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen says in these breathy weeks away <o:p></o:p></div>
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my panting for you has been forgotten.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But you started wearing my deodorant and, <o:p></o:p></div>
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at some rough point, he probably started<o:p></o:p></div>
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wearing it, too. In Virginia I have run out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am grocery store, I am shampoo as soap, <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am very little toothpaste. If I ever return <o:p></o:p></div>
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to our train town, I’ll smell like him—<o:p></o:p></div>
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whoever you love. He belongs beside you. <o:p></o:p></div>
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10.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whoever you love, he belongs beside you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The rupture is a slow roiling, the moan <o:p></o:p></div>
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let go by a falling tree. My volcano seeps <o:p></o:p></div>
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fire blood love up to the surface so it can <o:p></o:p></div>
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cool and dissipate, so it can run downhill. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen in my ear breathes heavy that I am <o:p></o:p></div>
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alone at a desk, taking what doesn’t belong <o:p></o:p></div>
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to me. I come from a long line of betrayers <o:p></o:p></div>
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who have worn many rings and read prophesy <o:p></o:p></div>
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into desire. I pretend I am good. I would <o:p></o:p></div>
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get you lost in the hot forest, I would bring <o:p></o:p></div>
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lemonade, speak thief songs to you, panting. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The queen says enough, puts me to bed<o:p></o:p></div>
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lying in your honest kind of shade. <o:p></o:p></div>
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11.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Lying in your honest kind of shade <o:p></o:p></div>
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under moaning trees older than I’ll live <o:p></o:p></div>
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to be, I roll onto my belly in a final try <o:p></o:p></div>
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to say, come with me to the high desert <o:p></o:p></div>
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where our breath will be our breath and not <o:p></o:p></div>
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the springtime breathing for us. Pack a car <o:p></o:p></div>
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with most of what you need, rough-faced <o:p></o:p></div>
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trust, hands in pockets, body inside body, <o:p></o:p></div>
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toothpaste, tequila, map worn along its<o:p></o:p></div>
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creases, smoke in rafters. Come with me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I try to say all this by getting to my feet, <o:p></o:p></div>
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by saying very little, saying I am not lost, <o:p></o:p></div>
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I swear. The queen says <i>lost</i>is a sort of <o:p></o:p></div>
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somewhere. Inside me there is a swarm. <o:p></o:p></div>
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12.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somewhere inside me there is a swarm<o:p></o:p></div>
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that wants out. If this storm is electric,<o:p></o:p></div>
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if the power goes out, wait. What has <o:p></o:p></div>
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flashed across every spring-static sky <o:p></o:p></div>
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will come again. I have paid my leap year <o:p></o:p></div>
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debts and with what’s left, cook breakfast<o:p></o:p></div>
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hot in a kitchen, kneading something <o:p></o:p></div>
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and letting it rise. If I’m being honest<o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t know that I ever saw your eyes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t know if you put your mouth <o:p></o:p></div>
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to my neck without looking over my <o:p></o:p></div>
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shoulder. Who is more dispossessed <o:p></o:p></div>
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than the thief? How long have I been<o:p></o:p></div>
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keeping quiet when I want to howl?<o:p></o:p></div>
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13.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Keeping quiet when I want to howl<o:p></o:p></div>
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is old work, the day labor that never <o:p></o:p></div>
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breaks me even. In some accounting, <o:p></o:p></div>
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this was worth every minute of leisure, <o:p></o:p></div>
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of lemonade, of cool, sugared wanting. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The horizon puts her feet up, stretched <o:p></o:p></div>
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out across hills that bloom, even while <o:p></o:p></div>
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they burn. There is no other queen above <o:p></o:p></div>
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her. This is no return ticket between us. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I took my body with me, took my book. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am not trying to be good. Double knot <o:p></o:p></div>
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your high tops, turn backwards your hat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Walk the highest hill until you see that<o:p></o:p></div>
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what you buried can’t be driven out of me.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
14.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What you buried can’t be driven out of me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The train town grasses have grown tall and <o:p></o:p></div>
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mowing sounds put me back in the secret <o:p></o:p></div>
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in your mother’s house, where I would tell you <o:p></o:p></div>
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over again how I have broken many things <o:p></o:p></div>
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in my thirst. I would lie on the floor and <o:p></o:p></div>
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give you my hands, give you my mouth, <o:p></o:p></div>
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try to hear you through your hair. Because <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am going to the desert, because you are not, <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am trying to remember your breath. I am told <o:p></o:p></div>
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we still look alike. I am told that every train town <o:p></o:p></div>
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has the same smoke in its rafters, the same <o:p></o:p></div>
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monuments, the same stairs collapsing and <o:p></o:p></div>
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collapsing, the same tide pulling at my belt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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15.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In a winter dream, months ago,<o:p></o:p></div>
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whatever <i>most right</i> was, it waited<o:p></o:p></div>
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between us, held tight like too much hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would never try to steal you from <o:p></o:p></div>
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the shore I couldn’t start to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Believe the less terrible, even when it’s true:<o:p></o:p></div>
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this book is a monument to touch, <o:p></o:p></div>
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however quick, however long it lasts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember my body, the folded map of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whoever you love, he belongs beside you,<o:p></o:p></div>
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lying in your honest kind of shade.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somewhere inside me, there is a swarm<o:p></o:p></div>
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keeping quiet when I want to howl.<o:p></o:p></div>
What you buried can’t be driven out of me.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alicia Mountain is a
queer poet and PhD candidate at the University of Denver. Her poems can
be found in <i>Guernica, jubilat, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Witness, </i>and
elsewhere. Alicia's work was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. Her
unpublished full-length manuscript was a semi-finalist for the St.
Lawrence Book Award and a notable manuscript for the BOAAT Book Prize.
She received an Academy of American Poets Prize, an
Idyllwild Arts Fellowship and a residency at the Virginia Center for
Creative Arts. Mountain earned her MFA at the University of Montana in
Missoula. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">ABOUT SOUND OF SUGAR</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"> to hear it. </span><br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-61958413358319429152017-03-25T23:14:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:42:07.597-07:00MAG GABBERT, "OXYCODONE" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/295097844&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">OXYCODONE</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mother of Pearl.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Porcelain rimmed</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">toilet seat</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">at the back of the 7-11.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your spine dissolves</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">to Pixie Dust.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your brain bursts</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">and shines</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">like yolk</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">swishing at the base.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">You want to drink</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">from the bowl.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your teeth</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">roll, jaw-</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">guttered m</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">arbles.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">White</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">and thinness</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">of your skin.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The light</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">blue of your veins.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Florescent beams,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the chill</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">of piss-riddled tile.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the layers break</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">to flakes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mag Gabbert is currently a PhD student in creative writing at Texas Tech University, and previously received my MFA from The University of California at Riverside. Her essays and poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals including <i>32 Poems, The Rattling Wall, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, LIT Magazine, Sonora Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review</i>, among other venues. Mag is also an associate editor for <i>Iron Horse Literary Review</i>. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT SOUND OF SUGAR</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 17.6px;"> to hear it. </span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-16394216294954437952017-03-08T19:23:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.614-07:00JOHN A. NIEVES, "SPEEDING" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294180348%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-87Z8o&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">SPEEDING</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The music in the car muted the rain</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">on the road save the wiper blades’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> repetitive thuds. No headlights, no<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> taillights, no deer or traffic signals.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alone, out here, is part of the landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The wind buffets me across<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> the asphalt’s long shine. The stereo<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> swears <i>the world is as soft as lace, but<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I don’t love anyone</i>. Outside, the world<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the world is as soft as lace. The ghosts<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> of train tracks clack under my tires. The milemarkers</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> streak green skyward into night.</span></span></div></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br />ABOUT THE AUTHOR:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br style="background-color: white;" /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 17.6px;">John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: <i>Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Literary Review, Verse Daily </i>and<i> Passages North.</i> His first book, <i>Curio</i>, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize and came out in early 2014. He’s an assistant professor of English at Salisbury University. John received his MA from USF and his PhD from the University of Missouri.</span></span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br />ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-12672296141005280992017-02-25T20:20:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:26.931-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xk37jCY2zvs/WLHw7DigfZI/AAAAAAAAAhM/vPHAMhqJxtkcsimGauRa02c9HSaUcUbPACLcB/s1600/powell_william%2Blomas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xk37jCY2zvs/WLHw7DigfZI/AAAAAAAAAhM/vPHAMhqJxtkcsimGauRa02c9HSaUcUbPACLcB/s1600/powell_william%2Blomas.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Or Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances</span></span></span></span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Elizabeth A. I. Powell</span></span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anhinga</span> Press</span></span></span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6</span></span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">R</span>eviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jamie Wendt</span></span></span></span></span><br />Elizabeth Powell’s second book of poetry, <i>Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Or Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances</i>, is a beautifully woven collection of prose poetry, lyric poetry, and memoir. She writes about the mixing of identities, particularly of Jewish and Gentile heritage as well as the combining of twins’ blood in the womb and the confusion of one’s self versus a doppelganger. Using Arthur Miller’s <i>Death of a Salesman</i>, Powell continually returns to the idea of auto-correction and the censoring of identities as a means to contemplate the erasure of female voice and presence within the Loman family and within the poet’s own family experiences. <br /><br />Powell raises issues of sexism and gender bias in theater and life, particularly for an unnamed daughter whose voice is silenced. She uses excerpts from <i>Death of a Salesman</i> as well as stage directions, theater typography, and lingo to intensify Loman’s death and the illicit relationship with the “Other Woman,” whose “Reckless Daughter,” a character of Powell’s imagining, sees the dysfunctional American family in a fresh light. Using symbolic moments from the play, such as Linda Loman’s stockings as a reminder of Willy’s affair in “How to Sew an Unhemmed Day,” Powell questions what the American Dream means for women in this play as they are repeatedly cast as “Other.” Women's lines are cut-off or ignored, or they are simply written out of the play or reduced to the role of understudy. <br /><br /><i>Death of a Salesman</i> and the poet’s memoir collide in a theatrical understanding of American families. Powell acknowledges that an actor/actress, extra in the play, or even audience member are at times the same, so there is often a blurring of reality and fiction. In a series of sonnets titled “The Understudy’s Soliloquies,” she plays with the idea of salesmen putting on a show and American business as an act. In the first sonnet, she writes,<br /><i><br /></i><i><i> </i>The photo on top of Father’s coffin was from before the creditcrunch,</i><i><i> </i>a portrait taken for a New York Times article on American business.</i><i><i> </i>Father fake-smiled from the frame before his final stage left, his mistress</i><i><i> </i>in the back made eye contact with the idea concealed behind journalistic</i><i><i> </i>facts</i> […] <br /><br />Poems such as “Accident Report,” “Set Design: What the Door Knows,” and “Traveling Salesman in Providence” are directly in conversation with <i>Death of a Salesman</i>, and the poet uses Loman’s story to talk about her own father and the life and death of his American Dream. In “What Death Said,” Powell imagines her father’s thoughts as he is dying and his concerns about who will care for his body in death. The reader cannot help but be reminded of Loman’s death as Powell weaves her own story with that of Miller’s tragic American family. <br /><br />Powell understands that people perceive the world in part based on the stories they hear, so if the reckless daughter is silenced, the audience misses part of the story. In the title poem at the end of the book in the section titled “Act 5. To Further Understand I May Not be Human at All,” Powell writes, <br /><i><br /></i><i><i> </i>Every salesman tries on so many faces, </i><i><i> </i>they lose their own in the road’s empty spaces. </i><i><i> </i>I was a secret stuck inside a secret. You kept</i><i><i> </i>tabulating yourself in me. I wept</i><i><i> </i>for the curtain’s endless rising</i><i><i> </i>on your death. The morning shining</i><i><i> </i>in through the kitchen window.</i><i><i> </i>The past could not enter, nor foreshadow. </i><br /><br />The recklessness of the daughter lies in the fact that she wants her story told, so as not to be erased from the plot of her family’s yearning for the American Dream. These poems—full of rhyme, longing, memory, and forgiveness—make for both an incredibly original book and a nuanced rethinking of the classic <i>Death of a Salesman</i>.<br /><br /><br /><b>Jamie Wendt</b> is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Omaha MFA program. Her poetry has been published in various literary journals, including <i>Lilith, Raleigh Review, Minerva Rising,</i> and <i>Saranac Review</i>. Her essays on Jewish writing have been published in <i>Green Mountains Review</i> and <i>The</i> <i>Forward</i>. She contributes book reviews for the Jewish Book Council. Wendt teaches high school English and lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Find her at <a href="http://jamiewendt.wordpress.com/">JamieWendt.WordPress.com</a>. Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-70566544040402879762017-02-24T20:57:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.627-07:00LINDSAY ADKINS, "THE PACKAGE" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294888524&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br />THE PACKAGE<br /><br />She is labeling every Last Time,<br />tucking each one away.<br />The doctor leaves the room for a<br /><br /> place where he can be of some use<br />and she wonders about her liver,<br />what it looks like spotted<br /><br />or even unspotted—<br />she’s never seen it before<br />and now it is killing her.<br /><br /> They know what to do with<br />the body, but what are the rituals<br />for a half-eaten jar of peaches<br /><br />at the back of the fridge? The comb<br />with her hair still in it? The coat<br />hanging limp by the side door?<br /><br />Three weeks ago she ordered<br />a new green blouse. It’d be at the<br />house by now.<br /><br />How simple—to open a box,<br />know what’s inside.<br /><br />ABOUT THE POET<br /><br />Lindsay Adkins’ work has been published with <i>The 2River View, Muddy River Poetry Review, the Aurorean, Glass Mountain</i>, among others. She is also a poetry editor over at <i>Vine Leaves Literary Journal</i>. During the day, she works in NYC at Random House Publishing Group. At night, Lindsay spends most of her time battling her penchant for noodles, and losing. <br /><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:</span><br /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-60701791918418357622017-01-20T12:39:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.639-07:00ACE BOGGESS, "'DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU'VE DONE?'" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294172022%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-gsWOc&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU'VE DONE?”</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> —questionnaire</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret is mourning</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret is the lie</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">we tell ourselves when sleep won’t come</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret takes blurry photographs</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in black & white</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">posts them on Facebook</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">for many to ignore</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret sings in the shower</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">a happy song to hide</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the chiming undertones of operatic death</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if it scrapes blood off highways &</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">erases the scar on my thumb</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if it rolls the boulder up</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if it laughs</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">at inappropriate moments</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in the best of company</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if someone says “<i>regret!</i>” &</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">means it without a definition</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if a man dies clinging</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">to empty absent moments</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">from his youth</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret is a pause upon waking</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret is a pause before rest</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">if regret is life without mercy</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">spent daily wearing the lion’s skin</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: <i>The Prisoners</i> (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and <i>The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled</i> (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, <i>A Song Without a Melody</i>, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in <i>Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly</i>, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, WV. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-86927552479535645782017-01-11T14:15:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.651-07:00EDWARD MAYES, "UNTIL JUST SECONDS AGO, IF I MISSPOKE" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/297755165&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">UNTIL JUST SECONDS AGO, IF I MISSPOKE</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Until just seconds ago, if I misspoke</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">And if I now stand corrected, or</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">An understanding finally of rain, as</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">If all the many deaths were the hailstones</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">That hit the olive trees last June, a histogram</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of death, a moment between stet and</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Everyone else in a hurry, someone’s</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Clamor trumping someone else’s clamor,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">The clumsiness of something as simple</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">As night fall, into a day not unbroken,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">And if it’s a sleep we can’t speak</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">About, the gnat clouds that try to lose</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Their g’s, or to say the t in hatch, or would</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">That be a blot on one’s escutcheon, a drip</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of fresh red paint on the architrave, what</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Warning, what bells rang in the shtetls, and</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">If we all are a bad batch, proof of the existence</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of bad gods, the kind that glitch, the kind</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">That botch, and us, apostatic and eldritch,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seeing more glass through the glass, an armistice</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Only for an instant, wet and worried and worn.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Until nearly daybreak night fell; steed, stud, arrest, instant, understand, static,</span><br /><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">prostitute, insist, ecstasy, system; stage, stance, stanch, stanchion, stanza, stet,</span><br /><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">circumstance, constant, cost, distant, extant, oust, restharrow; stalag, shtetl, apostasy,</span><br /><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">switcheroo, bedstead, armistice (arm-stopping), solstice (sun-stopping); epistyle,</span><br /><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">architrave; steer, stern; apostrophe; Pär Fabian Lagerkvist, Nobel Prize 1951</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Edward Mayes’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and magazines, including <i>The Southern Review, The New Yorker, APR, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, Agni, Harvard Review</i>, and others. His books of poetry include <i>First Language</i> (Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press) and <i>Works and Days</i> (AWP Prize in Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press). Edward lives in Hillsborough, NC and Cortona, Italy with his wife, the writer Frances Mayes. Their latest collaboration is <i>The Tuscan Sun Cookbook</i> (Clarkson Potter).</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-13571520434172235972017-01-01T11:28:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.665-07:00DANIEL ARIAS GOMEZ, "FORTUNE COOKIE" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/297641359&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">FORTUNE COOKIE</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">You pick up the cookie and crack</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">it open. You spread the paper with your fingers</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">and read—<i>Happiness begins</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>when you face life with a wink and a smile</i>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">You snort and throw it away. And you wish</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that just once you’d get a shitty fortune.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">You wish the cookie would say that your father</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">will spend the next ten months in the hospital</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">with a plastic shunt sticking out of his skull</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">to drain fluid from his swollen brain</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">until he finally dies—you wish it’d say</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that by the end, your father won’t even recognize</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">you, that he’ll be rambling about chickens</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">and horses, believing that he’s still in his ranch</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in Mexico, that he’ll say he likes the pozole</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">when he’s eating a tuna sandwich you bought</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">for him in the cafeteria—you wish it’d say</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that in his last moments of lucidity he will look</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">you straight in the eye, and he will tell you he’s sorry</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">for having been such a horrible father,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that you’ll answer that it’s okay, that you forgive</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">him—you wish the cookie would say</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that when your father finally dies, it’ll hurt</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">more than anything has ever hurt</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in your life, but that every year after his</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">death you’ll buy one of those cloying tres leches</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">cakes that he loved so much, and as you eat</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">it next to his ashes you’ll remember his calloused</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">hands cutting up the beef for the pozole</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that he used to cook on Sundays after church,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">and you’ll smile.