I’m fascinated by this collection of new poems by American poet Maxine Chernoff, The Turning (Berkeley CA: Apogee Press, 2008). Built very much as a graceful whole made out of smaller pieces, her deceptively clear and straightforward style works its way in under the surfaces of the skin, even as it appears, like water, bouncing off even as it has already soaked through. In The Turning, Chernoff writes a number of poems that bounce off quotes by such as Hannah Arendt, Donald Rumsfeld, Roger Shattuck, CG Jung, Laura Riding and Hans Arp, building the first section of her collection as carved through history and the page.
Light and Clay
“Will the dust praise thee?”—PSALM 30:9
The page was a place
before morality
before Gilgamesh
before the second prophet
of revealed law
The page was a hybrid
of value and valuelessness
a hybrid of community
and selfishness
a foster child of devotion
The page was experience
in semantic terms
a folie à deux
a terminal location
Cowboys and princes
offered their lives
the cult of the dead
worshipped there too
lacking in value
it saw only faces
The page was a room,
a picnic, a heaven
the utopia of words
in a region of want
The page was a bride groom,
a bride and a lover,
the child of the union
of religion and anarchy
“I will reflect it,” the page
said on Sunday
“I will absorb it,”
the page meant to add
Between death and rebirth
the page stood waiting
words came to call
speechless at best
Chernoff, the author of over a dozen books of poetry and fiction (including a previous Apogee publication, Among the Names), works a poetry written as political both through how it talks about politics itself, as well as history, and how it works through the language. All writing is political, someone once wrote, and Chernoff’s is no different, but for the fact that it is deliberately so, but with such a light and knowing touch that its power comes through subtle means, instead of through direct force.
And Words For
“Our human logic and our language do not in
any way correspond to time.”—ALEXSANDR VVEDENSKY
1.
The moment after the flashlight
The time we were not sorry
The woman who knew too little
Her assault upon community
The darkness of the hour
The black he never wore
Crime’s passion and passion’s crime
The quiet irony of place
His death in ‘74
Antecedent of the war’s eye-view
My failure to succumb
Candor of former confessions
Harbor beyond the harbor
The crowded field of action
2.
Comedic lines replacing
lost histories of space
Affinity for landing
in sorrow’s heavy gift
The Stradavarian grace
of longitudinal signs
Until the celebration
replaces patient thought
When everything is art
and life may prove you wrong
No comments:
Post a Comment