I think its a good thing that my desk is back to being a mess of books. At least it’s a mess I made. Since that last book sliding off desk on the heels of falling cat, she hasn’t been so keen to sit on papers. It won’t last I know but…
Anyhew, new off the press is almost sold out as I understand. Whack of Clouds of our poetry circle did well at the small press fair. Who’s in it? Amanda Earl, Nicholas Lea, Marcus McCann, Pearl Pirie and Roland Prevost. And here’s one excerpt, although each page of each person is pretty distinct,
expand further east
for the feast pander
defer the ex plan
read the spent fur
by Roland from p. 23.
And I finally got around to a couple books that have been sitting, An Everyman’s Library pocket book of TS Eliot which has Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Every street lamp I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
and thru the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium
Given the winds and lightning storm fronts that swung around us yesterday and the words, there’s a catch still of the heightened energies that wind brings.
Air and wind and travel among that in Peter F. Yacht Club #11 including this from Jenna Butler on wind, in part
The irony is
I come into being when called;
[…]
What a name
for a shambles of
meat & strongs;
the wind playing over,
my mouth a riveted
O Glass, firmament.
I breathe & am.
and this from rob mclennan from airport to airport, pivoting dextrous,
books becomes unreadable; small bricks.
my whole life on this solid earth
& four hours more, the ground
becomes unbearable.
I was not looking at her fingers
but I know where they were.
I got into Seal up the Thunder (Wolsak and Wynn, 2005). I saw excerpts in Erin Noteboom’s journal as it developed and it took me 3 years to get to her biblical Revelation, p.9
When I speak
your pulse will turn to tide. When I speak your ears
will hold all human words, like a wood full of birds,
they cry, lonely, lonely When you hear, your back
will arch like sky. You will call like the thunder:
bones, come together. Bones, take your order.
Be still. Your words are husk
for breath. They cannot make
the stones bleed water, or set the sun
ablaze past colour. I am the word
that made the clay curl up in fingers.
How can you answer? Be still
Ah, this is one I will take slowly but not want to. Opening to any given page and I’m caught up in not a line or phrase here and there but each bit and each complete. Lovely.
Peter O’Toole Magazine #4, with Hugh Thomas’
Cento:
I’ve been meaning to tell you I don’t need fish anymore.
Heh, give or teach, or just give a break to the whole dynamic.
Break a
tooth is going to
slide to pieces, you’ll swallow
the shards, exclamation point – you’ll
never get a job in retail,
sad face, sad face.
From the chapbook petty illnesss leaflet by Marcus McCann. What is it about teeth that makes that resonate. Hard candy breaking up in the mouth as a child seems to stay forever in nightmares of the whole mouth crumbling on apple bite.
One more to the tooth (wait for it) from Bunnybaby: the child with magnificent ears by Stuart Ross (1988), The Telephone Call
A man in a dark suit
enters a telephone booth.
He pulls an oyster
from his pocket
deposits it
and listens for the dial tone.
Jacques Cousteau answers,
says, “Life is many things –
an acrobat may hang by his teeth
but not tell the dentist.”
The man in the suit hangs up,
goes to his office,
and sells his brother-in-law.
Disturbances of Progress by Lisa Downe (Coach House, 2002), p. 13 The Shadow of your Simile is probably my early favorite with its accuracy
Travel broadening everything
even in absence.
[…]
there is no difference between
a little bit
and this welcome expanse which
makes you seem smaller.
Or in p. 37, Succession a spindrift of
A double of the sentence is offered.
Here. Here.
Introduction as conscience
foreshadowing a more complex past.
It gathers.
Funnily enough bodies are back again in two poems on my mind’s shelf. They are from different continents and years but were read and struck me back to back, about feet. One from Mary O’Donoghue in Among These Waters (Dedalus, 2007), p. 15 Thigging
Skin that was callous
as coconut husk
then melted to cushy
pearled flesh
of peeled lychees.
It ruched into folds
along the path
of her tickling finger,
They do wrinkle like lychees don’t they? She uses such unusual words and unexpected plays to convey, such as in other poems snapfastened suitcase or p. 25 back to the roking stewpot/to brew some little heartblock/with a soupçon of hallucination
Arc issue just received today has a whimsical poem by Robyn Sarah, p. 70, called End to End of having a chat with one’s feet in the bath, looking back to
in
patent leather, you dazzled
my eyes, showing me my
face, twinned in black lacquer.
Then you were nearer; near
the years I rode you hard
in scuffed Oxfords
Also got the Sino-Korean Translations: sinillogical translations, volume 4, by jwcurry and Mark Laba (underwhich editions 1987)
in full undress
uniformity
To close with Inspiration by name from The Sound of One Girl Screaming, Monica Kuebler (Burning Effigy Press 2002)
I like how inspiration overflows
in a mad cacophony of sensation.
Compensation for all those days
filled with black and white
and not a single thing that moves me.
The whole world goes through me sometimes
and doesn’t leave a trace
or taste
or scar
or caught breath even.
And what narrative arc that cat can do. But walk across my keyboard and sit on Seal Up the Thunder.