Beauty Breaks In

by Mary Ann Samyn

Poetry. "Mary Ann Samyn writes poems in which the impossible happens--through language, the human experience is turned to sky, fire, fireworks, diamonds. This is a poet who is able to hijack sorrow, or error, or delight, and transform them into deeply imagined, perfectly condensed and terrifyingly expanded glimpses. One doesn't quit reading a Samyn poem, as they accumulate in the reader's mind, follow us like our own shadows, permanently. There's that much power. I find myself wondering what source it is this poet has tapped into--and how frightening and lovely it is that she has done so, so that I can tap into it through her, and have a chance to stare into the Mystery through her poems"--Laura Kasischke.

Genres: Poetry

65 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Paula Koneazny]

On a first quick read I found the poems engaging but slight, an opinion confirmed on a second, more attentive reading. Samyn’s style for the most part is breezy and jokey. In the book cover blurbs, Donald Revell uses words such as “mischief” and “devotional.” Lynn Emanuel calls Samyn’s writing “hip, elegant, sorrowful, witty, and new.” I wouldn’t go that far. I love wit in a poem, but here, I would have preferred a less glib approach. Many of Samyn's lines read like instructions, directives, suggestions or even epigrams, particularly in the poems “A Girl Can Imagine, Can’t She, a Girl Can Dream,” “An Ambiguity,” “Her Sun Was Blue, Her Tree Was Green, Her Line Was Very Straight,” and “It’s Been a Lovely October Thus Far.” Reading Samyn, I became aware of the potential weakness in such an approach (the quirky, witty, stand-alone sentence). Although I question whether or not Samyn is truly a devotional poet, she does mention God a lot, in fact too often and for no compelling reason as far as my no-God sensitivities are concerned. The two poems that I appreciated the most in the collection, “Having Come This Far” and “Introducing the Bird-Watcher to the Bird,” show off Samyn’s talent when she succeeds in keeping her breezier proclivities in check.

“Having Come This Far”:

The loneliness was so old!
I had celebrated all of its birthdays.

Some verbs need helpers, my mother used to say.
Like the strings of an apron at the small of her back.

Today, a bird lay down in the grass.
Just like that, I’m telling myself.

If you knew how I thought of you,
you would say: this is a poem of praise.


“Introducing the Bird-watcher to the Bird”

Note: we began in error: a tingling.
*
You queried.
*
But have you a library, a system, an instrument?
*
—I shot back.
*
Thus, what had been null and void:
*
Dear Amateur—
*
Now we flit into view:
*
one calling out, each nightfall, the other
*
(sorry—)
*
begging back.

[Jessie]

"Right now I'm getting ready to turn my longing into contentment.
Getting ready to be lovely someday, very very lovely." ("There's Not Time Like the Present")

"Whatever you resist, persists,
said everyone famously." ("Bank On It")

"I am here to say the plainest thing." ("Covenant")

I am new to lyric poetry for the most part, though CD Wright can take me into this terrain sometimes where narrative doesn't hold sway and it's just emotion and atmosphere, incredibly precise lines that do somehow evoke a feeling when several of them string together. A book like this leaves me thinking, 'Now, how did that feeling come into being after that poem?' I loved sitting with Samyn's book on a Sunday morning, finishing almost in one sitting and then wanting to talk with her about it. Hope I get to.

[Joy Gaines-friedler]

Samyn has done it again with her unique "look at this" style. She forces you to look at language and then circles around between up and down it. Isn't that how we view a painting? She cracks me up and makes me cry at the same time. These poems are deeply personal and totally universal. I find Samyn to be one of the bravest poets out there.

Beauty breaks in everywhere.

Welcome to the wind-powered poem.

Like the ocean or the woodcut of the ocean.

I heard the hardest thing and listened.

Syntax says, you first. Shimmer half-scolds.

I said, I am loved. Sometimes a correction happens.

Fear made it one full week. A human action.

I stopped making it worse than it was.

[Stephanie]

I read this book cover to cover in under an hour. I plan to read it several more times. Very good!

[Kristin]

I was hoping for something a bit different from her first three books, but this is mostly the same. Great poetry, but mostly the same. It would be nice to see her push her limits a little.

[Alex Rye]

“I like my emptiness with a bit of elbow room. / You like yours with a convenient hatch.” – Mary Ann Samyn

i took this poetry book traveling with me, and it was really a fantastic read. i really regretted not bringing any of my highlighters or pens with me because i really wanted to annotate the shit out of this collection. samyn has this talent for capturing the human experience; things we don’t necessarily have the words for, but these poems encapsulate those complex feelings.

a few of my favorites were “Ply Me with Something, Please”, “I Want You to Scream It”, “Her Sun Was Blue, Her Tree Was Green, Her Line Was Very Straight,” and “Content / Content”.

[Jacquie]

Some beautiful lines but overall too disjunctive and at times abstract for my personal taste. Still super witty and intelligent.

[Jeff]

Unique and oblique.