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The Radium Watch Dial Painters: Poems
The Radium Watch Dial Painters is a book of sheer power and range, poems that burn in brilliant flashes and with searing luminescence. There are great stories in here, flurries of fresh images and graceful turns of music and wit.
Whether meditating on the grim facts surrounding the title poem (those women dabbing radioactive brushes on tongues to sharpen bristles so that rapidly passing hours glow in the dark), or considering the fossil and figurative fueling of our rage to get down the road toward the “dying of our lives,” or finding solace in familial havens, those temporary respites from “the perfect velocity / that illuminates the world,” these poems invite us to join them in a quest for language that will slow down our fervent “loving the world that is also our undoing.”
Whether meditating on the grim facts surrounding the title poem (those women dabbing radioactive brushes on tongues to sharpen bristles so that rapidly passing hours glow in the dark), or considering the fossil and figurative fueling of our rage to get down the road toward the “dying of our lives,” or finding solace in familial havens, those temporary respites from “the perfect velocity / that illuminates the world,” these poems invite us to join them in a quest for language that will slow down our fervent “loving the world that is also our undoing.”
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
November 27, 2010
I wanted to love this book if only for its title and cover image, but suspect that these surface features may have twisted my expectations. I'm familiar with the history of the radium watch dial painters and, so, wanted more (forensic?) historical research to imbue (or imbrue?) these pages. Also, the eerie green hue of the cover girl's features left me yearning for glow-in-the-dark poetry. I wanted traces of radiation poisoning in the lines.
I do think that Butterworth's collection contains some lovely moments. Most of the poems are quiet reflections on relations, or communications that seem to just miss each other. Example lines from "Conversation":
"I know what you're thinking, winter
foretold these stars, confirmation
that fire shadows itself before its fuel
burns, which is to say, your eyes
kindled by cold, burn against the snow
of your age, that shore time goes
wayfaring to reach."
I certainly don't know what the "you" is thinking--and I'm not convinced the speaker does either as he goes on to admit, "...it's no use anymore to find / the bright words." Maybe that's what I'm missing. I wanted more bright words--and by "bright" I don't mean cheerful or clever. I don't necessarily need to know what the Other is thinking, but I need some flicker at the edge of vision...if I'm to be haunted at all.
I will say that I enjoyed the final third of the book most with "Blind Man Driving" being my favorite poem in the collection. This poem scared me a little--and maybe that's what I needed:
"By the time his wife died, just
weeks ago, he had learned the way a road
tugs a body and curves,
the growl of the motor all the way into town.
When the officer stops the car, little
is he prepared for this intoxication.
But what gives us license to drive? The old
man sits, blind as night, knowing there's
a problem he can solve. Even now his hands
hunger to fiddle with cylinders,
even now he talks into vortices of his wife's hair.
The flashing blue presses
into afternoon, and the blind man
driving the car is miles beyond the road
any of us would ever drive. So the policeman
climbs in the back seat. What do we really know,
he thinks, and sits, and closes his eyes."
I want to trust the poet as much as the policman trusts the blind man behind the wheel.
I do think that Butterworth's collection contains some lovely moments. Most of the poems are quiet reflections on relations, or communications that seem to just miss each other. Example lines from "Conversation":
"I know what you're thinking, winter
foretold these stars, confirmation
that fire shadows itself before its fuel
burns, which is to say, your eyes
kindled by cold, burn against the snow
of your age, that shore time goes
wayfaring to reach."
I certainly don't know what the "you" is thinking--and I'm not convinced the speaker does either as he goes on to admit, "...it's no use anymore to find / the bright words." Maybe that's what I'm missing. I wanted more bright words--and by "bright" I don't mean cheerful or clever. I don't necessarily need to know what the Other is thinking, but I need some flicker at the edge of vision...if I'm to be haunted at all.
I will say that I enjoyed the final third of the book most with "Blind Man Driving" being my favorite poem in the collection. This poem scared me a little--and maybe that's what I needed:
"By the time his wife died, just
weeks ago, he had learned the way a road
tugs a body and curves,
the growl of the motor all the way into town.
When the officer stops the car, little
is he prepared for this intoxication.
But what gives us license to drive? The old
man sits, blind as night, knowing there's
a problem he can solve. Even now his hands
hunger to fiddle with cylinders,
even now he talks into vortices of his wife's hair.
The flashing blue presses
into afternoon, and the blind man
driving the car is miles beyond the road
any of us would ever drive. So the policeman
climbs in the back seat. What do we really know,
he thinks, and sits, and closes his eyes."
I want to trust the poet as much as the policman trusts the blind man behind the wheel.
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