Unrest: Poems

by Joanna Rawson

The second collection by the award-winning poet Joanna Rawson, whose "intense language recalls the hothouse prose of Cormac McCarthy" ( Kirkus Reviews )

The sky threatens to answer a prayer but then won't.
It is not exactly our own minds we go out of.
-from "The Insurgency"

A man's sister sews him into a bus seat. Stowaway immigrants suffocate in a crowded boxcar. The first female suicide bomber passes through a checkpoint. Joanna Rawson's Unrest shows the fervent, if not desperate, side of humanity pressed to the limits. With a resonant lyricism and profound beauty, these poems are restless meditations on American life, political borders, lawlessness, parenthood, and the spaces where the natural world and human turmoil come into conflict. Here is the voice of the poet at one moment in contemplation and at the next in emotional outcry, stuttering into song.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Joanna Rawson is the author of a previous poetry collection, Quarry, winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award Series in Poetry. She lives in Northfield, Minnesota."

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more than I did-- a series of prosy poems that intercut some would-be rhapsodic writing about nature with some panicked observations about the War on Terror, and specifically it's Iraq manifestation. (This is a book that might be just a news cycle too late, and I say that really how cynical it sounds).

In other words, I'm ready for a book that is critical of W, and I am not opposed to seeing mechanized war set against nature and the resilience of people in the face of urban poverty, et al. But I'm not sure this book has much to say about that beyond the obvious war bad, nature good. In the hands of someone like GC Waldrep, that kind of exploration can be amazing, challenging, illuminating. But here I didn't feel that.

Also, the prosiness of the poems was a little off putting. Many time reading, I wasn't sure what was happening with line breaks, whether I was reading line-wrapped prose or something else. The language also felt a little flat to me.

[D.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a long sequence in this book entitled "Kill Box" that I think is the epitome of what a long poem can do well: hold its reader captive in a space that's both large and discomforting. The relentless cadence of the poem feels like a ticking bomb, as well it should. Rawson gives us a harsh inquiry into this country's disturbing relationship with those who come here to supply us with the cheap labor that keeps the machinery of industry and agriculture turning. Rawson perhaps owes a small debt to Muriel Rukeyser: she has Rukeyser's sophisticated social conciousness, as well as Rukeyser's inventiveness. Political poetry can move us or it can challenge us. These poems do both.

[Brendan]

Fifteen poems of varying length: "Kill-Box" is 11 pages, "One Summer under Occupation Reports the News & Weather" is 16 pages. But there are a few one-pagers and the rest are in between. A lot of talk about bees (the edition I read features bees on the cover), war, and gardening (Rawson is a Master Gardener).

Favorite:
"Accordingly"

Somebody handed me this quote as the saddest story ever written:
For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.
- "Blowback"

The moon's like busted glass on the sidewalk...
- "Provisional Endings During Wartime"

Her fever makes each breath a hot streak it hurts to hear.
- "A Summer under Occupation Reports Its News & Weather"

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this collection of largely prose poems, Rawson relies plenty on juxtaposition to carry her goals. This works most interestingly in her poem "Kill-Box" that contrasts a train car full of dying immigrants with pleasant gardening at home. This creates interesting effects, but in the end the trust in juxtaposition simply draws too much attention to itself. Her other poems often continue such contrasts but they grow even more distant. The reader ends up having to do too much work. Still, she's obviously got talent.

[Jay Salvosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rawson's poetry serves as the string which ties bees, seasons, gardening, killboxes, immigrants, and bombs together. Some parts are unsettling -- clearly showing a slow motion of tragedies of the common man.

[Jonathan]

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/coll...

[LemontreeLime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dark and occasionally focused so tightly on disturbing subject matter its hard to read, but for different reasons. I can't say I personally enjoyed this, but i did read it.