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First light: Poems
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 5, 2022
This collection is full of poignant boyhood reminiscences, beautiful observations of animals and their habitat, piercing portraits of man’s dominion over nature, fierce condemnations of the wanton destruction of creation, and interesting musings about the darkness of the human heart (“Canticle for Xmas Eve” is a dagger!).
Favorite Poems:
“The Slow Dancer”
“Elegy for My Mother”
“Feeding”
“The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird Now Extinct”
“The Horsemen”
“Octopus”
“Loons Mating”
“Under the Raven’s Nest”
“The Rules”
“Canticle for Xmas Eve”
“Your Fortune: A Cold Reading”
“The Stump Speech”
“Writing an Elegy in My Sleep”
“Lifesaving”
“A Young Woman Found in the Woods”
“Bitter Cherry”
“The Gardener’s Dream”
“Getting Away”
Favorite Poems:
“The Slow Dancer”
“Elegy for My Mother”
“Feeding”
“The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird Now Extinct”
“The Horsemen”
“Octopus”
“Loons Mating”
“Under the Raven’s Nest”
“The Rules”
“Canticle for Xmas Eve”
“Your Fortune: A Cold Reading”
“The Stump Speech”
“Writing an Elegy in My Sleep”
“Lifesaving”
“A Young Woman Found in the Woods”
“Bitter Cherry”
“The Gardener’s Dream”
“Getting Away”
May 29, 2014
I so loved After the Point of No Return, the poet’s style and subject matter, it was interesting to read these earlier poems, written in 1983. I think his newer poems reflect the man he has become, shaped by the Pacific Northwest, and these poems are where he came from, and are quietly and resolutely Midwestern in tone and song. I am never taken as a New Englander, or haven’t been in a long time; I am a mountain girl through and through, but for a while I was believed to be a Midwesterner. It was taken as a compliment, and it evoked sweet, curious plainness in an open, friendly way, and some of these poems do that also.
“…you danced with her the best slow dancer/who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there/in your arms like music she knew just how to answer/the question mark of your spine your hand in hers…” (from the best slow dancer)
The titles tell the tale in a way, for a poet so lyrical in poems of history and nature, these are of memories, childhood. The truant officer’s helper; to a farmer who hung five hawks on his barbed wire ; for a fisherman who dynamited a cormorant rookery; peacock display; elegy for 24 shelves of books; your fortune: a cold reading. The poet started here, was molded and formed from the compass directions of these encounters and stories. The poet is a storyteller in a way that I think is distinctly American.
“She was at work on a poem about breath.
she asked what punctuation might be strongest
for catching her breath, for breath catching
halfway in her throat, between her straining breastbone
and her tongue, the bubbly catching of asthma.
She didn't care for ellipses or blank spaces.
Would a double colon work? Or Dickinson dashes?
It wouldn't be right for breath to have full stops.
It does go on, though people with trouble breathing
think about it, and breathe, and think about it.” from Poem About Breath
I was mending something between what falls asleep
and what dreams in me. I was closing an emptiness
by threading old words together, by stitching them
between the night in my mind and the next day.
writing an elegy in my sleep
and, of course, a beauty of a poem about his mom, who died of dementia/alzheimers.
Elegy for my Mother
She heard the least footfall, the least sigh
or whisper beyond a door, the turning
of a page in a far room, the most distant birdsong.
even a slight wind when it was barely
beginning; she would wait at a window
for someone to come home, for someone sleeping
to stir and waken, for someone far away
to tell her anything she could murmur
word for word for years, for those close by
to be alive and well in stories she loved
to listen to all day, where life after life
kept happening to others, but not to her,
and it was no surprise to forget herself
one morning, to misplace wherever she was,
whoever she was, and become a ghostly wonder
who would never wonder why it didn’t matter
if no one listend to her or whether
she was here or there or even somewhere.
or why it felt so easy not to linger
in the doorway saying hello, goodbye, or remember
me, but simply to turn and disappear.
“…you danced with her the best slow dancer/who stood on tiptoe who almost wasn’t there/in your arms like music she knew just how to answer/the question mark of your spine your hand in hers…” (from the best slow dancer)
The titles tell the tale in a way, for a poet so lyrical in poems of history and nature, these are of memories, childhood. The truant officer’s helper; to a farmer who hung five hawks on his barbed wire ; for a fisherman who dynamited a cormorant rookery; peacock display; elegy for 24 shelves of books; your fortune: a cold reading. The poet started here, was molded and formed from the compass directions of these encounters and stories. The poet is a storyteller in a way that I think is distinctly American.
“She was at work on a poem about breath.
she asked what punctuation might be strongest
for catching her breath, for breath catching
halfway in her throat, between her straining breastbone
and her tongue, the bubbly catching of asthma.
She didn't care for ellipses or blank spaces.
Would a double colon work? Or Dickinson dashes?
It wouldn't be right for breath to have full stops.
It does go on, though people with trouble breathing
think about it, and breathe, and think about it.” from Poem About Breath
I was mending something between what falls asleep
and what dreams in me. I was closing an emptiness
by threading old words together, by stitching them
between the night in my mind and the next day.
writing an elegy in my sleep
and, of course, a beauty of a poem about his mom, who died of dementia/alzheimers.
Elegy for my Mother
She heard the least footfall, the least sigh
or whisper beyond a door, the turning
of a page in a far room, the most distant birdsong.
even a slight wind when it was barely
beginning; she would wait at a window
for someone to come home, for someone sleeping
to stir and waken, for someone far away
to tell her anything she could murmur
word for word for years, for those close by
to be alive and well in stories she loved
to listen to all day, where life after life
kept happening to others, but not to her,
and it was no surprise to forget herself
one morning, to misplace wherever she was,
whoever she was, and become a ghostly wonder
who would never wonder why it didn’t matter
if no one listend to her or whether
she was here or there or even somewhere.
or why it felt so easy not to linger
in the doorway saying hello, goodbye, or remember
me, but simply to turn and disappear.
October 23, 2009
The poems were not funny or profound, but I do like to vary my reading
genre occasionally.
genre occasionally.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews