Evocative and lyrical free-verse poetry.
A translator offers two poem cycles—supposedly uncovered in two scrolls—that involve the politics of love and reading in ancient China.
This book includes a mysterious explanation about the unearthing of the Xian scrolls. The translator of these poems from Old or Classical Chinese into English, known only as E.O., relates that the anonymous archaeologist who found the two scrolls died under “mysterious circumstances.” This requires “circumspection” about the details of the scrolls’ location and the identity of E.O. and his contacts in China. These two collections of verses—“The Poems of Cangjie” (circa 2650 B.C.E.), by the Chinese historian, and “Visions of Cangjie” (circa 213 B.C.E.), by a poet and translator called the Sculptor—share vivid styles and themes. Both poets write in shimmering free verse about Cangjie’s forbidden love for the Yellow Emperor’s favorite courtesan and the consequences. The “furious emperor” forbids Cangjie to speak to the woman, and the historian, to circumvent the order, invents the written word to deliver his message to the object of his affection: “What you hear / is not what I hear. / I grieve / as at death.” Over 2,000 years later, the Sculptor demonstrates a similar ingenuity when he translates Cangjie’s poems onto a silk scroll. He hides that treasure, along with his own poems on a second scroll, in one of the hollow bodies of the terra-cotta army figures he labors to create. He thus saves both his and Cangjie’s work from the First Emperor’s massive book burning. Cangjie’s images are more concise (“Like your lashes / your hands flutter— / quails in a bush”) than the Sculptor’s: “One woman walked / as a falcon in soar.” The parallelism of the two collections remains pleasing in its symmetry. For readers who can let go of their need for undisputed proof that these are indeed lost poems, gems await, including this line from Cangjie: “Sly slip / of moon, / you made me wait the night / to see you.”
Evocative and lyrical free-verse poetry.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9848403-4-2
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Risk Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This compilation’s original works are offbeat but arresting, featuring far-out content in a melodic format.
Whimsical, melancholy, and death-laden songs make up this tuneful collection of poetry.
Much of Torgersen’s verse has a singsong quality, with strong meters and rhymes, repetitive choruses, and the use of dialect, especially West Indian patois. His subject matter and poetic moods, however, are often steeped in quizzical rumination and existential angst. A few pieces wander into overt philosophizing, including a colorful but dated prose essay that warns readers that “the long-legged wolf of consumerism runs unchecked as the lead dog in the world-wide Iditarod of capitalist oppression.” Some are songs that have been copyrighted by other authors, including the Paul Simon hit “Slip Slidin’ Away,” The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Steve Goodman’s railroad ballad “City of New Orleans,” and Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come.” Torgersen reprints the lyrics of these and other copyrighted songs verbatim, without attribution. In an introduction, he contends that many of his early verses were “stolen” from him, but he offers no evidence of his authorship of any of the lyrics here that have been previously recorded and published by others. In dozens of what appear to be original poems, however, Torgersen’s verse abounds in cryptic lyricism. He often strikes a prophetic chord, admonishing readers in “A’ Them Gone,” for example, to “Hear me when I say / there is something here today, / and there can be no peace / ‘till it’s gone.” Surreal scenes course through many poems. “Big Hill Revisited” begins with “The space suited florist’s man / is dumping dead daisies / out the back of a blue van / into an alley at dawn.” Goats are also a substantial presence in the collection: “The Wind and the Goats” speculates playfully that “Maybe it’s the way they smell, / so strong and, well, goatey, / that keeps the wind from trying / to ruffle their hair,” and “Look Homeward, Now” mentions “a goat on display, / with his head on a plate.” In patois pieces, such as “After We Are Weevils,” Torgersen’s poetry sounds an earthier but still hallucinatory note: “After we are weevils, / they baked in we bread. / Ask me ‘bout it sometime, / and remember we dread.” Formed in 1960s countercultural music ferment, the poet’s voice wanders through various styles, from folk picaresque to morbid psychedelia, and his imagery is often intriguing, even compelling. Sometimes, however, the verses fall flat on the printed page (“Aaa aa aaa / mm aaa aa aa / A’ them gone, / gone away, / yes they gone, / gone to stay”). At its best, though, the musicality of Torgersen’s poetry packs a strong emotional resonance, as in the elegiac chantey “One Love”—“Strike up, ye band members, / and play soft and low, / for ‘tis alla we / beyond the sunset must go, / and relive the story / from those lost days of glory, / where we once walked / through life hand in hand.”
This compilation’s original works are offbeat but arresting, featuring far-out content in a melodic format.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer.
A poet meditates on the things that everyday life does and doesn’t prepare us for.
Cox (Sorrow Bread, 2017, etc.), a Pushcart Prize and Whiting Award winner, takes the title of this elegant new volume of prose poems from Hamlet, whose titular character says, near that play’s climax, “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” Hamlet is presumably talking about timeliness, but many of Cox’s pieces are, ironically, about untimeliness—about the events for which we aren’t ready. The book is dedicated to the author’s friend and fellow poet Jack Myers, who died in 2009. He memorializes his friend in “Wrought,” which opens, “Jack, our old age together lasted twenty minutes. The distillation of all we’d learned about economy…we sat rocking on the rented beach house porch—something we had joked about for years, the inevitable old poets’ home—and listened to gulls scavenge along the water.” The scene-setting here is gorgeous, but the poem is, at its core, a riff on its one-word title; “wrought” is both a craftsperson’s word—and what is poetry if not a craft?—and the base of “overwrought”: agitated, troubled, disturbed. The author mines both meanings, thinking back on his friend’s work while still clearly troubled by his early death. With such careful wordplay, Cox gives lie to the common notion that prose poetry is too formless to count as real verse. (Poet Charles Simic once said of prose poetry that it’s “regarded with suspicion not only by the usual haters of poetry, but also by many poets themselves.”) This collection proves that this suspicion has no basis in reality, as Cox is as careful with diction, rhythm, and even rhyme as one might be if they were writing strict alexandrines—and yet, his poems are as fluid and readable as Jack Kerouac’s novels.
Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer.Pub Date: March 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941209-78-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Press 53
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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