Some Nights No Cars At All

by Josh Rathkamp

This is the first book by a poet whose imagination is intimately related to the physical world around him, which he describes as “a wholly new and startling landscape that is the acolyte deserts of Arizona. Living here on the moon, as it were, and for half of the year in nearly unbearable temperatures, something altogether interior visited me. The experience of this landscape is confused by its actual history—on the one hand, geological, on the other hand, recent and territorial, and in the great middle ranges, the profound consciousness of Anasazi and Hohokam. They say, here, just to walk on the ground is to dream.” Josh Rathkamp's language is plainspoken but emotionally charged. He writes about love (both its pleasures and its difficulties) and of the strangeness of consciousness itself with a confidence that can only come from experience that's been scrutinized and distilled. At first glance quiet and modest, these poems gather considerable force as the book takes us deeper and deeper into questions essential to us Can love survive our limitations? What is art, and why do we need it? How can we speak of human consciousness? Josh Rathkamp was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He received a BA from Western Michigan University and an MFA from Arizona State University. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Indiana Review , Fugue , Meridian , Passages North , Puerto del Sol , Rhino , and Drunken Boat . He currently teaches at Arizona State University and Phoenix College.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My creative writing teacher wrote this! It's so good. I'm glad I got a copy.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fine poems. Deliberate, meticulous, and clearly constructed with great care, but not overworked or overprocessed. Lyrical, narrative, unpretentious, un-gimmick-y. Dog-eared: "Stopping for Directions"; "Wanting"; "If Practice Made Perfect"; "Our Last Evening, After Launcing from the Bottom of the Hoover Dam."

[Superstition Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

An immediate must read. Rathkamp’s collection of poems travel the mind inward to the phenomenon of heartache. Harsh truths, majestic assumptions, and callous understandings of what it means to be part of the human relationship are of interest. Holistically, the poetic viewpoint renders points of transpiration life before these once shared moments further change with time, before they reach even a greater distance or enter a point of no return, not even retrievable through fallible memory.

“STOPPING FOR DIRECTIONS,” Rathkamp’s sestina reckons with the return to fix the predicament of being lost; at the same time, the poem repeats itself with attempts for the speaker to reconcile with the temporality of life, with the fact that we all experience death and we are prone to be alone when this happens. Any hopeful routes out of the lost state only cannot be explained, even though some kind of communion can occur—any attempt to talk about being lost (separated) is shown to only deter this overpowering aloneness briefly. We all experience death alone. Physical and emotional manifestations of human imperfections have literal transparencies in these poems. The absence, loss, and the theme of emptiness countered the implications of the refilling notions of transient place.

Rathkamp’s verses are saturated with specific visual details. Masterfully crafted, what was once full, empty, get found through harkening voice and personal reflection. These inquiries of the present, past, and future moments, which are grounded in places, some of these poems are peculiarly placed where people gather: garage sale, school cafeteria, and my favorite a rest area. These locations are where mere destinations only get furthered for the better; for they allow readers to arrive at their own active insightfulness and rediscoveries.

Some lines that I enjoyed:

“And again I am finding ways/ to clean the mess I made,/ rationalizing their nest to fallen twigs/ wound with mud and fishing line,/ the simple possibility of making another.”

“We were what we wanted.”

“We grew into speaking without words.”

“Sometimes what we think is soaring is actually/ a hell of a lot of work.”

By Abner Porzio

[Gary McDowell]

Got his BA at WMU.