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Daniel E. Arias-Gomez was born and raised in Guadalajara. He is currently a poetry student in the MFA program at CSU Fresno.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.</span></span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-29129059766955756322016-12-29T19:50:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.679-07:00FAY DILLOF, "BLOSSOM" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294174071%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-BCv68&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">BLOSSOM</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Either grief has no shape,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">sneaks through the cracks</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">like a poisonous gas</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">or I was born</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">forgotten. Nurses fed me milk, scotch-</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">taped a ribbon to my head.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It probably wasn’t so bad.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Just a little bit</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">arbitrary. As arbitrary as this</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">February morning when,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">driving home and not wanting</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">to get there, I passed a Magnolia exploding</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">so pink, I was brought to my knees</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in unrehearsed worship. God,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">how it hurt–– seeing it; how close</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">that was to being seen.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fay Dillof has had poems selected for publication in <i>Field, New Ohio Review, Bellevue Literary Review, </i>and<i> Shadowgraph</i>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-12330846584252029742016-12-11T17:49:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:26.956-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0cUhYTIZ8es/WE3zp80lqmI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/9p5WQ8KBCK4vqB8Zb2ajfGG8PPriNLAOgCLcB/s1600/range_scriptorium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0cUhYTIZ8es/WE3zp80lqmI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/9p5WQ8KBCK4vqB8Zb2ajfGG8PPriNLAOgCLcB/s320/range_scriptorium.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Scriptorium</span></span></span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Melissa Range</span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beacon Press</span></span></span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6</span></span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Philip Belcher<br /></span></span></span></span><br />In a speech commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Gogol’s death, Philip Rahv said that Vladimir Nabokov, as a Gogol critic, “suffer[ed] from something like a phobic fear of all interpretive techniques not strictly literary in reference—a fear driving him toward the extremely one-sided emphasis which takes the literary act to be a phenomenon solely ‘of language and not of ideas.’” Because contemporary poets who yield to the pleasures and disciplines of various formal elements still appear on the current literary landscape infrequently enough to be considered exceptions to the norm of loose free verse, readers encountering them also are tempted, like Nabokov reading Gogol, to expend so much energy admiring these poets’ facility with language that they devote inadequate attention both to considering the poems’ ideas and to evaluating the effectiveness of the poets’ formal skills in making those connections with readers that make poems memorable and worth the interpretive effort. So striking is Melissa Range’s devotion to formal, particularly sonic, inventiveness that a reader encountering Range’s poems for the first time might well be tempted to focus on the poet’s language to the exclusion, or at least the diminution, of the ideas presented by the poems. That would be unfortunate. <br /><br />Range made clear her intent to luxuriate in sound in her first volume of poems, 2010’s <i>Horse and Rider.</i> For example, that volume’s “The Warhorse” opens with a burst of alliteration:<br /> <br /><i> Oft has the warhorse, the wayworn widowmaker,<br /> with wearied withers been dismissed<br /> from battle, bereft of bit and bridle,<br /> saddened and saddle-sore, to survive <br /> his final charge, his last campaign—<br /> the paddock, the pack, the stall. </i><br /><br />Range is no less committed to form and sound in her second volume, <i>Scriptorium</i>, but careful readers will notice an evolution. Although form and content are congruous in all of Range’s work, that alignment is tighter in <i>Scriptorium</i> than in Horse and Rider. In <i>Scriptorium</i>, readers will notice in poems like “Ultramarine” how Range disciplines her use of alliteration, meter, and rhyme in service of the poems:<br /><br /><i> Beyond the blue scum sea, miners assault<br /> lazurite and pyrite, a blue-gold beam,<br /> pry from limestone caverns the lapis seam<br /> for the shade that painters’ patrons so exalt<br /> to hem the Virgin’s mantle, foam the Vault<br /> where she’s fixed like a lodestar or a gem. </i><br /> <br /><i>Scriptorium</i>, selected by Tracy K. Smith as a 2015 National Poetry Series winner, includes thirty-three poems and five pages of notes that help orient readers unfamiliar with the historical settings in which some of these poems are placed. One of the particular joys in reading <i>Scriptorium</i> is puzzling over the form and structure of the volume as a whole. Of the thirty-three poems, the titles of ten name pigments used in illuminating manuscripts. Each of these ten, spread more or less evenly throughout the book, is a sonnet—not the fourteen-line, half-rhymed semi-sonnet that one reads so often these days, but an end-rhymed, metrically consistent, honest-to-Goodness sonnet, many with a conspicuous volta in which the speaker turns to address God directly.<br /> <br />Range, a trained theologian, also draws on her East Tennessee origins as a source for <i>Scriptorium</i>. In poems like “Hit” and “To Swan,” the poet highlights the quirks of her native Appalachian, Southern dialect. Here, Range is her most playful. The opening lines from “Flat as a Flitter” will suffice to give a flavor of these poems:<br /><i><br /> The way you can crush a bug<br /> or stomp drained cans of Schlitz out on the porch,<br /><br /> the bread when it won’t rise,<br /> the cake when it falls after the oven-door slams—<br /> <br /> the old people had their way<br /> to describe such things. “But what’s a flitter?”<br /><br /> I always asked my granny. And she could never say.<br /> “It’s just a flitter. Well, it might be a fritter.”<br /><br /> “Then why not say ‘fritter’?”<br /> “Shit, Melissa. Because the old people said ‘flitter.’”</i><br /><br />Readers unaccustomed with the colloquialisms and patterns of speech in these poems will be seduced by their humor and intimacy. Readers from the South will be grateful for these poems’ authenticity and their lack of the faux-folksiness of writers ashamed or too proud of their own histories. These poems also recall ones by Rodney Jones and R.T. Smith in which those poets deal with their own Southern heritage and the evolution of language and place into something more homogenous than they remember. Range is no more regional (if that term is used in some limiting sense) than Jones and Smith; she, like they, uses her particular circumstance to address more universal themes. These poems address, too, the difficult break from the bonds of place and family toward promise and a fulfillment unavailable within the confines of the familiar. In “Crooked as a Dog’s Hind Leg,” the speaker asks how she might explain to her grandmother “that the creeks crisscrossing / our tumbledown ridges // are ropes trying to pull my heart straight / when it’s a crooked muscle, / its blood crashing in circles?”<br /><br />Although two themes—language and the relationship between the speaker and God—underlie all of the poems in <i>Scriptorium</i> (Could there be a better metaphor for that thematic intersection?), two poems emphasizing aspects of those topics deserve particular mention. It was a particular delight to see in “Incarnational Theology” a thoughtful treatment of the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. Although Range’s note on this poem is useful, it is not necessary for enjoyment of this fine villanelle. The poet combines her facility with received forms, her theological preoccupations, and her Appalachian vernacular to conceive a poem worth the price of the book. Few other contemporary poets are writing like this: <br /><br /><i> God takes on flesh and thinks he’ll smother. <br /> Reeling, obsessed, his heart a wilderness, <br /> God’s a mess, suffering in me as I suffer<br /><br /> over a torn leaf, a tore-up man, the others<br /> I’ve tried to love, shorn to the bone and luckless<br /> as the Son.</i> [ . . .]<br /><br />If any single poem in <i>Scriptorium</i> incorporates all of Range’s concerns, “Ashburnham” does. The related note helpfully describes the 1731 Ashburnham House fire that damaged and destroyed many manuscripts in the Cotton Library. Among those damaged severely was the only extant copy of <i>Beowulf</i>. The eighteen unrhymed couplets describe the origin of the library when books discarded from scriptoria upon the dissolution of monasteries were saved and collected and then their destruction by the fire. This is not merely a description of literary and historical loss; the loss seems personal to the speaker and, by extension here, to the poet. But the damage did not begin with the fire. The originals were “[ . . .] irretrievable / the instant the pen quenched // the harp: a smoldering / smothered, a ruin of the tongue.” Range reminds the reader through the content and the form of her poems that language was spoken and heard before it was written. Her musings in these pages, the scriptorium in which she considers language, her history, and the role of the divine in both, deserve to be heard as well as read. Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-83677395851147838592016-12-10T16:53:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:26.978-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TuYioqSrLWY/WE3zp_4Hj2I/AAAAAAAAAgU/U_TSSxQ0hlkhalQ5KZmGG4c2yBgeLRTlgCEw/s1600/peterson_original-face.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TuYioqSrLWY/WE3zp_4Hj2I/AAAAAAAAAgU/U_TSSxQ0hlkhalQ5KZmGG4c2yBgeLRTlgCEw/s1600/peterson_original-face.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Original Face</span></span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jim Peterson</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gunpowder</span> Press</span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5</span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gary Dop</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jim Peterson’s latest collection, <i>Original Face</i>, weaves meditative inquiry with narrative mastery. These stories and reflections return, again and again, to Adam and Eve, to man and woman, and to the possibility that all of life’s suffering, sensuality, and joy are part of a sweeping love story. This suggestion risks oversimplifying Peterson’s book, which contains multitudes in each of its moments, including explorations of Goya’s paintings, a maintenance engineer’s love song, and people who live inside loose-fitting bags. <br /><br /><i>Original Face</i>’s distinction is its close focus on expansiveness and inclusivity. In “The Long Roads,” a poem whose subject seems to be the loss of a child, Peterson expands the subject matter to the relationship or connection of all things: absence and presence, body and earth. The poem, as expected, presents the mother’s loss, but her behavior—her calmness and acceptance—provides an unexpected response, which is built upon the presence of the lost child, active and involved in the scene, as though death has not ended life as much as it has changed it. <br /><br />The poem’s closing sentence follows a moment in which the mother considers a pickup passing by, a moment we perceive as normal until the child, who we know to be dead, is present. Unlike the reader, the mother finds the child’s presence to be as normal as the pickup: “the presence she feels / dreaming in the leaves around her.” Soon “her man” will be home: <br /><br /><i> The night will crawl out<br /> from the roots of great maples and oaks<br /> through their windows and into their bed,<br /> into the fallow and fertile fields,<br /> down the long roads<br /> that lead to all of their kind,<br /> even that curious child<br /> resting deep in the vine. </i><br /><br />Life continues in these “fertile fields,” where the lost child, who is not a passive presence, alive only in memory, but an active presence, is signified by that most alive adjective: “curious.” Here, “deep in the vine,” all things are one, all are normal.<br /><br />Peterson supports this normalizing sensibility in the sounds of his poems. The music, which feels as easy and conversational as Whitman, has, like Whitman, a natural use of rhythm, consonance, and assonance, among other devices. In the previous example from “The Long Roads,” the closing three lines are strung together with the assonance of the hard I sound in the last word of each line, which complements the notion that all things—“kind,” “child,” and “vine”—are unified. <br /><br />We see this unification again in “Planting Season,” a poem about the playful barroom connection of a woman and a man. This type of poem, the meeting of lovers, has been written since antiquity, but Peterson’s sincere, yet humorous version brings an earthy point of connection between the lovers. The poem’s narrated by the man—“She has black dirt on her face,”—but the action of the poem is the woman’s. She pursues. She establishes the game. She brings the black dirt, which is not only on her face, but also her feet, her hands, and in her mouth. For the man, the black dirt is not an object separate from the woman, something to be washed away, but it is a compelling part of her beauty. The poem ends, and the lovers are together, after the woman approaches the man, throws her dirty feet up on the table, and they speak to each other:<br /><br /><i> “I hope you like <br /> black dirt,” she says. I make a grin<br /> with as much black dirt in it<br /> as I can muster. “Oh yes,” I say.