"Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in"Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?" -Excerpt from 'A Supermarket in California'...more
As beautiful as any of Glück's work, Averno centres around the myth of Persephone.
They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed tAs beautiful as any of Glück's work, Averno centres around the myth of Persephone.
They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed to belong entirely to life. Earth
asks us to deny this rift, a threat disguised as suggestion— as we have seen in the tale of Persephone which should be read
as an argument between the mother and the lover— the daughter is just meat.
When death confronts her, she has never seen the meadow without the daisies. Suddenly she is no longer singing her maidenly songs about her mother's beauty and fecundity. Where the rift is, the break is.
Song of the earth, song of the mythic vision of eternal life—
My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth—
What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god? - Excerpt from the first "Persephone the Wanderer"...more
The Hurting Kind is broken up into four parts, one for every season, with poems that are thematically connected. I particularly enjoyed the poems in 'The Hurting Kind is broken up into four parts, one for every season, with poems that are thematically connected. I particularly enjoyed the poems in 'Fall'. The collection is filled with nature imagery, recollections from childhood and coming to terms with the world.
Though I liked Bright Dead Things slightly more, The Hurting Kind is beautiful and well worth a read.
"On the plane I have a dream I’ve left half my torso on the back porch with my beloved. I have to go
back for it, but it’s too late, I’m flying and there’s only half of me.
Back in Texas, the flowers I’ve left on the counter have wilted and knocked over the glass— I stay alone there so the flowers are more than flowers.
At the funeral parlor with my mother, we are holding her father’s suit, and she says, He’ll swim in these.
For a moment, I’m not sure what she means, until I realize she means the clothes are too big.
I go with her like a shield in case they try to up-sell her— the ornate urn, the elaborate body box.
It is a nice bathroom in the funeral parlor, so I take the opportunity to change my tampon.
When I come out my mother says, Did you have to change your tampon?
And it seems a vulgar life all at once. Or not vulgar, but not simple.
I’m driving her now to the Hillside Cemetery where we meet with Rosie who is so nice we want her to work everywhere. Rosie as my dentist. Rosie as my president.
My shards are showing, I think. But I do not know what I mean so I fix my face in the rearview, a face with thousands of headstones behind it. Minuscule flags, plastic flowers.
You can’t sum it up, my mother says as we are driving and the electronic voice repeats, Turn Left onto Wildwood Canyon Road,
so I turn left, happy for the mundane instructions. Let us robot at once.
Tell me where to go. Tell me how to get there.
She means a life, of course. You cannot sum it up." --Excerpt from The Hurting Kind...more
Stag's Leap is written about the author's divorce, and has themes of love and heartbreak.
Then the drawing on the label of our favorite red wine looks lStag's Leap is written about the author's divorce, and has themes of love and heartbreak.
Then the drawing on the label of our favorite red wine looks like my husband, casting himself off a cliff in his fervor to get free of me. His fur is rough and cozy, his face placid, tranced, ruminant, the bough of each furculum reaches back to his haunches, each tine of it grows straight up and branches, like a model of his brain, archaic, unwieldy. He bears its bony tray level as he soars from the precipice edge, dreamy. When anyone escapes, my heart leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from, I am half on the side of the leaver. It's so quiet, and empty, when he's left. I feel like a landscape, a ground without a figure. Sauve qui peut—let those who can save themselves save themselves. Once I saw a drypoint of someone tiny being crucified on a fallow deer’s antlers. I feel like his victim, and he seems my victim, I worry that the outstretched legs on the hart are bent the wrong way as he throws himself off. Oh my mate. I was vain of his faithfulness, as if it was a compliment, rather than a state of partial sleep. And when I wrote about him, did he feel he had to walk around carrying my books on his head like a stack of posture volumes, or the rack of horns hung where a hunter washes the venison down with the sauvignon? Oh leap, leap! Careful of the rocks! Does the old vow have to wish him happiness in his new life, even sexual joy? I fear so, at first, when I still can’t tell us apart. Below his shaggy belly, in the distance, lie the even dots of a vineyard, its vines not blasted, its roots clean, its bottles growing at the ends of their blowpipes as dark, green, wavering groans. -Stag's Leap...more
I didn't find the poems to be particularly impactful, nor did I like the writing style. I liked some And Yet covers themes of motherhood and marriage.
I didn't find the poems to be particularly impactful, nor did I like the writing style. I liked some of the more experimental poems such as "The Garden of Eden: Updated Jacket Copy for the Modern World" and "The Second Coming of Chr*st". Also enjoyed "For My Sister"....more
While baby, sweetheart, honey covers important issues particularly around womanhood, this poetry collection did not work for me. The prose was not parWhile baby, sweetheart, honey covers important issues particularly around womanhood, this poetry collection did not work for me. The prose was not particularly compelling, and I found that many of the poems blended together. I wish there was more stylistic contrast in this collection; I did enjoy Evanescent though....more
Side by side, not hand in hand: I watch you walking in the summer garden—things that can't move learn to see; I do not need to chase you through the garden;Side by side, not hand in hand: I watch you walking in the summer garden—things that can't move learn to see; I do not need to chase you through the garden; human beings leave signs of feeling everywhere, flowers scattered on the dirt path, all white and gold, some lifted a little by the evening wind; I do not need to follow where you are now, deep in the poisonous field, to know the cause of your flight, human passion or rage: for what else would you let drop all you have gathered? --"The Hawthorn Tree"
I gathered you together, I can dispense with you—
I'm tired of you, chaos of the living world— I can only extend myself for so long to a living thing.
