Math, Heaven, Time

by Mandy Kahn

Poetry. MATH, HEAVEN, TIME is the lush, lyric and unabashedly beautiful debut from poet Mandy Kahn--a teeming corridor where characters from a Noel Coward play tire of eating oysters, where Alfred Stieglitz ruminates on Georgia O'Keeffe's hands, where a rooster crows for dawn all day, and where the consideration of simple things-- common wheat, a renovated loft, couples that argue on reality TV--rises to the level of exhalation, of prayer.

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Mandy Kahn is the author of the poetry collection Math, Heaven, Time. In January of 2016, former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser featured a poem from the collection, “At the Dorm,” in his syndicated newspaper column American Life in Poetry. Kahn collaborates with composers to create works that feature poetry in tandem with classical music and has had readings and signings at Colette (Paris), Motto (Berlin), Shoreditch House (London), Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco), Printed Matter (New York) and Art Center College of Design (Pasadena). She was one of several librettists who wrote the text for the critically acclaimed opera-in-cars Hopscotch; her libretto for the project was subsequently quoted in The New Yorker. Kahn also works as an essayist, and is coauthor, with Aaron Rose, of the nonfiction book Collage Culture: Examining the 21st Century’s Identity Crisis, which features graphic design by Brian Roettinger. Collage Culture was simultaneously released as a record which paired readings of the book’s texts with a score by the band No Age.

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I swore I'd only read a few poems from Math, Heaven, Time each day, not to finish too fast, but this morning I couldn't stop and ate the whole thing up. What a glorious encounter with a truly exceptional writer.

The hardest thing in the world is to write about something people have written about since the beginning of writing, and say something fresh, something that lets us see this basic human phenomenon afresh. A good love poem, therefore, is hard to find--but in this distilled collection they're everywhere. Here's one that just glued itself to my heart:

Poem for our Ghost

Who can blame the figure
that appeared,
translucent,
glowing, green,
and watched us sleep
just after we'd made love?
Moving
as he does
all night
past rooftops and tufts of trees,
how could he resist from perching closer
to such ardent rest?
Not more now than
lengths of ivy
painted on a scrim, how could he resist
such florid substance, such clay
on clay, two ropes swelled with ocean water,
bound to the bed,
bound to each other, far as one can get
from his own
estate of
disembodied transit?

Was our fragrance strong enough
to call him down
from his canopy seat in the nighttime?
How long
did he watch us, letting our scented breath
pass heavily through him,
how long did he float,
graceful, ponderous, sad,
before I caught him looking,
where his presence lit the room?
Even I
feel sometimes like a ghost
hovered above us,
trying to get closer,
to become us,
to know for certain our flesh.

So many great poems, many using famous photographs as their jumping off places, almost always with love as a theme-- like lovers Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz in "Your Hands: Stieglitz to O'Keeffe" ("how they sneak from the fields of your sleeves/like ferrets") ... a quietly torrid one about Weston's model and lover Charis Wilson in the famous photographs in the dunes "For Edward Weston" (You knew you were lucky/ to have her....) There's Nan Goldin's "Breakfast in Bed" and Man Ray and Eggleston... One about Jules Shulman's famous case study house photo, which has Kahn imagining herself and a lover into the photograph. She has the true gift of being able to see things clearly, and see them new, and open up small moments into large thoughts.

[Kirby Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cool collection from an LA-based poet. I like her relaxed and unfussy philosophizing. There were some great poems here about relationship dynamics and the feeling of being sort of disconnected or out of sync with your partner and even yourself in relationships. She also addresses very commonplace situations that can be psychically heavy, like that growing pile of undealt-with papers and shit on the table, or debt's strain on relationships in modern America. And there is an absolutely flawless poem called "The Sound" centered around old blind goats and the evolution of awareness and routine and memory.

[Adam Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda undercooked

[Donna Barney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!