</i><br /><br />Perhaps it is the openness of his characters that makes his narratives, and the speaker in nearly all of these poems, dynamic. These people all seem to be taking in the world, “the light and the dark,” rejecting nothing; even in moments of suffering or difficulty, the characters do not walk away—they walk into and through their experiences. <br /><br />They study each moment, as does the speaker in “Men and Women in Sacks,” who watches a woman remove her sack and swim in a river. When she steps out of the river, the speaker sees her: “her wet body glinting / like a sword.” He studies her, and when they’ve finally seen each other:<br /><br /><i> </i> […]<i> together<br /> we step out of our sacks, open<br /> our bodies to the light and the dark<br /> and to each other, and together<br /> we lie down in the river<br /> of deep currents, the cold<br /> pouring over us, together swim, free<br /><br /> to find our own way home.</i><br /><br />The speaker’s freedom flows with the change that has arrived, a change born of the studied, open eye, receiving whatever comes. These characters, and the characters in many of Peterson’s poems, model an openness that teaches the reader how to experience the book. No, it’s more than that—<i>Original Face</i> wants to teach us how to live an open life, to help us crawl from our confining sacks. Peterson’s poems all seem to say, of suffering, of joy, of dirt, of freedom, the same thing his readers will say of this expansive, moving collection: “Oh yes!” <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span></span></span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-14286754470741743612016-12-09T16:59:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:27.025-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OUv1VTWdu3A/WE3zpyK-0yI/AAAAAAAAAgU/JC0enbcpYQkKyi0ETRBQcVQik9FgbWuAwCEw/s1600/maris_lifedeathetc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OUv1VTWdu3A/WE3zpyK-0yI/AAAAAAAAAgU/JC0enbcpYQkKyi0ETRBQcVQik9FgbWuAwCEw/s1600/maris_lifedeathetc.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lifedeathetc / livdödetc</span></span></span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anna Maris</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Red <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Moon</span> Press</span></span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6</span></span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">stinne storm</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span> <br />Red Moon Press’ <i>lifedeathetc / livdödetc</i>, is the debut collection in the U.S. from Swedish poet Anna Maris. As its title implies, lifedeathetc holds to the natural cycles traditional to the haiku form, but Maris’ work is not confined by these conventions. Without unfolding the centuries-long history of the haiku tradition, it can be noted that Maris’s poems function within the well-known Japanese form that was initially composed of 17 syllables divided into three groups, respectively five, seven, and five syllables (more precisely, they are comprised of five, seven, and five morae, which determine syllabic stress or timing). Traditionally, haiku must include the natural world and should be in the present. The form originated in the 1600’s and its conventions have undergone numerous changes, especially in the 20th century, as it spread to the Western world and became a common form in other languages.<br /><br />Maris, a member of both the Swedish Haiku Society and Haiku Society of America, translates her own work into English, and the translations are exceptional. In some places, the diction in the original Swedish is more melodic than English, while in other places, her English vocabulary provides a wonderful openness to the haiku form. One example of such differences in English is “paper boat […],” which in Swedish sails away with much more grace.<br /><br /><i> paper boat (singular)<br /> another worry<br /> sails away<br /><br /> pappersbåtar (plural)<br /> så lätt flyter de bort<br /> mina bekymmer</i><br /><br />Whereas “long shadows” leaves one bird behind, graceful in its English alliteration. <br /><br /><i> long shadows<br /> after the siege has lifted<br /> a lone crane <br /><br /> långa skyggor<br /> efter att flocken lyft<br /> en ensam trana</i><br /><br />Maris’ poems excel in their depictions of nature. For this reader, well acquainted with the Swedish climate, her work invokes the Scandinavian seasons vividly. The text in “Part One (life)” oscillates from one changing season to the next, one elemental state to another: sea to fog, to mist, to rain, to rivers—and back to the sea. There is the wind in spring, deep harvests, crisp frosts, and winter stars. It is an intimate landscape, but not a tame one.<br /><i><br /> moon river<br /> thoughts wandering<br /> out to sea <br /><br /> mångata*<br /> tankarna vandrar<br /> ut på havet</i><br /><i><br /> *mån=moon /gata=street</i><br /><br />This cycle of haiku arranged around Nordic weather might well be a mediation for spaciousness, nature juxtaposed against domesticated spaces—bedroom walls and ceilings as canvases for projections of shadows and light, but with uncanny cracks in the harmonies and monotone beauty, the arrival of the unfamiliar on the scene.<br /><br /><i> home town<br /> in the familiar houses<br /> strangers<br /><br /> barbed wire another country<br /><br /> hemstad<br /> i de välbekantan husen<br /> främlinger<br /><br /> taggtråd ett annat land</i><br /><br />This hometown of strangers and its “icy winds” hold traces of other continents—Africa appears via references to Zanzibar just after the above passage—but when we meet the outside world it is through violence or alienation. The world, like the icy Nordic setting, is closing in, shrinking like “winter fishing,” like “the hole in the ice.” <br /><br />In “Part Two (death),” nature might be the same, but the poems are not. A specific pain has arrived: “the same hole in our heart / white chrysanthemum.” This loss is ephemeral, the “thing with feathers” and the words that cannot be found in a suicide note. Here, the uncanny gives way to darkness, but still the beauty survives. <br /><br /><i> insomnia<br /> the cold on the other side<br /> of the pillow<br /><br /> sömnlöshet<br /> kylan på andra sidan<br /> av kutten</i><br /><br />This is a good example of how the bilingual nature of the book opens up the poems in different ways. The original poem in Swedish has a distinct tempo created by the alliteration s, k, s, k, which is lovely to read and say aloud. Although it is not as melodic, the English version still preserves the stark simplicity of the metaphor. Here, in the heart of the collection, Maris is mourning the living, even as death becomes a physical weight.<br /><i><br /> packing up to leave <br /> everything we have<br /> dead weight<br /><br /> i packningstagen<br /> allting vi har<br /> dödvikt</i><br /><br />Whereas the previous part began with a whisper, “Part Three (etc),” begins with “open sky” and a sea personified through its overt desire to take. There is a change in pace, as well as place. The urban is more present.<br /><br /><i> high-speed train<br /> along the railway line<br /> wild apple trees<br /><br /> järnvägssår<br /> snabbtåget passerer<br /> vildäppelträden</i><br /><br />This is a nature enveloped by the city, a nature both globalized and unfamiliar.<br /><br /><i> southern winds<br /> foreign sea weed<br /> covers the beach<br /><br /> sunnanvind<br /> främmande sjögräs<br /> täcker stranden</i><br /><br />Winter is never far away, but monsoons appear as well, as do a new-year’s spider and wild boars in spring, and war. Again, the outside world is rife with troubles.<br /><br /><i> war-epic<br /> we pause for a firing squad<br /> of micro-popcorn<br /><br /> krigsfilm<br /> vi pauser för skottsalvan<br /> av mikro-popcorn//</i><br /><br />This last section of the book feels at times disconnected, as if it is in search of something. Its title, “Etc.,” implies a collection of things known, but unnamed. Perhaps for these reasons, it feels uneven. Or perhaps it is simply the stirring, for better or worse, that occurs when family enters the scene, the mirroring and defiance that their appearance brings. Here, we find a “mother’s angry wrinkle / in my selfie,” or, after the slow, rural rhythm of the life and death of the prior sections, the turbulence of a father’s appearance in the final moments of the book:<br /><i><br /> haiku<br /> my father wonders<br /> if that is all<br /><br /> haiku<br /> min papa undrar<br /> om det är allt</i><br /><br />As if the spaciousness of the first two sections is compromised by the onset of familial values, Maris invokes the natural world of the haiku. While much of the collection’s imagery gives voice to a particularly Swedish tone and setting, it is here, through the mastering of a classic poetic form, that her work grasps something timeless. These last poems left this reader wondering, like the father, but for very different reasons, how could it not be all?<br /><br /><i>lifedeathetc</i> is a fine work of literature when it mediates the personal with the universal. When it positions itself in the contemporary, it is even better. There is currently a darkness in European societies, one which is difficult to write about and more difficult to live in. Within this space, Maris’ literary generosity is a pleasure and a gift. There is similar darkness in all lives, but to escape it is not to conquer it. Haiku offer a way to navigate such troubles. Maris writes them with grace; we can read them with hope.Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-82295412682646901562016-12-08T20:16:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.692-07:00MAGGIE SMITH, "PANEL VAN" (ISSUE 14)<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294167091&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">PANEL VAN</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">You know the one about the white panel van,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the one about the dark sedan, the one I told</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">my daughter this morning,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the one about the man who’s lost and needs</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">directions, the one about the man who lost</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">his puppy, the one that goes come here,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll show you a picture of my puppy,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the one that goes he’s so cute, isn’t he,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">such a cute little lost puppy.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I told my daughter the one about the not-lost</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">not-puppy. I redacted the part about what’s lost</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">being something in the man, something</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">he thinks a child can help him find, or maybe</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">he thinks she has it. She doesn’t have it.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn’t tell my daughter</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the man was once a child. He had a mother</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">who zipped his tricky winter coat, tamed</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">his cowlick with her spit-wet thumb,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and how could she have known her son</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">would search the web for <i>cute puppy</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">pictures, then roll past a park. This morning</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I told my daughter the one about still loving</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">the world we live in, the world the man</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">lives in, lost. Yes, the same world.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE POET</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maggie Smith is the author of <i>Weep Up</i> (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018); <i>The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison</i>; and <i>Lamp of the Body</i>. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Maggie is a freelance writer and editor, and a consulting editor to the <i>Kenyon Review</i>. <a href="http://maggiesmithpoet.com/">MaggieSmithPoet.com</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-41322068959835600672016-08-26T09:01:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:45:27.043-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xtr1HyAqPXg/V7dFaAmWlUI/AAAAAAAAAe4/hh8OZM_rOccdTib2L4THKJ0xU8O4NwKNACLcB/s1600/brewer_country%2Bof%2Bghost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xtr1HyAqPXg/V7dFaAmWlUI/AAAAAAAAAe4/hh8OZM_rOccdTib2L4THKJ0xU8O4NwKNACLcB/s1600/brewer_country%2Bof%2Bghost.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Country of Ghost</span></span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gaylord Brewer</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Red Hen Press</span></span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5</span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by John Pickett</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span> <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">In Gaylord Brewer’s new book of poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Country of Ghost,</i> the reader follows a protagonist named Ghost as he deals with the afterlife that is happening right now all around the rest of us. While the title alludes to one country, Ghost’s travels actually take him through three: Spain, Finland, and France. The prominent motifs and themes of the book—regrets, memories, love, loss, family, and home—are made clear in poems with titles such as “Ghost Says Goodbye,” “On the Pier, Ghost Finds a Love Note, Paper of Seeds, and Accepts an Invitation,” and “Ghost Rehearses for His Funeral,” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Brewer opens the book in Spain with “Ghost Born.” We begin with the death of Ghost and his rebirth as a spirit who still has unfinished business in the land of the living. In “Becoming Ghost,” we are present at his funeral where, “Your secrets mean nothing to anyone now,” and Ghost himself seems to forget that he’s actually dead as he “breathes on for awhile—sorry nostalgia, so breathe.” It’s as if Ghost is fighting for relevancy and his life, and Brewer makes this fight one of the central themes to the book. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Also central to the book is the question of what happens in the afterlife? “Where are you going?” the narrator asks at the end of the poem, and then answers “Where you have arrived, of course,” as if the answer to the movement of Ghost is already predetermined. Ghost doesn’t take this answer lying down as he continues on as a spirit, as he continues doing the things a living person would, as in “Ghost Takes the Evening Bus, Briefly Dozes,” “Ghost Holds His Vow of Fasting for Nearly Twelve Hours,” and “Ghost Bleeds.” In “Ghost Takes the Evening Bus, Briefly Dozes,” we see Ghost </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[…]</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> work the crowd, seat to seat</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lap to lap, so exquisitely exhausted</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you’re sure of truth in each,</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And near the end of this particular journey to a destination that Ghost himself doesn’t name, but by sight, he writes, “Next stop, perhaps one after / that’s yours. Don’t worry—you’ll / surely know when you see it.” Ghost is merely a tourist in his own memories, but he longs to do something about it. For a person that’s dead, Ghost certainly lives on. