Full Description
Resonant poems give form to the paradoxes of embodiment and interiority
Utilizing the short lyric poem in long sequence, Songbird addresses matters both urgent and ancient: what it is to grow from a child into an adult, how to remain inside one's body, what it means to open the mouth and sing. Guided by the images, senses, and sounds provided to her by the natural world, the poet invents a stuttering natal language to approach the unsayable aspects of interior life. In doing so, the poems collectively trouble the binaries that beset modern existence: the simultaneous push-pull of sexual desire; the interior and exterior landscapes that shape our perceptual fields; the reckoning of violence with beauty; the human need for both permanency and flight. Songbird is a daring and necessary book.
[sample poem]
let me take something small
between my teeth
piece of straw meant
to signify your body
which was given freely to me
or threads of me
that are wheat strands
always these small barters
for a price would I give you
the edge that is
your absence for my presence
and you between my teeth
for the price of grass
the price of all grasses
so say I
to you
in prayer
I would
swallow whole
what gave you in part
Contents
up from spine these grasses
//
let me take something small
what gave you in part
by my own burning do you
let shine your infinities
me somewhere
temporary
//
you in your molt
me naked but for
cloth I wove and unwove
by all emptiness
entirely from absences
and imagined the sun
into the unending
of all that would swallow me
and came away
also by thin string
and look how you flower
by way of looking-prayer
by my touch
does my name go wanting
there where I still
//
read me please
o lemon or poppy
that you just left
something as temporary
those were my wind-fingers
whence came the blood
if all the world is seed
to open our mouths
set spinning the spell
boil me
if the sky begs
us met and meeting
in back of eye our prayers
you the air
me sky color
o me in your field
//
back to where sugar
and these my eyes
does me imaginary
me untouched and unharmed
true that you saw of me
and you the shape
these our particulars
that I could shuttle
by this cobalt body
because I was both ax
and slipped the body
///
for luke in embryo (france 2006)
redux (borrowed thing)
came my own sunlight
Blue Bottle
convince me songbird
/
open your throat and sing
acknowledgments
