Colosseum

by Katie Ford

The visceral new work by Katie Ford, whose poems "possess the veiled brilliance of stained glass windows seen at night" ( The New York Times Book Review )
If you respect the dead
and recall where they died
by this time tomorrow
there will be nowhere to walk.
―"Earth" With gravity and resplendence, Colosseum confronts ruin in the ancient world and in the living moment, from historical accounts and from firsthand experience. Displaced from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Katie Ford returns this powerful report attesting to the storm's ferocity and its aftershock. Ford examines other catastrophes―those biblical, obscured by time, and those that play out daily, irrefutably, in the media. Colosseum is an essential, moving book in its insistence that our fates are intertwined and that devastation does not discriminate.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2008

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved section II, Vessel. Section III, for me, lost some energy. Some language I loved out of Vessel: "Lord of confusion, Lord of great slaughter and thin birds, you could never answer all of us at once." "but we are not like shells, there is no table to set up upon for judgement." "someone misspelled my easy name." "I waited for silence with its boards stripped off."

[Nomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably, this is as good as her first, Deposition.

[Abraham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as good as Deposition, which was one of the best books of poetry I've read in ages, but pretty damn potent. The early poems take a while to seem like more than just average poems you might find in a lit journal, and the New Orleans poems are not that exciting, though well written. But the later third of the book really picks up, making you go back and reconsider everything you read the first time. The second read is pretty great.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book to hold onto and return to. The language is beautiful and eloquent. It doesn't try to wow you or shock you with its subject matter. Rather, the slow pull of it reveals the layered pain and beauty of Katrina which speaks to so many instances of ruin.

[Dylan]

I'm reading through Lithub's 365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library, a reading list in four sections (Classics, Science, Fiction & Poetry, and Ideas). This book is #5 of Part 3: Fiction & Poetry and #19 overall.

Some poems I liked and mostly some poems that, presumably through no fault of their own, bounced right off me.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, haunting, re-readable, quotable. Honestly, I don't read a lot of poetry because I get frustrated with myself because I suspect I just don't get it, like I'm lacking a poetic-interpretation gene or something. But Katie Ford brought it home for me. I'm still not sure I totally get it, but I'm getting it enough and I think I'll get it more as I re-read it.

[stephanie roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

eleganti devozioni terrestri

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Colosseum, Katie Ford writes with such beautiful lyricism that at first, it's easy to forget that her latest collection is about tragedy. However, with a poem such as "Flee" where the narrator dictates "Rarely do I remember another month, August./Rarely another day do I remember" we, as readers, suddenly realize that the work is about disaster; more specifically, Colosseum is about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.

Ford situates this tragic moment in American history among other catastrophes of our world -- some Biblical, some more recent. And while her poems of a destroyed landscape of a wounded city are beautiful, it's the poems where more personal narration comes to the page that are often more poignant. For example, in "He Said" a persona records the words of a unknown witness who states, almost crassly, "that city needed a good cleaning" in regards to the chaos that followed Katrina. In another poem, a narrator hides out in a friend's library, taking a sort of emotional shelter, until her friend says "in the library/there are many devastations//instead go back to your own."

Colosseum is the third book of poetry about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina I have read this year (Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith and Perpetual Care by Katie Cappello were the other two). I can't say it was my favorite. What I can say is that Ford's book is another important witness to recording the near death of an American city.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Katie Ford's first book, Deposition, impressed me because of its ability to describe a complex relationship with the divine. In Colosseum, Ford seems more of a Modernist poet, concerned with ruin. She says, "Something please tell me I'm wrong/ about impermanence,/ wrong that there is no unbroken believable thing/ on this earth," and the epigraph of the collection, from H.D.'s "The Walls do Not Fall" sets this theme of ruin in the foreground.

Ford has reason to meditate on ruin--she was living in New Orleans until Katrina hit, and that storm and its aftermath are the occasion for this collection. Even poems written about other countries (Beirut, Vietnam, Italy, etc.) are concerned with ruin or impermanence.

I read this book off and on, over a couple months, and few of the particular poems have stuck with me--one, about the Coliseum Theater which burned in New Orleans after the storm, does. At the end, the speaker acknowledges our desire for escape: "... when the moviehouse burned, what were we/ to say? We who wanted so much/ to say again, simply,/ let's go to the movies./ Please, just let us go."

