The Insomniac's Weather Report

by Jessica Goodfellow

The Insomniac's Weather Report, originally published in 2011 as the winner of the Three Candles Press First Book Award, explores the impermanent boundaries that define and - due to their nebulous nature - fail to define the human condition: those between body and self, parent and child, energy and matter. Shifting between formal and prose poems, the myriad voices in this book include an insomniac struggling to delineate the edge between consciousness and sleep, and a couple trapped in a poem cycle that is itself an interlocking meditation on the oblique lines between self and other that constitute marriage. "Jessica Goodfellow's debut collection The Insomniac's Weather Report is admirably diverse in its approaches and structures and reads like 'a fugue of opposites', integrating the scientist's persistent enquiry and the philosopher's rarefied obsessions with this poet's highly tuned and unique sensibility 'in a blaze of form and discontent'. With their keen intellect and capacity to hold ambiguity, Goodfellow's poems are most successful when their complex abstractions are grounded in the body, image, and the human. For this reader, the power of these poems inhabits that space where logic and reason fail, efforts to name and place break apart, and chaos threatens to annihilate. This is a challenging and original debut." (Mari L'Esperance) "To say that The Insomniac's Weather Report is exquisitely thrilling poetry doesn't begin to do it justice. Wicked and funny as an encyclopaedia of unanswerable koans, elegant as a fifteenth-century flowered silk kimono portraying, perhaps, 'a hinge on a hingeless door', it is also savage - containing a hidden history of 'marriage, / perpetual stagger of desire / and resist' - and I found it irresistible, as will you, dear reader." (Alicia Ostriker)

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2011

Reviews

[Erin Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Goodfellow's since reading her chapbook, A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. If you don't have that book, you really should order it, and by all means, get this one too! Her poems are not only beautiful, they're smart. Reading them, I'm reminded of how poetry is like math: like mathematicians, poets are solving for the unknown. Goodfellow's background is in science and math, and the thing about this collection is that the intelligence behind it is inviting, never exclusive. Whenever I read these poems I come away inspired. Here's just a snippet from one of my favorites of the collection, "The Beach at Big Salt":

Tools of antiquity--the compass, the straight edge--
could not square the circle, couldn't tame
its numberless sides. Arcs, curves, chords
of circles remain, tracing hollows of shells,
clawed waves, parabolas of sand. See
how matter curves around the emptiness,
how it cups and gently holds
the space where things are absent. . . .

There's a section in the book called "Alphabet: Fugue", a series of poems in which the titles are connected. "marriage: whisper:" becomes "whisper: birds:" becomes "birds: language:", etc. It's a lovely configuration, adding to the overall themes and forms central to the book. There's such lyricism and mystery in Goodfellow's world; this book is one you'll want to keep and read again and again.

[Taylor]

Review forthcoming at thesmallpressbookreview.blogspot.com.

[Selma Writes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purchased Nov 2023
Amazon review Dec. 2023

Unique. Even the friction is wickedly beautiful and I even heard music.

Reviewed in Japan on December 6, 2023
Format: Paperback


Reading The Insomniac's Weather Report by Jessica Goodfellow, was a most unique experience: even the friction in the pieces and the things each did to my mind were wickedly beautiful. So much so that I wished to be there to witness how this project came to be. (more about this at the bottom).

I'm a recent poetry enthusiast and live in cloud nine with the many syllabic forms in poetry and prose and not until this book did I come to understand that there is far more to what I think I know about poetry. I was mesmerized by the depth of the poems within the covers of this book. Poetry is not a puzzle to be deciphered and untangled, but something to be enjoyed. I enjoyed these poems tremendously and I heard music.

I recently heard about a form of poetry called the epistolary poem, an epistle—a poem written as a letter, addressed to a private person. I feel the poems in this book are epistles. Maybe. In the case of this collection with such a title, I’m assuming the poems are a compilation of contemplations and conversations addressed to a beloved, to the natural elements, to things that are alive--like marriage--AND to me, as I'm part of nature too.

For the duration I spent on each poem, I was given a glimpse into the workings of an advanced mind that pondered deeply into real, moral, and philosophical questions. It was enlightening and I enjoyed listening in.

As I read I felt that this poet must listen to good music and that as she writes she smoothly maneuvers the tones and punctuations (in the pauses) in each complete piece to match the cadence of the music she hears.

How else, I concluded, could she create such a lovely flow to permeate into the reader’s (me) subconscious?

I always ‘think’ I work best in a quiet space. Now I ‘think’ I must add classical music to my space so that I might write with such finesse.

After a couple of rereads, I wanted to ask this poet to list for me the music pieces that inspired each poem.

The Insomniac's Weather Report is a collection of multitonal, juxtaposed conversations that kept me rereading, nodding, and wanting to hear the music. But this book is more than that only I cannot put my finger on it.

For now, let me assure you that I've been changed by this book. It's a most unique experience I wish I could see unfolding. Dare I compare this feeling to something I remember reading in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" where Dillar writes how she doesn't want to miss spring this year. That she wants to be there the moment the grass suddenly turns green and lush. What do you think about that? Hmmn. And as Dillar ponders on the knot on the snakeskin she finds, I ponder on how Goodfellow got to develop these lovely poems.

Get this book to see for yourself what I mean. It's beautiful and unique. I'm sure you will hear the music too.

I highly recommend it—a 5-star rating from a satisfied customer in Japan.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koans, philosopy, lessons, desires, geometry, beauty; with skill Jessica Goodfellow writes about the mysteries of the universe hinting at answers. There is much to mull on in "The Insomniac's Weather Report," and many secrets hidden in her rich pleum of words.

The first section, Uses of Water, starts with the poem "Why the River Flows Away From Its Source," it opens with "All poems should be about water. Or bones," and ends with, "See, there is no water in this poem,/There never was." Poems in this section allude to how we Use Water.

In the third section, Flotsam and Jetsam, in her poem "The Waters of Separation" her father tells her the four of five things never to forget, but then says, "Don't worry about the fifth thing./It's the same as the fourth, the third,/also the first. The second thing is wrong." She asks, "The invisible red thread?/I don't know I wouldn't tell you if I did." There are no answers anyone can tell us.

The final long poem, "Alphabet: Fugue," is an italicized phrase from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays: First Series, 'Circles' (1841). It is a long composition; in the section "Roof: Fugue," the word fugue is footnoted from a variety of dictionaries for it's musical meaning.. She creatively uses crossed through words; and numbers (as in her first chapbook). The poem section, "Wind: Roof," opens with, "Pale knock at my door last night" and later, "For some time I've been/nesting on your roof waiting for/the angels who dance on erasers/to come and do their hoodoo/in your corners."

This is truly magical writing, rich with mystery to unravel and images to swim in. I spent a long time reading this book to truly savor each poem, and like a koan with lessons to unravel I will go back to read it again. I'm looking forward to reading her book "White."