AUX ARK TRYPT ICH: Poppycock and Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees

by Cody-Rose Clevidence

A triptych of wild, lyric love poems that are, at heart, an ode to Arkansas.

Set among blue Ozark creeks, hoods of trucks, and changing constellations, Cody-Rose Clevidence’s poems call up embodied sensations as they arise, with love and anguish, in a specific place. Navigating between senses and the sensed world, in lyric, lushness and density, Clevidence constructs an intricate and playful poetics both experimental and emotive to investigate the interplay between the vivid sensations of the body and the viscerally surrounding world.

Genres: Poetry

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 9, 2021

Reviews

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I think of poetry books that embody nature, like make me feel while I'm reading the book that (a) this poet has been recollecting spontaneous overflows of feeling that drive them to further spontaneous overflows while writing and (b) I am in the midst of their embodied spontaneous overflow WHILE READING THEIR POEMS! I think of Heather Christle's The Trees The Trees and Brian Teare's Doomstead Days. I mean, there are so many others. But these poets are the ones I'm often thinking about.

Which is not to say Clevidence, Christle, or Teare have all that much in common. The skill to think into the writing about earth and write into the thinking of earth so it makes a feeling, this they have in common for my reading life. But it's three different registers. Clevidence's register feels like packed earth. It feels like the ground being dug into for a grave (an image resorted to many times in the book). It feels so intensely present. Is it about the body, then? Or is it about temporality? I don't know. Notably, I want to tip it one way or the other. It would amplify my reading to commit one way or the other. But I don't. I prefer the poems straddle both sides.

[Marije de Wit · Rating 4 out of 5]

'[

gloat, more
dumb, rhyme
petite, mort
pterodactyl

blue, pfhhh
geyser, spy
arkedelphia
lazy, eye

unashamed, sun
thoughts, sensations
goat, boat
sudden, come

perilous, eagle-eye
perpendicular, lizzard-sky
lamb-of-god, whippoorwill
masochist, [thy] animal

all-the-way, magnificent
cluster-fuck, accident-
dodecahedron, demi-god
parallax, "kiss thy rod"

vertebrate, cortisol
mandrake, parasol
mighty storm, entourage
take me down, little dove,

milky way, vital ounce,
oxytocin, palindrome
this glee is mine
it's "born within"

]'

[lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it, made me stop & think & consider language and form in a way i don't usually feel called to do. nature, relation, poetics, which of course are all queer etc. but clevidence didn't talk about this in a wholesome mary oliver way; aux/arc was a lot more visceral, neutral (in the way god/nature is). gay too. ha-ha. put me in a state. i feel like going out & stealing flowers from the local rose garden. really good, my fav collection of poetry in a while.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this.