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excepting the outstanding opening poem, “Beirut,” Katie Ford’s new collection, Colosseum, started out pretty weak for me. The opening section, “Storm,” which is about Hurricane Katrina, was filled with what I felt were rather flat, reportage-like poems. But such events can be very hard to write well about. With that in mind, perhaps Ford’s approach is best. Sometimes being a witness is enough – even for a poet. Tell it straight, go light on the Art. Whatever the case, the collection increasingly gained traction for me (closing very strongly), so that by collection’s end, poems I felt were “weak,” placed within the overall context of the collection, did indeed have their place. That’s probably because Ford was wise enough to expand her scope, with historic tragedies such as Pompeii or Nagasaki making their appearances, and then circling back to New Orleans, displacement, family, and friends. Ford’s a fine poet (I was a big fan of her earlier collection, Deposition), and it’s good to see a modern day poet step into Job’s shoes and sing a lament in such a clear-eyed way. There's sentiment, sure, but sentiment tempered by an overwhelming reality: Katrina.

[Andi · Rating 4 out of 5]

last night I had the privilege of hearing Katie Ford read her work. She has recently been awarded the Lannan Literary Award for her work, which includes two books Deposition and Colosseum. Her reading last night was understated and quiet yet marked with the same kind of subtle power you can feel in the air just before a lightning strike or a big snow storm arrives. She speaks with confidence but not bravado, and it truly was a pleasure hearing her read. One of my favorite poems from Colosseum, “The Shape of Us” begins this way:

Perhaps our difficult loneliness
was not given to us
but was ours by mistake
like an early theory of the world
in which all creation was a single sun,
in which humans and trees
and the white heron bent to feed
were not forms but caverns
cutting into that light. Pompeii was discovered
beneath calcifications of ash
because certain hollows looked human.

Her work is filled with history and allusions that add richness and strata of complexity beneath the words. I would highly recommend that you pick up a copy of her work, or read some of her poems found around the Web.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think this book is about New Orleans. I know it's supposed to be. The central poems in this book, for me, are "Division," "Koi," and "Colisseum," and they don't seem to be about any kind of New Orleans (except for a possible city parallel between Rome and New Orleans), instead they seem to be about two people. A relationship. Especially how the speaker feels about this relationship. Yes, there are more poems that explicitly mention New Orleans, but the mention only feels incidental. Not nearly as important as the speaker responding to something about herself.

[Brendan]

She's a capable writer, but not much stood out to me.

Favorites:
"Ark"
"What We Get"
"Easter Evening"

There was nowhere to fix it. There was no talk of ever fixing it.
- "Division"

I wanted to see others alive
and count myself among them.
- "The Singing"

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend reading this hungover on a bleak day in an unfamiliar city. So, so sad. So heartwrenching. The first section does indeed stand alone as its own chapbook. The rest is like that hangover after a particularly awful evening. The extreme let-down of a disaster-ridden city is palpable in Ford's spare lines. Haunting.

[Abe Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit the bias of being a native New Orleanian. But it is baffling to read a book about the failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina, but which does not mention race or feature any black folks. Ford's book aestheticizes the experience of evacuating in a way that depoliticizes and dehistoricizes it. I wanted very badly to like it, but I felt empty--and even angry--after reading Colosseum.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this collection I had to put it down. These are intense poems. This is not airport reading. This is only a lamp on past midnight at my desk with a bourbon while the wife sleeps reading. That seems the best way to revel in the abandon of the what's presented (to steal a line from Tom Petty.)

[Lynnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ford puts the aftermath of Katrina into the larger context of our human response to natural and divine tragedy. Occasionally obscure, though the books set of motifs -- water, vessels, fire, earth -- create a satisfying depth.

[Shappi · Rating 4 out of 5]

a rather brilliant poetic response to the idea of ruin. it's not all my kind of writing, but where she is sparse she can really pack a punch. "therefore ready yourself/ but do not panic/ you cannot be ready."

[Michael]

Something to live for in 2008.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title poem is particularly satisfying and central to the book. The "Storm" section, of Hurricane Katrina poems, falls short for me (it was previously published as a chapbook).

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tightly written poems

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

These powerful poems detail a personal reaction to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

[Brian Tucker · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Overture" was one highlight of this collection.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes me want to read more poetry.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked the spiritual vibe to the poetry in this one.