from “Notes on the Enclosure of Spheres” by Amy Catanzano
If a note of music is the foundation for using a voice
the way a makeshift window uses a sky, then the voice must
contain some liquid flicker, some mist, some that is never
shaped.
The dawn inserted. I took my hand and kept speaking
of reasons. But something important was on fire.
Close to your chin where I was looking was this thing,
a patch; I couldn’t tell whether it was for an eye or a shirt.
Dear Developer
Dear Discovery
Dear Rosewood
duplicated, you are nearly the same as you are now: a
ripple in water past the outward edge of land, tracing its
own roots. I am the grid of my face: close up
and slightly jeweled.
***
Luminous language and breath-taking gestures everywhere in this book. Look, look, and look.
***
Jack Foley is a walking “maelstrom with a notch” of a force, a history, a dance, and one of the most all-encompassing literary intelligences it’s ever been my pleasure to meet. To hold these two books in your hands is to have a portable education in new and experimental literature–especially from the Bay area. James Broughton, Kathleen Fraser, Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris answer Jack’s precise questions. Jack gives his take on the art of Ko Un, Sheila E. Murphy, Jake Berry, Cole Porter, Amy Evans McClure. And more. With Jack there is always “and more!” At the end of O Powerful Western Star, a CD features Jack and Adelle Foley “performing” a critical piece of Jack’s, which levers open the text in interesting and exciting ways.
With an attention to accuracy of word reminiscent of the young Marianne Moore, Mary-Marcia Casoly’s unfortunately titled “Run to Tenderness” is a tour de force that should be better known. Though I completely understand the impulse behind the title–many of the poems are addressed to the poet’s father, who appears to have been an absolutely wonderful gentleman, it does not alert the potential reader to the breath-taking range of language within:
She is a mysterious soup,
a city, a portal of fish stock, spearmint and bird’s eye-peppers
and yam. Morning like jasmine buds strung
into a bracelet, the rooster crow,
jet planes roar. Stalls of watermelon, mangosteens
dragons’ eyes and rambutans;
golden arils of jackfruit shine.
A flexible pole is slung over one shoulder
with a basket on each end; she passes it across
the river to you. Every smile greets you. There is more bottom
than top as every child knows.
(”Widow; Bangkok”)
And the gifts keep coming!
I could quote the whole book, including the fabulous “Australia Dreaming,” but can only point, in this brief review, at one amazing poem after another.
I’m a fan of Annie Finch’s work and actually met her for the fist time at AWP when I purchased this book on the last day of the conference. When I finally got a chance to read this book, I was struck first by the ambition of the work, and second, by how wide a margin Annie Finch missed the mark she’d set for herself. Add more than a dash of Starhawk and other pop “Wiccans,” and other “easy reading” explorations of New Age consciousness with every cliche you can imagine about empowerment, mix in some stilted, wooden versification, and bind between slick covers and you have this volume.
Here’s one example from among many:
Hecate, Hecate, what have you told me?
First a death, then a rape, now a pregnancy?
Hecate, Hecate, now am I pregnant?
Hecate, goddess of the crossroads
looming above me, your face like a tomb,
as you enveloped my day with your darkness,
the oldest, haggard face of the moon
swung into place like a sky above me,
covering me with a solitude.
Of course, the minute one works with material like this one is immediately in the tradition and company of the great and near great English poets of the 19th, 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries. The echoes are there, but echoes are not enough. One must attempt to renew the mystery, the terror, the uncanniness, the “numinosity”–if you will–of all of these goddesses and crones and tutelary presences of the past. It’s not enough to tell us that Hecate is “the goddess of the crossroads”–with a..”face like a tomb”–and “like a sky…”–(????)–as Annie well knows–but it’s the poet’s job to make us feel it in our pulses.
The plot line is good, with many possibilities, but Annie chooses the easy route. Among the Goddesses seems more like a first or second draft than a final work. Perhaps that final work will come in the future, but this version is a disappointment. Jess
Powerful narrative poems that successfully encounter, question, and refashion myth with a capital M. We agree with Sharon Doubiago’s assessment: “…Katherine Hastings is doing great work, as a poet and for poetry.”
Small Change Series
WordTemple Press
khastings[at]wordtemple.com
Human, humane poems: chartitable and largely people-oriented in the manner of Reznikoff, with the sense of self-effacement one finds in the Objectivists, Bronk, and the best of Corman. Many favorites here but my absolute is “Washing my Brother’s Hair.”
We have before us Tinfish (Poetry Puzzles and Games) 18 1/2, the handome Tinfish 19, from “Unincorporated Territory” by the Guam poet Craig Santos Perez, and “2 Poems” by Jozuf Bradajo Hadley (hand-writen–includes CD!)–all interesting, explosive, political–mind-and-English-bending work. Susan tells us that 19 might be the last issue due to funding cut-backs. We hope not!
A great magazine! Once again, some impressive artwork esp. by Alex Kanevsky, Eden Veaudry, And Yeni Mao. Carrie Etter, Mary Miller, Emily Carr, and others–all interesting–grace the pages. The Muses dance here.
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