Sandra Simonds, steal it back

When my friend told me he was in love with someone else,              my thoughts turned to Greco-Roman modelsfor inspiration. Also, the letdown            of milk since the body is relentless. A troll on Twitter.It was snowing on all the arches, on the atrium, the four          chambers of a chicken’s short-lived, factory-style heart.The word “psalm” comes from the Greek word “to pluck          a lyre.” Maybe I can address you now. My husbandwill be furious. Coward. Liar. A voice says, “Alice, why did            you have another baby?” Exercise:                      reread the Ten Commandments (“Glass Box”)
I’m intrigued by the expansive surrealism in Georgia poet Sandra Simonds’ latest poetry title steal it back (Ardmore PA: Saturnalia Books, 2015). The author of Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2008), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University, 2012) and The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Simonds described her approach to poetry in her recent “12 or 20 questions” interview, writing:
For me poetry follows the logic of music and the logic of the body. I think you have to follow your ear in order for a poem to work—you know the hidden story that can only be told through blind faith in the sound.
The structure of her poems appear constructed as a series of accumulations, built as a montage of lines, thoughts and phrases that flow like endless, rushing water. The repetitions, cadences and rhythms are quite striking in poems such as the ten-section “Glass Box,” or the fourteen-section “The Lake Ella Variations,” that includes: “Oh little green apron boy with the crappy gray eyes, let’s watch / the sunrise over Georgia. Gave poetry book I hate five stars on Goodreads; I am / such a liar! / What if I step on a syringe and get a disease? / Who’s going to give me a lot of money so I can quit my day job and write this poetry?” Alternately, the seven-page “Occupying” is a single block of text, existing without punctuation but including capitals, suggesting new phrases and/or sentences, adding to, as opposed to slowing down, the inertia of the piece: “[…] I bet she is an excellent typist I bet she is a lot of things I bet she has been to yoga today I bet she is noble I bet she speaks in hushed tones I bet she is incredible I bet she is an incredible dancer I bet she is a lot of incredible things I bet she dances every night […]”
Simonds does seem to follow and favour rhythm and repetition, allowing certain phrases to echo and repeat, using repetition not as a way to hold the poem back but to hold elements of it together and to propel it forward, composing poems across a canvas far larger than the single page.




Today I paid my landlordat the last possible minuteon the last possible dayof the month which ison the 5thday of the month.It is the 5thof November, 2012.
Poets hate their landlords.This is an imperative. It has no grammar.Maybe it has a crude grammar.I am not writing the check untilthe last possible minutein my car because I haveso much hatred in my heartfor property and landlordsbut not land or streamssince I love the Romanticssince I am also a romanticwhen I am not practicing poetrylike going to TJ Maxxand looking at my face.
I have been thinking of the body of my three-year oldand how it is so new and unstableand how I don’t want him to ever feelhappy in this world.I don’t mean it like that.I want him to feel joybut not happy in the sensethat he feels content. (“A Poem for Landlords”)
There is a fierce intelligence and swagger to Simonds’ poetry, constructed with precision and an excess of wild energy; a poetry of rants, lectures, frustration, unease and pleading, passionate gestures. “I am writing this so quickly.” she writes, near the end of the piece “A Poem for Landlords,” a poem rife with domestic specifics and a rushed, harried breath. The poem ends: “I will post this on my blog / immediately.”