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Brewer’s tone through these pieces is melancholy, but with a wink and a nod to a hope, even in the direst of situations in which Ghost finds himself. There are no fixed patterns here in the structure of the poems. Much like a ghost, Brewer roams where he wants to with his phrasing. In the aforementioned “Ghost Rehearses His Funeral,” Brewer is almost staccato in the first stanza:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leave candles unlit, the field’s</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bouquet unharvested, book of</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scripture closed. Unbutton shirt</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and trouser. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Later on in the work, the syntax opens: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lie now on the black down</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of your bed-giving pillow,</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still room, last rites of silence.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cross hands loosely one upon</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the other, where the heart lived</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">its urgencies and desires.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Brewer’s work leads readers to be more mindful of their own travels and day-to-day existence, more aware of the subtleties and the finer details of life. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Country of Ghost </i>is essentially a travel companion of a life once lived and lived again. Though it moves through well-tread themes, it travels well. Brewer’s Ghost is more real, more complex than our moaning, white-sheet stereotypes. Ghost regrets, particularly when his wife shows up from time to time in pieces like “Ghosts Says Goodbye,” where he looks at a photograph and remembers “Your wife, your home, the man you meant to be and became instead.” But before the end, Brewer again offers a hopeful sliver: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And yes, if there were a ghost</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of a chance for one blessing more, </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deserved or otherwise </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[…]</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>John Franklin Pickett, III, </b>received a BA from Florida State University’s Creative Writing Program and is currently a professor at Northern Virginia Community College and National Defense University. He has work forthcoming in <i>Apalachee Review</i> this fall. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></div>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-830320317131818022016-07-30T10:55:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:42:07.707-07:00The Sound of Sugar...Jen Lambert<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/276078617&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">FROM <i>VISITATIONS</i></span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br />This country has no lamps for its alleys,<br />but I know the streets like the body<br />of a whore, those wounded stones, valleys<br />of dark water. There is sorrow<br />in wet nights, and the yields will not give.<br />I don’t know what is worse, to burn or to drown,<br />but either way there is famine. The dog will howl<br />in the limping city, the wasp will burrow<br />deep in the unforgiving plum, and tonight,<br />I will learn the bend of a girl, the give<br />and take, the way to turn her hard dirt<br />so I won’t starve on my own instinct,<br />so I won’t bite through my own foul tongue.<br />That flesh is ripe. It will bleed and run.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br />That flesh is ripe. It will bleed and run<br />if I’m not careful, but I am a patient man,<br />and your body is a map I can read<br />with my hands. Be a compass, a candle.<br />I am desperate for a course, and your body<br />is the way back. I miss a woman in my bed,<br />but I am too old for rules, for routes.<br />You, though, you can be my true North,<br />be a heave of iron, the sad, round<br />spinning Earth, and I will be the glass face,<br />the grid, the bearings. A man doesn’t need<br />directions, his heart is a magnet, it pulls,<br />his hands steady the steep pitch and roll.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: normal;">My hands steady your steep pitch and roll,<br />but these hills are on fire and I<br />haven’t seen the sky in years. Direction?<br />I am your geography. I am your<br />book of maps. I am your sun. And you,<br />tiny planet, you insignificant<br />collection of stars, will spin and spin<br />until you burst into flame. Your black lakes<br />will boil, your fields sear, your safe little houses<br />of mothers will blaze, and I will rattle<br />your paper walls, my hot mouth at the door.<br />I will break the bones of this town. I will<br />burn down every tree, scald every girl I touch.<br />And you? You will blister. You will scorch.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: normal;">You will blister, you will scorch, you<br />will burn you wicked little crow.<br />This is how it happens. This is how you die.<br />Don’t believe any of this. My hands are liars.<br />The way they touch you, the way<br />they fall on your body like moonlight, like rain.<br />Maybe it’s like this: maybe you drown.<br />Let’s say there is a black lake. Let’s say<br />there are hands, many hands, hands in your hair,<br />hands in your mouth, hands covering your mouth,<br />holding your mouth underwater. No, let’s say<br />the hands are stars, falling in the water<br />like hot stones. Open your mouth. Catch one.<br />This will keep you from drowning. This will save us both.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: normal;">I tried to save you, to keep you from drowning.<br />How was I to know you were made of glass?<br />This whole city is a boneyard of broken girls,<br />slight wrists and stony kneecaps like landmines<br />under the sand. There is nothing left of you,<br />just threads of hair on a pillow, a damp dress,<br />be careful where you walk, girl. Every night<br />a new burning, every night I melt you down.<br />Tinder bound and boxed, you will love me.<br />My body can be the house you hide in,<br />and I will say, this is how you love,<br />and I will say, this is how you pray.<br />You were built for my kneeling, your mouth,<br />my own collection of trembling boughs.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: normal;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">Jen Lambert is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and <i>burntdistrict magazine</i>. She received an MFA from the University of Nebraska, and her work has appeared in journals such as <i>Pank</i>, <i>The Los Angeles Review</i>, <i>Sugar House Review</i>, and <i>Redactions</i>, among others. This recording is five sonnets from a longer series, <i>Visitations.</i> </span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br />ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-82885863093673176022016-06-19T16:10:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:45:27.059-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_XSwX69IrUM/V2clEKwfrXI/AAAAAAAAAds/uHB2-Z3LfJ4qBW4Q1oz5hBmVxTdhuX5KQCKgB/s1600/dubrasky_danielle_RuinandLight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_XSwX69IrUM/V2clEKwfrXI/AAAAAAAAAds/uHB2-Z3LfJ4qBW4Q1oz5hBmVxTdhuX5KQCKgB/s1600/dubrasky_danielle_RuinandLight.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ruin and Light</span></span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Danielle Beazer <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dubrasky</span></span></span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anabiosis Press</span></span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5</span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nan<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">cy Takacs</span></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Danielle Beazer Dubrasky’s <i>Ruin and Light</i> is a stunning sequence of poems, like a body of water with many inlets, each shadowing natural images such as stones, leaves, fish, shells, constellations, and skies, in a patient cadence. Each poem reveals bits of a story in a non-linear way about two young people who form a relationship that metaphorically and literally traverses wild places, and can never be forgotten. Although this is a chapbook, its depth and beauty allow it to seem like a much longer book, one that should be read again and again. <br /><br />The book is addressed to a male “you.” A story is told back to him, even though he is a part of it. There is a “she” in the relationship, possibly the poet’s self. Imagery, symbols, and references to myth throughout the sequence allow the reader to feel the couple’s losses, their epiphanies in their attraction to, and need for, one another, and their mystery. The fact that the story is told back to him suggests that he may not be aware of some of the events in the way the poet wants him to be, while also indicating that his side hasn’t been told: “Only one of you is telling this story. / No one will ever know / who is body and who is shadow.” <br /><br />In poem three, after the young woman has revealed her story, which the you “hold[s]…as if you could never burn,” and begins to carry her “sorrows between your fingertips,” she goes into detail about her scar, and how in her mind it brings them together: </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span>She carries a sundial shell in her hand, its tip a gnomon.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>Libra’s scales follow the day’s journey on a sundial—<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>the scales that were derived from the scallop Venus rode to the strand,</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>the only shell that crosses oceans, clapping two valves through spume,<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>a hundred eyes on its rim. St. James fell into the sea</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>and was buoyed by mouths clinging to his clothes.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span>The scallop-shaped scar on her cheek is a pilgrim’s sign</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>as if she has traveled to the groove in your palm</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>and all her days were held in one moment she glimpsed</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>out the corner of her young eyes while collecting shells<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>when she saw her own life’s helix curl</span></span></span></span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>into a carapace to land at this morning’s shore.</i><br /><br />In her shell-collecting on a shore that reminds her of Venus, through the telling of her story to the you in the poems, the young woman is able to begin to cast the weight of it, lose the “carapace.” It is key in this poem that the poet not only uses the word shell to mean self-protection, but skillfully allows it to radiate into fairness, sacredness of the body and sexuality, the birth of love, the plight and also strength of a woman, the connectedness to a groove in the man’s shell as his own scar that she recognizes instantly because she feels imprinted herself with all of the myths and meanings of “shell.” <br /><br />Although some of the poems suggest the couple are in their teens, they seem to also have a history as children: in the anaphoric “the children who have never heard rain,” and in poem four: “You treasure marbles, matchbox cars, old maps, / stray fishing flies you unhook from reeds. / […] You give her what you value most— / a mayfly nymph broken off someone else’s line.” Likewise, these childhood memories arise in poem 17: “You were her mirror—a blue sea in which she found not herself / but a boy looking up at her window, who memorized maps by flashlight / and followed a strange road to her cul de sac.” <br /><br />Experiencing their intimacy, as the poems build, is tantalizing, as in poem five:<br /><br /><i> You taste sweet water when you drink from her lips,<br /> she tastes snow and a thousand blackberries.<br /><br /> When she becomes your lover, she hears the notes<br /> in your voice’s flame—moths playing wildly with light.<br /><br /> When you become her lover you are bound<br /> to someone always searching for ocean. </i><br /> </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And in poem seven:<br /><br /><i> Deer tongue fallen apples, haunches taking shape in the dawn,<br /> the only sound: soft mouths nudging open ripe skin.<br /><br /> She rests her hand on your navel where your first hunger was nourished<br /> and touches that scar where you were cut and released.</i><br /><br />Dubrasky has a unique way of allowing images to surface, as if they are tossing in the waves of the couplets themselves, eventually washing ashore the intimate moments of the relationship as the couple wanders together and then apart. <br /><br />These images pulse through the sequence, with the repetition of words like “deer fur,” “map,” “acorn,” “train,” “ocean,” “shell,” “river,” “scar,” “swan.” This repetition shows transformation as the relationship intensifies and shifts. Deer fur is tied into fishing lures by the male character, which are used repeatedly. In poem seven, he is depicted as casting a fishing tie to lure the female character, “to catch her hair once, her fingers twice, with deer fur…” In poem 13, after she leaves him, she pictures him calling her back “to the strands of deer fur” she imagines he is still tying into flies as if he is unaware of the relationship’s ending, believing she will come back to his “mirrored world.” In poem 17, the image of deer hair surfaces again after it is clear she is not coming back, and he “unlatch(es) a box of deer hair” and feathers, but the speaker imagines him choosing from pheasant and peacock, instead of the deer fur that was only tied for her. Dubrasky intuitively places these images, showing the character and progress of the relationship, as well as the man’s character, with the resonance of this gentle image to lure her, but with the sinister sharpness of the hook that is beneath the “iridescence.”<br /><br />The images seem culled from the depths of the poet, revealing how nature, too, is deep and timeless, just as the relationship, not without its troubles, has been for them.<br /><br />Recurring constellations and maps reveal their importance when his “father chart[ed] Cygnus in the August sky” or in a later poem when he “touch[es] the past on vellum / in a constellation of vanished cities.” In the last poem, “Cygnus appears in the stars over the rusted tracks” as the poet shows how she imagines he must be leaving his past behind. <br /><br />Likewise, she reveals how he has been influenced by the relationship he has had with her: “What she has given you is a way to pilot the distance / between memory and a river of roads.” Water remains important for her. She floats, enters waterfalls, plunges into rivers. In poem five, she <br /><br /><i> swirled in eddies, dizzy beneath stars;<br /> she became its break and took in silt,<br /><br /> she became its eyes and saw minnows, trout,<br /> deer fur skipping the surface.</i><br /><br />And in poem 10: <br /><br /><i> Your stories join on a shore where freighters<br /> cross a lake that makes its own weather—<br /><br /> lifeguards muscle rowboats against the tide<br /> beyond bathers plunging into choppy water.