Sunday, October 23, 2011

Monday Poetry Paradise Review Week 25

Hello beautiful poetry readers.

How are you on this fine fall Monday?

Thank you for checking in to read today's Poetry Review.

Here where I live (and probably where you hail from as well) the air is ripe with fall festivals, apple cider and of course PUMPKINS.

In the spirit of agriculture, fall harvest and in celebration of our natural world, I went looking for something good to read that celebrates that subject. Check out this poem about a goose flying overhead... 

Last night a single goose flew over the house,
throwing her voice out ahead of herself:
a stone
skipping out across still water.
A joy ride.
Then she followed the beautiful sound
across a meadow of moonlight and snow,
a clean bowl
waiting to be filled with the most beautiful thing.


This poem and more are in The White Calf Kicks, Deborah Slicer’s first book and was selected as the winner of the 2003 Autumn House Poetry Prize.




Garrison Keillor has included selections from The White Calf Kicks in his nationally syndicated radio show Writer’s Almanac. Slicer teaches philosophy at the University of Montana .

This is a poet who, expertly blends the known physical world with the metaphysical one of her imagination. With the expertise of a down hill skier she glides between the two with such speed that her reader must stay with her or risk getting left behind altogether. Her words tantalize and amaze with the fascinating thought that perhaps everything can exist at the same time.
.
In "Cancer: Two Lyrics" Slicer opens with treacherous weather seeming to be the subject of the poem and quickly the reader is lead to realize something more treacherous is looming;

Hail
falls thought the cosmic cracks
at three in the afternoon
spaaps
at the windows, pffsts
at the sun, all the grape hyacinths
break down.


Slicer"s work in philosophy is evident in poems like "Ars Poetica":
A cherry tomato on a white plate
language chases after
but can’t skewer. Philosopher’s headache.
Poet’s itch.
All thoughts are words–necessary and sufficient
conditions for each other
or nothing.
Such beautiful nonsense, the tomato taunts the fork.

In Slicers world everything be it plant animal or person is recognized as a sentient being in its own right. In her poem "Mousey and Me" she identifies so entirely with a cow called Mousey who is beaten by "the bony man in thick glasses" that she can say convincingly:

That man?
Mousey and me knew him about the same.
 
Naomi Shihab Nye who chose this manuscript for Autumn House calls these poems
"brilliant and breathtaking, original and haunting, riveted with meaning and music.

Folks, I couldn't have said it any better.

You can purchase your copy here:

http://www.amazon.com/White-Calf-Kicks-Deborah-Slicer/dp/0966941969


Thanks so much for stopping by and don't forget to check out next Mondays Poetry review right here at Bluebell!

all the best,

Indie

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed that review. A poet to check up on for sure.
Jamie.

Unknown said...

love the goose flying imagery,

beautiful review, Indie.