Poems of separation and loss, parting, distance—a voice in the telephone.

In the best moments the poems explore these emotions through a careful, calculated, and almost clinical language, hinting at a paing buried under the sterility of words:

”... my half of
any one conversation we’ve had is what I correct
before I sleep…”

In other moments, lines get rather self-indulgent, almost cloying: “Why / do I resent wanting?”

A memoir of a cutter that portrays not just the pain / pleasure of cutting, but also the daily pain of living an existence exquisitely crafted into a semblance of normality.

“I wanted to be tragic in order to justify simply being unhappy, but knowing that I wanted to be tragic made me suspect the very legitimacy of that unhappiness.”

“I no longer experienced things so much as I experienced them as experiences, a step removed.”

“unhappiness is a kind of narcissism, in which nothing that does not resonate with your unhappiness can interest you.”

“I had become obsessively preoccupied in particular with this disturbing interconnectivity of things, the way the most insignificant of decisions might have ramifications you could never know about when you made them.”

“I write to you as an approximation of intimacy.”

At a reading I went to, Ronk talked about eating as a tedious, uncomfortable task—something that helps explain the mood of her poems. Ronk beautifully portrays the sterile, cold, repetitive mundanity of similar days, conversations, relationships, mixed in with brief moments of surprise in existence. Ronk’s an expert in the pain of the ordinary.

The second section is mainly a sequence of Freudian dreams, interwoven with a collage of quotes from Freud. The dreams are dreams of obsession and fear—of loss, of being lost, especially of / from a home, memories.
__

“Life’s approximate is how someone might put it
and I think that’s sort of true.
It’s the monotone moved from one tree to another just a bit further down the road.”

“No one speaks of it exactly as I would.
The feel of his fingernails under my hand.
That his hands smell of butter,
unresisting as one could only have been at the time.”

In Americus I, Ferlingetti charts a history of American poetry, naming the canonical greats as well as his own faves and buddies (Ti-Jean Kerouac).

At first I wasn’t into the rather broad declamations about America and poetry - I was turned off a bit by all the naming of names - but it kinda grew on me. The book’s like a declaration of a love of poetry - specifically American poetry - swirled with anti-war sentiments.

A fave phrase: “pathetic phallusies.”

“Poetry a strange form of insanity, tempered by erotic bliss.”
“Like a bowl of roses, a poem should not have to be explained.”
“Poetry is thinking with your skin.”

“Begin with a homophone, move
through numbers, animals & rocks participated
in the inventions of language
(from the snapping of twigs
we learned k’s and t’s)”

This long poem about California touches on everything from history to art to sociology to linguistics to environmental issues.

Here, poetry takes many forms. Sikelianos includes diagrams of sign language, molecular doodles, vintage postcard images and photographs, and Q & As. We even get a list of endangered, threatened, and extinct species of California—

“My sister, who would have been sixteen or seventeen at the time, was strong willed and persuasive. My mother must, that summer, have been under her spell, for she let Olga drill me for hours every day on the beach, in preparation for taking a ballet exam…. I would get cross or even tearful at times …”

Perhaps all older sisters are cruel.

Tesserae’s a collection of short vignettes, recalling memories from Denise’s life. Denise was born to a “Jewish-Christian” father from Russia and a Welsh mother. When 12 years old, Denise decided to become a communist—and sold the Daily Worker door to door. At some point, her sister Olga died tragically somehow. Denise took all sorts of odd jobs, including that of a nurse during WWII.

Lost books, friendships, details of memories. Curious remembrances recalled and pondered over - rather insignificant events and people from the past that become important through memory -

” when you say it, say
it — what’s there
to be said — what’s here”

“Seemingly realistic codes have pointed to other
levels of images beyond their limits, ice
permitting time to decorate a block.”

Funny, but rather long. Really really long. Still, it had its moments:

“while I am asleep, I feel neither hope nor despair; I am free from pain and insensible of glory. Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man even.”

“The magpie had just escaped to flutter freely from one sycamore to another, intoxicated by its independence and the fresh air.”

I kind of wish the second part of the book came before the first, because the first part was a lil tough to get through / understand without the second part. Then again, it kept the first part surprising and eerie, and I s’pose it makes you want to re-read the first part—