TONIGHT
D.G.Wills Books
7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla , CA.
7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla , CA.
(858)456-1800
www.dgwillsbooks.com
www.dgwillsbooks.com
Wanting to liveafter your deathis like wakingin an empty room:too much space.
Wanting to liveafter your deathis like wakingin an empty room:too much space.
All day I sleep off
the crude hangover.
All day I sleep offthe crude hangover.
Ed Hirsch is one of those poets who runs hot and cold; when his idea is served by fresh language that eschews cheap irony, is develop with restraint and is not burden with the crushing , arbitrary banality of social significance, we get some real lyric verse. This is a set of instincts I wish he would take better care of, because when his bad , the birds fall of the powerlines His poem "Lottery" is a lead weight all around; it is a premise strong enough for a short story or a sequence in a longer novel, perhaps by the likes of Russell Banks, who's books are full of sad men at some post-crisis point in their life, recollecting over drinks, lots of drinks, about the intensity of a youth that is invariably squandered in is depressed tales. The failure of the poet, perhaps, is that Ed Hirsch isn't a good enough writer of fiction to have plots points segue into revelations of character, the revelation of a world view that has the grit of felt experience.This might as well be a TV Guide synopsis of a movie being broadcast after hours when the house is quiet and each incidental sound due to sagging wood beams or running water are too loud, prohibitive of serenity or self-reflection. Banks, not the perfect narrative artist, was convincing in the worlds he chose to bring to book length;his types of tale, with narrators bordering on suicidal depression, are not the things that make for a lyric poem. This poem is blunted by the fact that Hirsch stops himself from using his prerogative and writing longer; he wants the pathos to be suggested, whispered behind the collective reticence to show emotion. The poem instead just lays there like a dead wife .This poem is nothing but lead weight all around; it is a premise strong enough for a short story or a sequence in a longer novel, perhaps by the likes of Russell Banks, whose books are full of sad men at some post-crisis point in their life, recollecting over drinks, lots of drinks, about the intensity of a youth that is invariably squandered in is depressing tales. The poet's failure, perhaps, is that Ed Hirsch isn't a good enough writer of fiction to have plots points segue into revelations of character, the revelation of a world view that has the grit of felt experience. This might as well be a TV Guide synopsis of a movie broadcast after hours when the house is quiet, and each incidental sound due to sagging wood beams or running water is too loud, prohibitive of serenity or self-reflection. Banks, not the perfect narrative artist, was convincing in the worlds he chose to bring to book-length; his type of tale, with narrators bordering on suicidal depression, is not the thing that makes for a lyric poem. This poem is blunted by the fact that Hirsch stops himself from using his prerogative and writing longer; he wants the pathos to be suggested, whispered behind the collective reticence to show emotion. The poem instead just lays there like a dead wife.
The thought of barking dogs
at the center
of the intersection,
doing what they do
when the tires
are turned to the curb,
blunts the pure memory
of having hands to
direct populations to
matters clean in
their marrow,
serene
in the middle of a man-made lake
as the boat drifts without oars
to a shore
on a tide even the
scars of the moon
cannot disrupt,
it's pay day all over the globe.
It's dogs that barkall nighton the way home froma friend's apartment,how the tiressing on the wetasphalt,My name cruising like a hiss of a low leak that starts loud as a squeal yet fades as the words find their form and meaning from a dead language that was killed with a stick, dogs who've heard me thinking in musical alphabets behind each utility pole in the city, howling at jokes I didn't know I was telling, it's yelps and nips at the heals of enterprise, love comes undone like cheap sandals, grace is rubbing the feet where all the dog days have been lived.I should say that I still love every excuse I've ever worn, all the women's eyesshow green flecks and blue radiances of dances dogs could bark to when I brought scissors and carpet rolls to the prom, long limbs and tips of index fingers dotting eyes onsoft shoulders begging for cuts in line for school meals that are dead on arrival on paper plates and plastic forks, I love every eyes I fell into not knowing either the dead man's float or the breast stroke, I am still in love with faces I can't see yet whose profiles I trace with tips of all fingers while hands find populations that always need a chaperon, a mysterious other,punk dogs
at the side of the pools
and sleeping on
the beach on the clean towels
I brought,
Some one I love is leaving town,some one I love has left thehouse,some one I love has left the planet,some one I love has left the earth,some one I love is with the earth,some one I love is adding to the future,some one I lovehears dogs at her feetand dances despite corners
and wet paint ,
dogs who smile
insanely bright
starry night
or halo or a phone call away,
some one comes home whose feet are too heavy,
the night caps are loose,
the bottles clink together
but no lights come on,
is everyone still asleep,
are you
awake dreaming of me dogging it again
or are asleep seeing me crawl
through the window
under the grace of
stars and head lights
and spill on to the
rug like molasses
from bottles?
The dogsare barking
and treesare their address.