As Is

by James Galvin

“James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry.”— The Nation "Galvin's poems seem straightforward enough—but they're not....Galvin writes here like a force of nature. Excellent reading for contemporary poetry enthusiasts not looking for the overblown."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal James Galvin’s poems have zero percent body fat. His tightly controlled and detailed poems evoke measured optimism in a spare existential world where certain characters—“The Mastermind” and the “Members of the Board”—are recurring shadows. Like fables suggesting new truths, personal narratives and love poems intertwine to confront the various paradoxes of domestic life, art, and politics, and the line “All poems are love poems” leans hard against “Some poems are better off dead.” In As Is , both claim their hard-won place. I think black holes are just plastic
Garbage bags blowing down the midnight highway
That is the Universe.
There aren’t as many dimensions as we thought.
A black hole can disappear anything that nears it.
We all know that.
The farthest away I’ve ever been is in my own home,
Finally cleaning out my daughter’s room
So another little girl can live here.
The black plastic bag I held in my hand
Was infinitely capacious.
I mean I could throw anything in there. James Galvin is a Wyoming rancher and on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of six books of poetry, a novel, and the acclaimed memoir The Meadow. He lives in Tie Siding, Wyoming, and Iowa City, Iowa.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

Reviews

[Margaret Carpenter]

I enjoyed this collection a great deal. Galvin's poetry is sort of undefinable - one moment you're in the American Southwest, the next you're on an Italian island. One instant you're watching the news and the next you're sitting in on a board meeting with improbable characters like the Mastermind, the Know-It-All, and the Cut-Purse. I haven't ever read anything quite like it. The elements should feel incongruous in each other's company, but they don't. They all blend beautifully. Galvin mixes realism and surrealism with ease; a nostalgist with a keen eye trained on the present. Every poem is different from the last. I liked being surprised by them.

"I watch from the doorway,
And for a minute, maybe longer,
Everything
That threatens us
Threatens to save us."

from Two Sketches of Horses

[Nicholle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I should read poetry on Saturday mornings with coffee, ignoring my chores, basking in the new sunlight. I didn't give this volume that luxury, unfortunately, but I found several of the pieces powerful. I love, love "The Meadow" by Galvin, though, so reading this one, how and whenever I could, was worth it.
***
#15 - A book of poems.

[Jim Galvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was originally interested in reading this solely because the author and I share the same name, but it delivers as some of the most interesting poetry I’ve come across. Highly Recommend!

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a self-confessed sucker for almost everything I've read that Copper Cayon publishes. But this one didn't do it for me as much as it should have-- there's this recurring fiogure in the poems here, and maybe he comes from other Galvin books and maybe not, called Mastermind. Mastermind is the embodiment of God, but a particularly small minded God-- think of him as the God who really does speak to W, and you get the idea. Tyhis figure plays a central role in the most fiery poems here, the ones that engage politics more broadly, and these are some of the weightiest, in the sense of being the most self-important poems in the book.
Only Mastermind seems poorly drawn, sort of squidgy around the edges, and not all that interesting. It turns these poems which I think are supposed to be important into really flat critiques-- less shooting fish in a barrel than throwing half-dull knives into the side of a barn.
I'm not really resistant to the idea of a governing metaphor or figure like this in a book of poems. But here, I feel like it sabotaged the poems it governed rather than making them something larger than they could be.
Otherwise, I thought the poems were fine-- a little blah, but whatever.

[Jon Cone · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are crafted poems, honed poems. Like a fence made from stone, these poems. They have heft to them, the feel of something old and substantial, a durable quality that can withstand the rains and snow, winds. They occupy a line going up the hill and disappearing over the horizon. "There's a flight of birds furling and glancing/Over the city as the wineglass musician/(Is there a word for that?)/Sets up his folding table and tunes his crystal chalices [...:]." One can think of Hughe's CROW, at times, and Marvin Bell's Dead Man, as books and poems that touch what Galvin is doing here with his hovering presences, 'the Mastermind' and the 'Members of the Board.' This is a collection that is thematically drawn out from beginning to end -- something I've noticed more often in poetry books these days, a trend to a kind of poetic or lyric novelizing. (Perhaps that has always been the case, now that I think of it, for how many collections I consider worthy also have this unified field in which they stand. So I must concede that poets have for many years been pursuing this hidden novelisitic intent.) And here there is always the writing, which looks easy at times but that shows us only how hard it is to write this way: seamless, free from the inelegant strains of artifice.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, quiet, beautiful book. You can tell a lot about it by the first and last poems. The first, "A Tiny yet Nonexistent Etching as Seen through a Magnifying Glass," has the speaker observing a make-believe world in which everything is sharply detailed: "The goddess is scored in painful / Realism." I see all the middle poems as an exploration of this Etching's world, with its own rules and characters. Then the last poem, "All That I Can Tell from Here," applies the same observational curiosity to a more terrestrial setting. (We're told the poem was composed in Wellington, NZ, with a postscript -- it's the only poem in the book that has this.) We're brought out of the imaginary world, but we now view the real and artistic worlds as bound together and equally valid: "All this to arrive at the obvious: / Life is not a technicality, / So art can't be."

Very interesting conceptually, even though it's kind of cold in its detachment from the real world.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm in love with love poetry. I can't browse in a bookstore and see a volume of love poetry without picking it up and probably giving in to purchasing it. So I found Galvin's book fine because he writes elegant love poetry. He has a dark side. There are several poems about a Mastermind, a kind of terrorist who seems to have connections with and accomplices in figures from classical mythology. These are smoldering, disturbing poems. Threatening. But they're early in the volume, and he gradually softens this with lighter material, notably some love poems I found to be especially affecting. One of his lines runs "All poems are love poems." Well, I don't know. But I'm willing to say that one of his, the title poem "As Is," is as exquisite as any I've read.

[Micheal · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Galvin writes in a language that is mesmerizing, promoting vivid imagery and spontaneous emotion. Often obscure and hard to decipher at first glance, further reading and study germinates multiple threads of thought. His wordplay is like an intricate dance, deftly performed across the page with originality and fluidity that demands attention and another, closer look.

I look forward to reading all of Galvins poetry and hope for new material in the future.

[Heather Gibbons · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is tough. Galvin was one of my teachers, and I have a lot of respect for him and his body of work, and are a handful of beautiful, stunning poems in here, but on the whole, I gotta say, this book was disappointing.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not the kind of reader for socio-political allegories, but there are some nice poems among those others. It was a thrill to recognize the landscape of I80 and Wyoming in here (much more than it has been to drive that Nebraska stretch).

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't slay me like "X" or "The Meadow." Still beautiful, though. Much happier.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It didn't move me as much as his earlier work. Of course there were a few gems, but I expected quite a bit more.

[Husayn · Rating 4 out of 5]

simple, in language, form, and content, but extremely enjoyable read

[c · Rating 4 out of 5]

a lot of self-consciously cheesy a/o old-manish conceits give way to extremely fun and playful word play and well-wrought imagery