Shopping for Poetry

Since I really started to read poetry in earnest back in 2003, my concept of the discipline has changed drastically. Along with all of this reading has come a sense of who I am as a writer--where I fit in, what I see that has not been done, and what niche I might fill. For me, that's the power of reading loads--much of writing that claims to be original has very little 'original' stuff in it, and this is an accidental disease I wish to avoid.

I was at Third Place Books in Ravenna the other day, perusing their poetry offerings (which are decent). They have a good selection of used poetry books (as do a number of Seattle bookstores, which is quite fun to sift through). I ended up with four books--the new Keillor "Good Poems" collection, a Liz Waldner, a martha ronk, and Irving Feldman. I chose these books using this science: The Keillor because I know many will buy and talk about it, and I want in on the conversation, and the rest because they had titles that intrigued me, and because a cursory flip-through revealed something I had not seen before. Yes, I thin-sliced the books; there were many I put back down through this process as well. Of the three books I purchased by this method, two are award-winners and two are by University professors. None I had heard of before.

Liz Waldner~ Self and Simulacra (the book I bought)
http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/351

A Calculus of Readiness

I, too, come from the city of dolls.
A small palm is my umbrella.
This takes care of above
but below, the blind river of sadness rolls
on and in it, a hand is always reaching up
to pick fish from the night-time sky.

The lines on the palm of the hand lure a trout
with a strand of hair from the head of a doll.
The bait is the hope for a hand on your brow.
Shadows play on the wall. Or the face of a doll.
The plants eyeing each other
is all.

I would not call the stars generous.
They don't cry enough for dolls to play Drink Me.
They don't cast a covenant's fishy rainbow
yet leaf faces watch the open window
where they hang far and hard.
The rein of starlight a second hand

with which to play Go Fish.
Now Give me a hand, plants. Now give me
good-night, stars.


martha ronk~ why/why not (the book I bought)
http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16582

Why knowing is (& Matisse's Woman with a Hat)

Why knowing is a quality out of fashion and no one can decide to
but slips into it or ends up with a painting one has never
seen that quality of light before even before having seen it
in between pages of another book and not remembering who knows
or recognizing the questionable quality of light on her face
as she sits for a portrait and isn't allowed to move an inch
you recognize the red silk flower on her hat
and can almost place where you have seen that gray descending
through the light reversing foreground and background
as the directions escape one as the way you have to
live with anyone as she gets up finally from her chair
having written the whole of it in her head as the question
ignored for the hundredth time as a quality of knowing is
oddly resuscitated from a decade prior to this.

Irving Feldman~ beautiful false things (the book I bought)
http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/683

Episode

Their quarrel sent them reeling from the house.
Anything, just get on the road and get away.
Driven out, they drove. . . miles into countryside,
confined and bickering, then cold, polite;
she read a book, or looked out at hillside pastures;
once, faraway life came close, and they stopped
in mist for muddy, slow cows at a crossing,
then, tilted, shuddering, a tractor came across;
coldly silent other hours of trees after trees
interspersed with straggling villages--then hot;
her voice pulsing, tempestuous, against the dash,
buffeted, blew up; the slammed her hand down, hard.
"You let it happen--you know you did.
And you make me the bad one--all the time!
I won't stand for it another second." And then,
irrationally, "Look at me, I'm talking to you!"
What half-faced her was mulish, scolded sullenness
--who gripped the wheel and to scare her drove faster,
scaring himself; he felt out of control, dangerous.
Downhill, the road darkened, dropped out of sight.
At the bottom, racing toward them, three lights,
and trees. . . . Remember this, remember this,
she thought, the last thing I will ever see.
Diner, tavern, café, whatever it was.
The car spun suddenly into the parking lot.
She grabbed at the key, threw it out. Shaken, they sat
--while their momentum went on raging down the road.
They knew they might have been killed--by each other,
had someone been up to just one more dare.


...so, I feel like I did pretty good! This is the same process I used while in London--I bought so many books in London, I had to buy a third bag--but their bookstore poetry sections are joyously large. I found both Stephen Dobyns and Les Murray this way.

Your assignment: Find a store with a good poetry selection--not a big box bookstore that only has Bukowski (ack!) and Plath, but a place that has names you're unfamiliar with--and go fishing. Here are some used bookstores in Seattle: http://recollectionbooks.com/seattle.html (Recollection on Roosevelt has poetry scattered all over the store), Third Place Books is good, the University Bookstore has a good selection upstairs, and of course, Open Books (http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/), which also has nice, cozy readings. The idea is to find poets that make you go "I didn't know you could do that!" Or, "I'd like to be able to do something like that!" Anthologies and collections are okay, but buying the slender volumes produced by just one author in one time period have a certain richness to them.

Happy Reading!

Dani