</i><br /><br />The above poem foreshadows their unraveling with the “choppy water” as well as the line he speaks to her “I am memorizing you already, you say.” The next several poems suggest more unraveling, with trains cars that become unbuckled, “flowers and rain on the willows / [that]call her back to the river,” while he looks into a pool, wondering who “is behind those eyes, that mouth—”<br /><br />In poems 15 to the end, the poet casts more light on their mystery, though shadows remain, fluttering or rising to the surface, as “Moths tap inside the lampshade, spiraling the wrong way home” for him, and in one of the final poems:<br /><br /><i> She looks for you behind mirrors as if the river could break open<br /> the rooms where you held her in quiet breathing.<br /><br /> The mirror shows only one face with eyes that haven’t slept for years—<br /> she wanders past closed windows, stares at the alcove of your locked door.<br /><br /> She looks for you in stories of an old father weeping over his bound son<br /> before he finds the ram in the thicket between leaded panes.<br /><br /> When did the water freeze to glass?<br /> The boy still lives in your hands,</i><br /><br />The reader feels the poet’s tenderness for their story, despite what has happened between them:<br /><i><br /> You can take her back in the darkness, she is not a dream—<br /> her body against yours, her hair, cheek, lashes brushing your arm.<br /><br /> Don’t open your eyes she whispers and you both drown in a braided river<br /> but as your drown you rock each other as if you are riding a train<br /><br /> through a place no one else has entered.<br /> You listen to the note only you have heard on the sinews of her voice,<br /><br /> a vibration of music so exquisite you must open your eyes—<br /> your fingers hold moth wings burning in starlight.</i><br /><br />I was lulled by the undulant feel of these poems, by Dubrasky’s boldness with language and its subject, and stirred by the images and symbols that seem to converge and break apart in other worlds and other myths. This sequence masterfully gathers the story of the relationship in <i>Ruin and Light</i>, and unfolds its own myth—dark at times and dreamlike, but wholly alive. </span></span></span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-82828850408083857802016-06-18T16:00:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:45:27.080-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XCkfC0NbMkg/V2clCVv8L-I/AAAAAAAAAdo/-j25xJYJMQ4fTKbXcfUpueSg7qluc0lBwCLcB/s1600/Carney_Rob_88%2Bmaps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XCkfC0NbMkg/V2clCVv8L-I/AAAAAAAAAdo/-j25xJYJMQ4fTKbXcfUpueSg7qluc0lBwCLcB/s1600/Carney_Rob_88%2Bmaps.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">88 Maps</span> </i>by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rob Carney</span></span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lost Horse Press</span>, 201<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5</span>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by <span style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lexi Jocelyn</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rob Carney serves as an expert topographer in his most recent collection of poems, aptly titled <i>88 Maps</i>, guiding readers along various paths in search of a meaningful destination. Carney invites readers to follow as he searches for home within himself, among others, and on the surface of a wild and beautiful earth. <br /><br />The collection is divided into five sections: “Departures,” “Directions,” “No Return Address,” “Home Appraisals,” and “Arrivals.” The first poem in the book and the only poem under the heading of “Departures” is the one for which the collection is named. “88 Maps” is a series of vignettes detailing the discovery and contents of maps found in the basement of a home. In the opening, Carney establishes his capability for vivid storytelling. <br /><br /><i> I found them rolled up, dusty, in an old armoire<br /> too big to get out of the cellar—</i></span></span></span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span> </span></span></span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>no way to fit it through the door frame</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span> </span></span></span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>and angle it up the stairwell—</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>decades ago he must have hauled down wood</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i></span></span></span>and built it where it stands.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span> </span></span></span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>And it’s not just a place to store winter jackets.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span> </span></span></span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>He was being deliberately permanent,</span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i><br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>sawing, planing, and jointing</span></span></span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span> </i></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></i>more than six feet underground.</i><br /><br />The final stanzas of “88 Maps” serve as a transition to the next section of the book as readers embark with Carney as their guide: <br /><br /><i> I know about maps, though:<br /> the way they all start somewhere,<br /><br /> </i> […]<i> but always arrive at the ocean, stars, or underground</i></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span></span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span>whichever way we go.</span></span></span></i><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />“Directions” contains twelve poems in which Carney observes the relationship between human beings and the natural world that surrounds them. The poems in this section serve to highlight place and the improvement of the conditions in which we live. In “Here, in the Rugged, Noble West,” “Suggestions for Urban Renewal:,” and “Here in What Used to Be Mexico,” Carney uses lists to comment on political issues of wildlife management, the preservation of nature in urban environments, and immigration. Contextualized by the national political climate in which we live, the imagery and directness of these poems point to cutting truths that have become all too difficult to keep in focus. From “Suggestions for Urban Renewal”:<br /><br /> <i> 10. A new Target’s not where people fall in love.</i><br /><br />From “Here in What Used to Be Mexico”:<br /><br /><i> 2. Our language is not a lug nut,<br /><br /> 3. and you’re a thinking human being not a wrench.</i><br /><br />“No Return Address” consists of four prose poems detailing the complicated intersections of human relationships with the natural world, with sometimes dangerous results. “Undercurrents” portrays the sublimity and danger of the landscape of the American West:<br /><br /><i> Seems like every weekend in the summer here, someone wants to<br /> take you down to Moab. You go there and hang out and marvel<br /> at nature and beauty </i>[…]<i><br /> </i>[…]<i> Somebody died that day. Drowned. </i>[…]<i><br /> </i> […]<i> what I’m saying<br /> is there must be someone who’s still sick about that summer<br /> because this guy they loved went out and ended up dead. No<br /> more telling him it’s time for dinner. No more sex or calling him<br /> on the telephone. Gone. Just memories. And even those getting<br /> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">l</span>ess and less every year….</i><br /><br />In “Lost and Found,” a man is on a boat with a grizzly. “Dinner Date” illustrates a woman’s aversion to chicken. Despite the complexity of the maps illustrated by Carney, simplicity of language creates a series of honest portrayals, depictions of fragile and fickle human life in the 21st century. <br /><br />The poems in the “Home Appraisals” section of <i>88 Maps</i> evaluate the priorities of people searching for a home, both literally and metaphorically. Carney’s emphasis is on wildlife—the plunge and pursuit of hawks; the color, texture, and shapes of plants; the smell of “rain on dust;” the attributes of insects; the “shimmer of fish.” Likewise, Carney accentuates the parallels of home and memory construction, as in “2,140 Square Feet”: <br /> <br /><i> You pass between the two through an open arch<br /> but not the kind of arch you see in church,<br /> the kind you find in women: rounded hips,<br /> the small of her back, her somersaulting laugh,<br /> her slow smooth way of coming ‘round from sleep.</i><br /><br />or “January 26, 2009”:<br /><i><br /> Forty-three thousand job cuts in one day,<br /> in just one morning. Thirty thousand more<br /><br /> by late-afternoon. Mine wasn’t one of them.<br /> We’re not part of the millions since last May<br /><br /> who’ve lost their homes—lost porches and front doors,<br /> the mantel ‘round their fireplace, the trim<br /><br /> they painted ‘round the windows one April:<br /> pale green to go with her flower garden.<br /><br /> Or the place where he first saw her naked.<br /> Or their kids’ favorite hiding closet. All…</i><br /><br />As in the opening section, the final section, “Arrivals,” contains only one poem. The final poem of the collection, “In the Only Zombie Flick I’ll Watch,” finds Carney reaching the X on the map he’s been drawing for the past sixty pages:<br /><br /><i> It’s generic Defense of the Genre 101:<br /> our anxieties projected,<br /><br /> the dead-alive virus of consumerism,<br /> suburban fear of wild animals<br /><br /> whose wildness is safely on TV,<br /> and so on, and so on. Take your pick.</i></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />While Carney does not exempt himself from falling victim to the concepts these zombies represent, he does express a desire to choose the more difficult path—rising above petty consumerism and insubstantial activism. Carney’s map culminates by reaching a conclusion that his place is to find home and strike a balance between coexistence with other human beings and with the natural world. <br /><br />Though Carney tentatively reaches his conclusion, it is important to note the cultivation of uncertainty in these maps—informing readers that it’s okay to not know all the answers before embarking on the search, to not know all the answers on the way, and it’s okay to not know all the answers once home has been found. As he states in some of the book’s closing lines:<br /><br /><i> Certainty feels like a flag when you fly it. It snaps in the wind<br /> and makes the sound of your own good name,<br /> <br /> of your own high opinion. It’s the opposite of birds.<br /> And it was birds that he was growing, after all: </i> […]<i><br /><br /> </i>[…] <i>One morning he went ‘round his yard on a ladder.<br /> He paid no attention to everyone clapping,<br /><br /> just picked each bird and released it into the sky.</i></span></span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-65508171237737753662016-01-31T08:22:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.721-07:00The Sound of Sugar....Liz Kay<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/244727448&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">SUNDAY EVENING <br /><br /><i> The twins were found dead Sunday night<br /> in their father’s home after police got a call<br /> around 8pm requesting they check on them.</i><br /><br />We found him lying<br />on the bed—<br />not asleep, but neither<br />quite awake—his eyes fixed<br />on the wall behind us,<br />and below him, tucked<br />beneath the bed<br />were the two small<br />bodies, bundled together<br />in a large towel and placed<br />face down.<br />How long had they lain<br />there? And him<br />above them, covering<br />them with his body,<br />the way a man might<br />throw himself on a grenade<br />and wait<br />in that long still moment<br />for the world to erupt. <br /><br />ABOUT THE POET :<br /><br />Liz Kay's poems have appeared in such journals as<i> Willow Springs, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, RHINO</i>, and <i>Sugar House Review</i>. Alongside co-editor, Jen Lambert, Liz is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal <i>burntdistrict</i>. Liz's debut novel, <i>Monsters: A Love Story</i>, is forthcoming from G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2016.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-25897142281016551402015-12-20T14:41:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:27.102-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_1XSFgGtf7o/VoWus9belBI/AAAAAAAAAbo/VdFwUEnmnR4/s1600/lindenberg_logan-notebooks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_1XSFgGtf7o/VoWus9belBI/AAAAAAAAAbo/VdFwUEnmnR4/s1600/lindenberg_logan-notebooks.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Logan Notebooks </i>by Rebecca Lindenberg</span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Center for Literary Publishing, 2014)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by Stefanie Wortman</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />In <i>The Logan Notebooks</i>, Rebecca Lindenberg offers poems of careful observation, colored by the particular beauties and idiosyncrasies of the town in Utah where the book is set. This is an elemental poetry, characterized in part by multiple attempts to address subjects like “Birds” and “Trees” and “Mountains.” Lindenberg attends to what is strange about the “usual stuff,” as in “Things Found in a Local Grocery Store”: “pink tomatoes, bagged salad darkening in the corners, pale gelatinous salmon or flaccid little gray shrimp.” Her poems also approach the sublime as in “On a Visit to Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels,” in which the winter solstice offers a sight “Worth the pain in your hand-joints you can only feel in this kind of cold.” In either case, the poems are sensitive to beauty wherever it might be found.<br /><br />The notebook structure of the collection gives rise to a tension between the forward-movement of narrative—centrally, the story of a relationship growing, failing, and ending—and the constancy of elements like clouds and wind, which Lindenberg names in many varieties, some factual and some imaginative. The book moves from “September” through “A December Wedding” and “One Week in April” to “The End of August.” The cycle of the year and the seasons partakes of both movement and stasis, joining the forward momentum of time with the constants of nature. <br /><br />In their attention to both the ordinary and the extraordinary, these poems display a classifying impulse, and they often take the form of lists. Lindenberg’s catalogs have a force different from the accumulative poetry that comes out of Whitman. His poems, and others inspired by them, take a view of the world that Elizabeth Bishop might have characterized as everything connected by “‘and’ and ‘and’.” By contrast, Lindenberg’s lists often feel like they’re implicitly connected by “or” and “or.” She seems to search for the best or most representative member of a category. In these prose poems, often modeled on work from the 17th century Japanese text <i>The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon</i>, each item in the list comprises a distinct paragraph, a technique that contributes to the feeling that their speaker is holding up and carefully considering each possibility. <br /><br />Even as she makes these lists, Lindenberg acknowledges that the project of cataloging contains the seeds of its own failure. The entirety of the poem “Impossible Things” is the admission, “It is impossible to be comprehensive.” She also wonders about the judgment implied in putting things into categories. In “Beautiful Things,” she begins with confidence that a certain tree is beautiful, but stumbles when she tries to explain why:<br /><br /><i> The Tree of Life in our backyard is beautiful because it holds up a swing. No, <br /> because it conceals the pheasants. No, because it drops its leaves in the creek. No, <br /> because you love it. No, because everyone loves it. No, because its origins are a <br /> mystery. No, because it is ours. </i><br /><br />She wants to find some justification for including the tree in the list, but ends back at simple assertion: “No, it is not beautiful? O, it is beautiful. It is beautiful.” As she tries to pin down her criteria, Lindenberg also explores the correctness and effectiveness of language itself. These questions are most immediately apparent in “Different Ways of Speaking”: “Our neighbor across the cul-de-sac says something about gays in the military. Only he does not say ‘gays.’ / Our neighbor says something about alcoholism in the Native American community. Only he does not say ‘alcoholism’ or ‘Native American.’” In a book that makes many things parallel, Lindenberg also has to question whether language should be sorted into better and worse, acceptable and unacceptable, as she corrects the neighbor’s discriminatory speech. She holds out the hope that by writing a poem she can get beyond misunderstanding and miscommunication: “Poetry is nobody’s / native language. Or the only one.”<br /><br /><i>The Logan Notebooks</i> is also a book about place—or about the idea of a place. What makes Logan a part of the West? What makes the West the West? Among Lindenberg’s quiet observations, there is an undercurrent of conflict and violence, and it is telling that her first attempt to define the West looks back to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: “That was the first time I felt the strange elation of utter rupture, when something happens that is so scary, it is too much to feel.” In one of the poems titled “Mountains,” the landscape rings with gunshot, and though it is likely just some kids shooting for sport<br /><br /> […]<i> it’s still the sound of a heavy-haunched creature being put down. Or it’s the sound of a <br /> great rural indignation. Or of some dread teenager’s heart backfiring. Or a hundred <br /> schoolchildren turning to see what clicked open the door.</i><br /><br />Lindenberg’s is not a poetry of epiphany or clever wordplay. This is not to say there aren’t clever moments—one of her “Things that Lose by Being Written About” is “Being a woman, which is fairly easy as long as no one’s around.” She is just not particularly interested in flash. Instead, she aims to look deeply into what is most familiar. As she writes in another of the variations on “Mountains,” “[…] all I want is to see the same landscape a thousand times and never repeat myself.”</span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-68791725928414523612015-12-19T14:35:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:27.197-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o8KWEU-uWvM/VoWtAzU5hzI/AAAAAAAAAbY/tzj2b7D6WUE/s1600/laidlaw_stuntman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o8KWEU-uWvM/VoWtAzU5hzI/AAAAAAAAAbY/tzj2b7D6WUE/s1600/laidlaw_stuntman.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Stuntman </i>by Brian Laidlaw</span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Milkweed Editions, 2014)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by Josh Cook</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Stuntmen are surrogates. They willingly put themselves in harm’s way, give a glossy sheen to danger, stage art in the name of preserving “the pretty.” Brian Laidlaw, the yarn-spinning musician and lyric poet, takes a scalpel to the heart of the stuntman in his first full-length collection. Does the stuntman elevate the art? Or is he an underpaid instrument? Where does real creation happen? In the poet or the poem? The song or the singer? The sense or the sound? The book begs these questions but also interrogates lost time, individual responsibility, communal apocalypse, the role of art, the absurdity of art business, and the precariousness of the body/shell of things. These strains manifest in mysterious missives, rants, fragments, and confessions. <br /><br />The speakers in <i>The Stuntman</i> are restless souls full of folk wisdom. They yearn for home, casting about genuine modes of expression. “THE EARTH BROKE OPEN BECAUSE WE BROKE IT OPEN,” the speaker of “Telegram,” the book’s opening poem, says. Ingenuity comes at a cost, and humans, though agents of destruction, are also agents capable of manifold change. Even beauty is susceptible to violence, as in “Notes for a Song Called ‘All it Takes’” where “The day doesn’t just break, it outright shatters.”<br /><br />The first section teaches the reader how to read the collection. Repeated images of home abound, and a remarkable associative logic rides on jaunty rhythms and wordplay. The speaker of “Upstate Mother’s Refrain” comprises a list, repeating “I know,” but then her voice is shot through with italicized commentary. She says: <br /><br /> <i> I know the tart iron water is reaming the well-poles<br /> I know freshwater sharks<br /> I know haters & orphans<br /> I know patriot atheists </i>[…]<br /><br />Where are we, exactly? Some distant land, perhaps. In section two, we get references to the Washburn A Flour Mill in Minneapolis, torn-down cities, Trotskyites, outer space, the Cold War, and cannibals. The collection’s eight “Terrarium Letters” and five “Telegrams” also throw the poems into dislocation. Is the sender from a far-off place? Or are we? Either way, they conjure a sense of lost home, alienation, and a vacant space between that which is and that which is desired. “Terrarium Letter #2,” a twangy ramble, strains toward the connectivity and complexity of objects: <br /><br /> <i> the record needle has dust, is an eyelet, a stinger, isn’t stingy, the coronets on the<br /> record are dumber than ever, the daughter falls in love with her own hands </i>[…]<br /><br />The swerves in action and the clever line breaks jolt you into and out of frenetic narratives, the effect somewhere between be-bop and ballad. “Narcissus the Debutante” begins:<br /><br /><i> newcomer grows in, killing familiarity<br /> the wealthy scramble to incorporate<br /><br /> he attends their dinners<br /> like demons they need new bodies.</i><br />Laidlaw’s not giving anything away explicitly, though. We’re left to guess where we are located, and it often turns out to be a cold, mythic mystery landscape where “here were trappers,” where the “Voyeurs Cum Voyageurs” collectively assert, “we lowdown our hearts in the tundra / we lowdown the spades.” “A List of Scenarios” unravels in non sequiturs, what could be a stoner’s brainstorm for song-titles, including, “a bird with a broken wing” and “the randomizer stalks the spreadsheet.” The inclusion of objects like “spreadsheets” destabilizes the landscape, something Laidlaw—the Stuntman—is adept at. Hold on to your reins, cowboys, Laidlaw seems to say, don’t get too comfortable. If you do, you might miss something ingenious, like this from “The Cartographer Cries into His Knapsack”: <br /><br /> <i> I want to hear my elegy for everywhere, over the radio in the off-road<br /> limousine, wrenching up to a place I have no business, a sing-along<br /><br /> <br /> to myself weeping with joy.</i><br /><br />Laidlaw is aware of his tricks, thus a constant reckoning of the commercialization of art. “Terrarium Letter #5” begins, “So-and-so is the next So-and-so, I wonder if that’s enough or if I care at all […]” Here, Laidlaw succeeds at parsing the paradoxes that lie between making art and “making it.”<br /><br />It helps to know that Laidlaw is working from, riffing off of, and deconstructing the myth of Narcissus and Echo, the central image, of course, being Narcissus peering down into his own image. It’s also based on Bob Dylan’s relationship with Echo Helstrom, his high school girlfriend and “The Girl from the North Country.” Dylan’s cryptic references to Echo throughout his career—at different times referring to her as Hazel, Becky Thatcher, and the girl who looked like Brigitte Bardot—baffled critics, and no one really knows how important she is or was to Dylan. In many ways, Laidlaw’s “Stuntman” pivots with the same reluctant frenzy of Dylan’s amorphous career—that is, seamlessly, and not without blithe provocation. The book also comes with a companion album for download. The songs are easy, Sunday-afternoon tunes, and Laidlaw’s voice pours like rich molasses. He’s less confrontational in his songs, freer, more narrative. Perhaps this is the echo, the stuntman’s double, the safer, prettier side. He saves danger for his page, and we’re all the better for it. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-86004865758218412902015-12-18T14:26:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:45:27.246-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s1SEumgZvAc/VoWtA-bCnsI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/GvrOn7RJuc0/s1600/takacs_blue-patina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s1SEumgZvAc/VoWtA-bCnsI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/GvrOn7RJuc0/s1600/takacs_blue-patina.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Blue Patina </i>by Nancy Takacs</span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Blue Begonia Press, 2015)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by Kate Kingston</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />The poems in <i>Blue Patina</i> weave through varied subject matter, some relating to childhood, others to wilderness, and still others to the concept of worry. Each of the four sections has its unique theme, but the unifying threads are in Nancy Takacs’ attention to voice and imagery, her relationship to the natural world, and her intuitive perception. <br /><br />In the opening section, “The Voices,” Takacs journeys back through her childhood in the cityscape of Bayonne, NJ. Her opening poem of the same title begins with a lyrical description of voice which serves as a springboard for the poems that follow: <br /><br /> <i> My bee and blossom voice<br /> hums in my wrist each morning, flies out<br /> over the field, bumbles through dust<br /> in the April wind, flies low to the apple trees<br /> to lose myself whole in each center.</i><br /><br />Takacs immediately focuses on the act of writing, the physical activity of the wrist, the ability to go beyond the self, drawing on nature and its images, to become lost in the centering—an intuition that gyrates with wisdom. This poem serves as an introduction to the collection as a whole. The determination and grit that drives these poems is expressed further in the poem: <br /><br /><i> The bicycle voice<br /> is a wise voice, tells me<br /> to keep moving, get back on<br /> and turn my thin beige tires</i><br /><br />This first section reaches back to a time of <i>I Love Lucy</i>, garter belts, and childhood secrets, defined by Takacs in her poem “Hurt” as a time when “writing was penmanship, / and we were in love with letters / as if they were tears, and we were / the ones who had cried them.” These poems lend a renewed perspective to growing up—Sunday Mass followed by donuts from the deli, a stolen kiss, and intimate relationships that form family—the brother’s distance, the father and his buddies at Campbell’s Tavern, and the mother’s voice of prayers and songs. From the poem, “Sunday, My Brother,” we hear an example of Takacs’ haunting voice:<br /><br /> <i> No one knew back then<br /> what you and I know now:<br /> personality disorders, AA.<br /> No one thought anyone<br /> was crazy or needy.<br /> We just expected our neighbor<br /> to lay all night smashed,<br /> bloody, in the alleyway.<br /> Even our own father<br /> coming home from the tavern,<br /> speaking nonsense, might<br /> have a gash or two.</i><br /><br />Her subject matter is unflinching and grasps the core of what it is to be human, to transcend our surroundings and make sense of the world we inhabit. <br /><br />The poems in the section “Utah Map” use nature as a catalyst for rediscovery, opening into a life much different than her childhood in New Jersey. From her experience as a Wilderness Studies Guide, landscapes surface—mountains, deserts, rivers, and slick rock. Seamless language appears to grow effortlessly from the sandy soil, rugged canyons, and juniper-laden ridges where “the exotic is nature.” Takacs luxuriates in images of flora, fauna, and weather that compose wilderness and shares this adventure of spirit in her “jeep / clawing its way over slick rock.” She writes of avalanches and quicksand, arches and petroglyphs, flash floods and crabapples in her desert yard. Her sensitivity to inner landscape likewise flourishes as in the poem “Escalante” where she invites the reader to discover “ghost-shaped / petroglyphs in the dark blue patina.” <br /><br />Takacs is also a water color artist, and her intimate knowledge of hues, tones and textures is evident in her images of desert landscape infused with light as in the poem “Balance Rock, October”:<br /><br /><i> We never tell where we jeep for lunch<br /> between nearby canyon walls whose dark<br /> patina sheens to indigo, sapphire, a swarm of blues;<br /> petroglyphs float under alcoves<br /> near Swasey’s Leap; silent orange vistas<br /> accordion at The Wedge. </i><br /><br />As if her notebook were a canvas, she sketches images through idiolect and responds to other artists’ paintings as well, infusing the page with a rich verbal palette. Her ekphrastic response to a painting by David Dornan in the poem “‘Process’ at the Balance Rock Café” highlights her ability to process color and texture through language: <br /><br /><i> Now I know I need the sudden turquoise car<br /> inside the lemon-yellow house,<br /> lavender anemones over corrugated<br /> ribs, the tin ribs, the bare ribs,<br /> a whiteness more like a rose-cream,<br /> orange a true orange into fluorescent-orange into red,<br /> lipped over undercoats of lime, violet, battleship; </i><br /><br />In the section entitled “The Worrier,” her voice takes on the previously promised maturity of wisdom from the “bicycle voice.” Each poem in this section is structured as a dialogue between two inner voices that create a philosophical template based on our human capacity for worry. The question/answer format revolves around fear, relationships, and nature’s fragility. The two voices remain true to themselves, never bordering on the sentimental, never hesitating, but rather speaking with a clarity based on experience. The juxtapositions parallel the turmoil of mid-life, but they also resonate with an inner intuition that dictates the wildly juxtaposed answers as in the “Worrier” poem subtitled “the body.” <br /><br /><i> What are the crimes of the lake?<br /><br /> Silence.<br /> Not giving up the dead.<br /> Grief.<br /><br /> And what does the lake heal?<br /><br /> Elbows of crawdads,<br /> splintered oak,<br /> edges of washed glass,<br /> the plan of silver.<br /><br /> What does that silver do?<br /><br /> It allows the body<br /> to surface.</i> </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />The litany here is not only dependent on the words but also on white space. Concrete and abstract meld to create a resonance rooted in the sparse toughness of language. Her word choice, “Not giving up the dead,” ignites the concept of fear and diffuses later in the “plan of silver” that “allows the body / to surface,” leaving an intuitive truth growing like wisdom in the rib cage. Through sparse language, white space, and dialogue, Takacs scaffolds an emotional and intellectual core in each of these “Worrier” poems.