I summoned you into existence by opening my mouth, by lifting my little finger, shimmering
blues of the wild aster, blossom of the lily, immense, gold-veined
you come and go; eventually I forget your names. --September Twilight...more
Filled with gorgeous, bright prose, Bright Dead Things is a perfect accessible start to poetry. From poems on grief and sorrow, to lust and longing, tFilled with gorgeous, bright prose, Bright Dead Things is a perfect accessible start to poetry. From poems on grief and sorrow, to lust and longing, to hope and nostalgia, there's a poem for everyone packed within these 100 pages.
“Say we spend our last moments staring at each other, hands knotted together, clutching the dog, watching the sky burn. Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive, right here, feeling lucky.” --The Conditional
"When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought about my friend M. He's obsessed with plane crashes.
He memorizes the wrecked metal details, the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.
Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.
How people go on, and how people don't.
It was almost a year before I learned that his brother was a pilot.
I can't help it, I love the way men love. --Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds
I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. Think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe. How powerful that voice must be to get there. Once in a small chapel in Chimayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that's what you were supposed to do. That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body. There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die. I relied on a Miracle Fish, once, in New York City, to tell me my fortune. That was before I knew it was my body's water that moved it, that the massive ocean inside me was what made the fish swim. --Miracle Fish
How years later, some might say that their love was not a love, or was not the right kind of love, but rather a sort of holding on in order to escape another trapped fate of desert heat and parental push, but I want to tell you, nothing was an accident. Not their innocence or their ideals, not their selfish need, not their dark immortal laughter, not the small place with the roaring traffic, not the bus rides, or riots, or carelessness and calm, not the world that wanted them in it, that needed their small, young faces united in kiss and weep, not the song that surrounded them in a good fight, that repeated, Come, Come, Come out tonight. --Play it Again...more
Excerpt from Not Even: Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need magic to make it out of here.
Long ago, in another life, on an Amtrak through IoExcerpt from Not Even: Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need magic to make it out of here.
Long ago, in another life, on an Amtrak through Iowa, I saw, for a few blurred seconds, a man standing in the middle of a field of winter grass, hands at his side, back to me, all of him stopped there save for his hair scraped by low wind.
When the countryside resumed its wash of gray wheat, tractors, gutted barns, black sycamores in herdless pastures, I started to cry. I put my copy of Didion’s The White Album down and folded a new dark around my head.
The woman beside me stroked my back saying, in a Midwestern accent that wobbled with tenderness, Go on son. You get that out now. No shame in breakin’ open. You get that out and I’ll fetch us some tea. Which made me lose it even more.
She came back with Lipton in paper cups, her eyes nowhere blue and there. She was silent all the way to Missoula, where she got off and said, patting my knee, God is good. God is good.
I can say it was beautiful now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else.
To be a dam for damage. My shittiness will not enter the world, I thought, and quickly became my own hero.
Do you know how many hours I’ve wasted watching straight boys play video games?
Enough.
Time is a mother.
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.
In my language, the one I recall now only by closing my eyes, the word for love is Yêu.
And the word for weakness is Yếu.
How you say what you mean changes what you say.
Some call this prayer. I call it watch your mouth. ...more
My absolute favourite poetry collection. Every poem is a hit. The emotional impact is unparalleled. If you don't like Siken, I'm not sure !!!!!!!!!!!!
My absolute favourite poetry collection. Every poem is a hit. The emotional impact is unparalleled. If you don't like Siken, I'm not sure if we can be friends (kidding, kidding... or am I). The poems will stick with you. The language is accessible, the format simple but there's still lots to deconstruct.
Favourite Excerpts: "You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terr- ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for." -You are Jeff “Imagine this: You’re driving. The sky’s bright. You look great. In a word, in a phrase, it’s a movie, you’re the star. so smile for the camera, it’s your big scene, you know your lines. I’m the director. I’m in a helicopter. I have a megaphone and you play along, because you want to die for love, you always have. Imagine this: You’re pulling the car over. Somebody’s waiting. You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms. And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down, you’ve memorized it," - Planet of Love "We're shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth. You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back. Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn't want to see it this way, everything eating everything in the end. We know how the light works, we know where the sound is coming from. Verse. Chorus. Verse. I'm sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious." -Dirty Valentine
"Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing. You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?" -Litany in Which Things are Crossed Out...more
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