Like Someone in Love
Presenting—Star Time—David
Meltzer
and the Famous Flames,
lovely healer and
hologram, avenger of the
blood who could
read for hours, when the
children’s faces
followed him upstairs, the dog would bark
The fire spit funerary
songs
A smoke of tiny feathers
that we know nothing and
gladly say so (smiling)
that a prince is sometimes
left to trace and dig and paste
asking after my poems, qualities
of transmission
and who had I been listening to? I might say
Lady or The Misty Miss
Christy
Carmen meaning McCrae or
Leontyne
Price, either way, he was always
right there and shot
through,
Wide wreath in flames
The
latest from Lofall, Washington poet, critic and editor
Cedar Sigo is the poetry
title
All This Time (Wave Books, 2021), following close on the heels of
the remarkable collection of essays (that I’m still working through)
Guard the Mysteries (Wave Books, 2021). Sigo’s poems are first person
examinations and explorations on living, thinking, reading and being. The press
release compares Sigo to a contemporary
Frank O’Hara (via a quote by Ron
Silliman), composing an “I did this, I did that” kind of first-person lyric,
one that engages with the writers and artists within his immediate circle, and
there is certainly that, but Sigo’s poetic is one that engages deeper with those
poets he references. The references aren’t set simply as references or simple
interactions, but composed as deep, and even foundational, engagements with the
work of those he cites, including
Diane di Prima,
Larry Eigner,
Tom Clark,
Amiri Baraka,
Charles Olson and
Joanne Kyger. “Larry Eigner’s words,” he writes, to
open the poem “Surface Waves,” “Like golden / flies / stuck in / a loom—made /
to fall / with sudden / strumming / they sound, separate / distinct [.]” These
are poets clearly important to his reading and ongoing poetic. Sigo edited
Joanne Kyger’s There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera (Wave Books,
2017), after all, so the repeated instances of her name throughout are hardly
one of name-dropping, but in openly engaging with the work of his mentors,
forebears and influences, and there is very much the sense of both engagement
and homage through these references. I would even argue there’s far more of a
Joanne Kyger influence, and even Larry Eigner influence, throughout this
collection than anything out of Frank O’Hara, especially through the accumulation
of staggered, first-person journal-entry short lines. Not that one needs to
know of the source material to enjoy these poems; Sigo’s offerings are truly
his own, although it does open a window into his thoughts on these other
writers. Paired with this, as well, are poems composed as dedications to some
of his contemporaries (including
Joy Harjo,
John Godfrey,
Ed Berrigan and
Julien Poirier); any writer’s work exists in conversation, or at least response, to
the works of those around, so I’m simply pleased to see Sigo’s engagements acknowledged
so directly. He is, as any good writer is, writing from within a particular and
uniquely blended melange of books, writers and community interactions.
Mind control takes hold
after four poems.
Elaine should be the poet
in a cage (booth) at the LA art-book fair
or better yet, bill her
as a prizefighting Jean Harlow
in a slightly bloodied V-neck
blouse
and green-gold pyramid
cuff.
*
Rereading the first
Joanne interview in our new book (There You Are)
“Just write what’s going
on around you. Outside and inside.”
I think of this as a
statement on sustaining a viable rhythm within the poem.
The poem is the only hem
(the only field?) that Joanne has to land upon. (“Six Lines Missing”)
There
are times these poems read akin to journal entries or quick sketches, almost Creeleyesque,
perhaps, but clearly worked and thought carefully through. There are some sharp
insights caught in Sigo’s lyric (and I would highly recommend his collection of
essays, the first title of his I’d actually seen; a book I clearly haven’t
dealt with properly yet via review), one paired with, and even strengthened
through, a lovely, easygoing craft that engages clearly and thoughtfully through
the prose sentence and lyric form. And yet, this book refuses any consideration
of showy or performative, allowing itself, akin to the work of his fellow Wave-poet,
Joshua Beckman, a clarity of pure ease of meditative thinking: a poetry that simply
and beautifully is.