<br /><br />Thematically, childhood poems, wilderness poems, and “Worrier” poems lead us to the fourth section, “Still,” with its attention to the all-encompassing fragility of nature reflected in the fragility of the self. Takacs’ images and their appeal to the senses keep us grounded while her intuitive grasp of what is beyond the mundane culminates in this last section. Here we discover meditative, quiet poems that subtly resonate back through the manuscript. The poems in this final section are embedded in a sense of reflection that acknowledges tension as portrayed in the poem “Yoga Class”:<br /><br /><i> I like it when the moments<br /> fall gently into one another,<br /> end up on some island<br /> with no human footprints<br /> and many bear. </i><br /><br />Takacs’ poems leap from unexpected places, yet they always land in the still pond of the self that sends ripples, not unlike a stone tossed into still water. Takacs’ poems migrate out from the center through imagery, and discover, then embrace, the shifting self. </span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-7844933836594181672015-12-06T18:12:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.736-07:00The Sound of Sugar....Laura Stott<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/236410288&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">INTO THE BLUE</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br />At the edge of a boat dock</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">the blue nudes look far down a ladder—<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">to where it hits surface glass.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">They can see rungs barely<br /><br />waver as their blue heads peer</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">over. Their own eyes<br /><br />and the stars reflect in dark tide.</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">It seems they will be climbing<br /><br />down into sky, one<br />blue nude after another.<br /><br />It couldn’t feel anymore night.<br />Seals swim in their black<br /><br />milky way. Sky ripples<br />with the color glaciers create.<br /><br />One moon bathed, barnacled<br />rung at a time, the blue nudes<br /><br />disappear, past mussels<br />in their blue shells,<br /><br />kelp tangled in mid-air.<br />One nude stops at the rim<br /><br />before arranging herself<br />over the side—torso twists,<br /><br />as hands cling. She looks back.<br />It is this leaving that’s beginning.<br /><br />Her hair blows in the wind.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">ABOUT THE POET:</span><br /><span style="font-size: normal;"><br />Laura Stott received her MFA from Eastern Washington University and she teaches writing at Weber State University. Her poems have appeared in various publications including <i>Hayden’s Ferry Review</i>, <i>Bellingham Review</i>, <i>Sugar House Review</i>, and are forthcoming in <i>Crate</i>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: normal;">ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. </span> Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-35118413425764699672015-11-21T11:04:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.750-07:00The Sound of Sugar....Matthew Landrum<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/234098127&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br />BLUE LAWS<br /><br />Sarah’s hair freezes in the winter wind as we walk down<br />the hill to the corner store forgetting blue strictures<br /><br />that say you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays<br />before noon. See—<br /><br />sometimes it’s not conscience that keeps us<br />from falling. Forgetfulness<br /><br />and luck too have a share<br />in our salvation. This morning leaves us<br /><br />high and dry. We kill half an hour, observe the icicles<br />hanging from the spire of St. Mary’s,<br /><br />wander the neighborhood, past the alleyway<br />where, years ago, I knelt and prayed for God<br /><br />to end me. My vomit wouldn’t freeze,<br />even though it was ten below. And I walked out<br /><br />leaving that afterbirth of a new life<br />steaming on the pavement and thought I was finished<br /><br />with all that forever. But we live on<br />the edge of a precipice, always one step away<br /><br />from ourselves. Sarah’s pixie hair freezes<br />in December, still wet with showering. And when we return<br /><br />home and sit with six packs by the fire,<br />it will steam.<br /><br /><br />ABOUT THE POET:<br /><br />Matthew Landrum teaches Latin and literature in Ann Arbor. His poems have recently appeared in <i>The Emerson Review</i> and <i>Cold Mountain Review</i>.<br /><br />ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-39348970599393762582015-11-07T09:16:00.000-08:002017-05-30T17:42:07.761-07:00The Sound of Sugar....Kristen Clanton<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205907326&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br />METRONOME<br /><br />The peacock devours his plume absently<br />as the mermaid falters posture among sinking swells—<br /><br />black lines that separate air from cloud from bird,<br />tree from leaf from root, tiny pictures painted black.<br />Hung in strict rows for me to chart your path,<br />I follow you foolishly to the sea.<br /><br />Closer, I can feel the gloom’s yawning breath.<br />Closer and the dawn’s golden nod escapes the wire.<br /><br />Compass misplaced and panic where sleep should be.<br /><br /><br />ABOUT THE POET:<br /><br />Kristen Clanton is an adventurer, defenseless only to gravity and the subconscious. She graduated from the University of Nebraska, earning an MFA in poetry. Her poetry and short fiction have been published by <i>Bicycle Review</i>, <i>The Birds We Piled Loosely</i>, <i>Burlesque Press</i>, <i>MadHat Drive-By Book Reviews</i>, <i>MadHat Lit</i>, <i>Midnight Circus</i>,<i> The Outrider Review</i>, <i>Ragazine</i>, <i>Quilt</i>, and <i>Sugar House Review</i>. She has work forthcoming in <i>The Mangrove Review</i> and <i>Otto Magazine</i>. You can see to all that here: http://www.kristenclanton.com and contact her here: kristen.clanton@gmail.com<br /><br />ABOUT THE SOUND OF SUGAR:<br /><br />We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it. <br /><xml><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><a href="mailto:kristen.clanton@gmail.com"></a></span></xml>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630376588123687711.post-67760661214194022892015-07-21T16:47:00.000-07:002017-05-30T17:45:27.266-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C9RFDmyeg2E/VbgTp2SSB0I/AAAAAAAAAaY/qiQKMhcofZo/s1600/jorgenson_sediment%2B%2526%2Bveil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C9RFDmyeg2E/VbgTp2SSB0I/AAAAAAAAAaY/qiQKMhcofZo/s1600/jorgenson_sediment%2B%2526%2Bveil.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="header" style="color: #41563d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Sediment & Veil </i>by Kirsten Jorgenson</span> </span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">(Horse Less Press, 2014)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;">reviewed by Michael McLane</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="subhead" style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; text-transform: none;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“No one in Utah ever died from radiation poisoning; it isn’t on the form.” This pithy and chilling remark, usually attributed to R. Billings Brown, a professor at the University of Utah medical school, cuts to core of why the legacy of nuclear tests remains the elephant in the room throughout the Southwest, and Utah in particular. It also suggests the reason that Kirsten Jorgenson’s first collection, <i>Sediment & Veil</i>, is such a welcome addition to the poetry world and to Western literature at large. Though many poets have contributed a poem or two on the subject, Jorgenson’s is the first poetry collection since Emma Lou Thayne’s 1983 <i>How Much for the Earth </i>to approach the subject with such depth and care. <br /><br />These poems grapple with the acute disruption that nuclear testing—and its attendant skyrocketing rates of leukemias, thyroid cancers, female reproductive cancers, sterility, and congenital malformations—caused for thousands of families, including the poet’s, throughout Utah and Nevada, an area declared “a region of sacrifice” by both government and military officials owing largely to its low population densities and a widespread perception of the Great Basin as a wasteland. It was safer to risk clouds of fallout landing on small communities like Ely and St. George than for them to roll through large populations in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Likewise, the largely-Mormon population in the area, still eager to be perceived as patriots after a century of distrust from the nation at large, were rightly believed to be less likely to complain or to seek litigation or remuneration. These conflicting perceptions and legacies of landscape and faith come to bear heavily on Jorgenson’s poems and illustrate that the term Downwinders is not to be used in the past tense, but is instead an ongoing struggle, one that bears itself out in in the ephemeral world of memory as well and the much more tangible world of medicine. <br /><br />From the opening page of <i>Sediment & Veil</i>, it is clear that the body, and many bodies, are the primary setting(s) for these poems, but the body it is not a boundary, a place clearly delineated; rather, it is a membrane which the joy and tragedy of memory transgresses perpetually and which unwittingly welcomes the legacy of the Nevada Test Site and the nuclear West:<br /><i> <br /> every one<br /><br /> is remembering<br /><br /> a single line<br /><br /> a mouthful<br /><br /> say I border<br /><br /> my body<br /><br /> filmy<br /><br /> ghost</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i><br />Ghosts abound in this text, as do skeletons, bones, and souls; the corporeal and spiritual infrastructure of the individual are at stake throughout it pages. As the book’s title implies, there is a direct correlation between what settles to the ground and the losses felt upon that land.<br /><br />On a half dozen or so occasions in the book, images accompany or even overlap the poems. In one instance, “a grid representing abnormal macular degeneration” in which one corner of the grid sways and bends, illustrates a patient’s blind spot. Overlapping the grid is the passage “memory is light / through flesh / honeybee / ghost / incinerator / a language / in bones / cells / a promised land.” Jorgenson packs an unbelievable amount of history and conflict into that combination of sixteen words and one image. It is one such moment in the book where the poignancy of loss, the governmental blind spot toward a population, the irony of the poisoning of a wide swatch of the Mormon Zion (represented by both the “honeybee” and “promised land,”) and the tragic connotations of light in this context, collide head-on in a succinct-but-chilling moment. Elsewhere, Jorgenson has essentially dissected what she labels a “contour map of a ‘Turf’ detonation in Area 10 of the Nevada Test Site,” placing single sections or layers from the map on top of, or adjacent to her text. Removed from their full context, these images are haunting, appearing as ultrasounds or small piles of dust strewn across the page, the latter creating a particularly devastating effect when accompanied by passages such as “written into darkness / a curtain / veil / to be pulled through or not.” Perhaps more importantly, the pieces of map are a reminder that when such tragedies are visited upon a landscape, neither maps nor the land itself can be trusted going forward. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Of the various themes addressed in her poems, the notion of faith pitted against citizenship is one of the most complex and overlooked aspects of Utah’s nuclear legacy. Despite overwhelming evidence that they were deliberately overlooked and lied to, there is an ongoing conflict between victims and descendants who are furious and seeking both admission of guilt and recompense from the federal government and those who continue to want to believe that their family members, farms, and animals died for the greater good and for a patriotic cause. Though Jorgenson offers no judgement or resolution of such conflict, it is key to her interaction with others throughout </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">the poems, most poignantly in the writing of “This is the Place” on a makeshift sign</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> for a family reunion (a clear gesture to the words ascribed to Brigham Young upon his entrance to the Salt Lake Valley) and the poem’s final line, “Your hair has ash in it,” a reference to the fact that many Downwinders at first perceived falling radioactive ash from tests to be freak snowstorms.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As much as it is an exploration of historical events,<i> Sediment & Veil</i> is also a poignant exploration of the function and dysfunction of memory of the period preceding, and immediately following, great personal loss. While the specifics of this loss are never overtly revealed, which often allows such scenes a timeless quality, it remains an axis on which the book turns and reprises. The passage quoted in full earlier in this review reappears on several occasions, its eight lines disintegrated and recombinant. Similarly, other media that appear in the poems, like the test site map presented in piecemeal, begin to undo themselves. A photograph in one poem offers a stark example of this tendency when Jorgenson writes:<br /> <br /><i> call you ghost<br /> </i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span>you moved away<br /> </i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span>you left a smudge on the film<br /> </i></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span></span> no face to identify your body<br />no body but spilled and congealed milk </i><br /><br />Like memory, the body is a desolate setting here, whether it be the men a relative describes finding in Dachau, “so thin they were hanging by their genitals from piano wire,” or the “evening ghosts[…] / collapsing against horizon / the 6,000 head of sheep / blood atonement.” Such moments are reflected in the increasing expanse of the poem’s geography, as the southern portion of the Great Basin expands to include the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats of Utah’s west desert, places ostensibly barren but playing host to ecosystems as fragile as a body under attack from cancer. It is a psychic landscape as well, as references to the 1960s cult classic <i>Carnival of Souls</i> implies. Shot in and around the Great Salt Lake, including the former lakeside dance hall of Saltair, the film, like the book, is an exploration of attempting to make home in a place that poses a tangible threat. But where Mary Henry’s character is largely haunted by ghosts of the mind, the ghosts of the land itself play an equal counterpoint in Jorgenson’s poems. <br /><br />Sixty-plus years on, the legacy of nuclear testing continues to be shaped simultaneously by ongoing tragedies for those families exposed to its byproducts and by an increasing desire from Downwinders, and the nation at large, for a more complex understanding of the events surrounding the tests. The numbers of scholarly studies and oral histories are increasing, giving voice to a group that achieved a day of remembrance only two years ago. Likewise, Jorgenson’s unflinching glimpse into ground zero’s “glass desert” provides a crucial lyric and fragmentary component to such work. Difficult history gains emotional and intellectual depth in the hands of a skilled poet. This is precisely what <i>Sediment & Veil</i> offers, to devastating effect. And yet, in spite of the sacrifices made, the steadfastness of the people these poems document shines through from time to time, as in the <br /> <br /><i> two years of food in the pantry<br /><br /> enough to walk<br /><br /> through the burning world</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> counting blessings</span></i><br /><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></i><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> locust and gull</span></i><br /> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><br /> counting blessings<br /><br /> locust and gull</i></span></span>Sugar House Reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14180060867575046532noreply@blogger.com0