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How to Wear This Body
Poetry collection.
77 pages, Paperback
Published June 18, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 30, 2017
How to Wear This Body
Hayden Saunier
Hayden Saunier’s poems are accurate, intelligent, reflective, and above all, respectful of language – but they are also unpretentious, not afraid to play with sounds and words:
I Need to Live Near a Creek
because
the lush
mossy
rush of it
hushes
me up
It’s a simple, happy piece that unabashedly plays with the “ush” sound. The poem is utterly down to earth, down to creek. The attuned reader hears the rush and tumble of water flowing over stones
In a different mood, Lament, treats the gift from a friend of a blue pottery bowl. The friend, whom we learn midway in the poem is deceased, wanted Ms. Saunier to have the bowl because it sang . . . But the bowl refuses to sing, until
I clear away
my clatter, leave the smooth
blue emptiness centered in the room.
It takes its time.
Like grief.
Then a low note,
an opening hum.
Rhythm, word choice, tone – all are accurate and pleasing. Like much of Ms. Saunier’s work, the poem is understated and spare, but also full.
In the finest poem of the book , Her Eulogy, As If Written by the Moon, the moon and the earth share a reversal in which the moon becomes the observer:
She wrote of me often in her journal but not once
was I the same moon, always a moon particular
to each odd day and moment, the way
earth never seemed the same to me, its storms
and lights and desert ranges on a spinning ride . . .
The moon goes on speaking of the terrestrial journal keeper:
Waxed or waning, daylit,, bright, she knew me
whole and changeable, no matter what you see.
I think that might be love. Or ought to be.
This is a book you will want to keep close at hand to come back to (and in the interest of full disclosure, I live beside a creek).
Fred Lowe
Hayden Saunier
Hayden Saunier’s poems are accurate, intelligent, reflective, and above all, respectful of language – but they are also unpretentious, not afraid to play with sounds and words:
I Need to Live Near a Creek
because
the lush
mossy
rush of it
hushes
me up
It’s a simple, happy piece that unabashedly plays with the “ush” sound. The poem is utterly down to earth, down to creek. The attuned reader hears the rush and tumble of water flowing over stones
In a different mood, Lament, treats the gift from a friend of a blue pottery bowl. The friend, whom we learn midway in the poem is deceased, wanted Ms. Saunier to have the bowl because it sang . . . But the bowl refuses to sing, until
I clear away
my clatter, leave the smooth
blue emptiness centered in the room.
It takes its time.
Like grief.
Then a low note,
an opening hum.
Rhythm, word choice, tone – all are accurate and pleasing. Like much of Ms. Saunier’s work, the poem is understated and spare, but also full.
In the finest poem of the book , Her Eulogy, As If Written by the Moon, the moon and the earth share a reversal in which the moon becomes the observer:
She wrote of me often in her journal but not once
was I the same moon, always a moon particular
to each odd day and moment, the way
earth never seemed the same to me, its storms
and lights and desert ranges on a spinning ride . . .
The moon goes on speaking of the terrestrial journal keeper:
Waxed or waning, daylit,, bright, she knew me
whole and changeable, no matter what you see.
I think that might be love. Or ought to be.
This is a book you will want to keep close at hand to come back to (and in the interest of full disclosure, I live beside a creek).
Fred Lowe
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews