November 25th, 2008
Review by Eric Greenwell
LEAVING IOWA
by Michael Meyerhofer
Briery Creek Press
201 High Street
Farmville, VA 23909
ISBN 978-0977447121
2007, 63 pp., $10.95
http://www.brierycreekpress.org/
In Michael Meyerhofer’s first full-length collection, Leaving Iowa, winner of the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry, he ventures to drift off the page into a vivid world of dreams and fantasy, were it not for the consistent chain that binds him to the follies and vulnerabilities of being human, anchoring him here, with all of us, in reality. With astounding linguistic awareness, he presents this complex struggle in a very lucid way, conveying concepts as complicated and depthless as the faculty of imagination with comprehensible simplicity (“I grew in its shadow, knowledge that there was something in this world I could not see”). And this relatable quality extends further, as Meyerhofer’s speaker exists in a world no different from our own, full of repairmen, handshakes, haircuts, trips and falls, funerals, sex, mothers, religion and the Trojan War. Meyerhofer embeds these concepts in narratives with a fierce dedication to honesty, sparing not the dour truths of life, acting as a brilliantly diverse and all-inclusive account of human emotion—a voice of humor as well as tragedy.
The first section of this book consists predominately of first person narratives. In “Death, the First Time,” the initial poem in the collection, the reader is exposed to human fragility in an experience laced with familiarity: “I was seven, running across the ice/when I slipped and cracked my skull,/blood bursting like crimson novas…” Physical vulnerability is brought to the forefront. Note that we are not invincible; we have accidents; we break like vases and glasses succumbing to gravity, a force enacted upon all things with no exceptions. Our uniqueness lies in our ability to feel, yearn and improve our state. Unfortunately, life will be cruel and emotionless, constantly thwarting our attempts. This truth adds a profound layer of depth and beauty to Meyerhofer’s prevailing honesty:
November 24th, 2008
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Leonard Nathan
AND HAVE YOU ALSO WISHED
And have you also wished to leave the world
of unforgiving surface and hard time,
to enter mist and climb an autumn slope,
becoming all but invisible below
a gray and dripping baldachin of boughs
that lead to the little clearing in the woods
where much will be revealed, what love and dreams
had promised before you woke and had to leave?
And have you, even as you wished this all,
passionately wished it, nevertheless continued
in the old direction, stretching out
and out to dust, foregone and trampled flat,
because you were told to once or because—who knows—
you said you would, or something shallow as that?_____
WHEN I FIRST SAW
When I first saw my new-born son, I saw
life would be somewhat different now for me,
as Schopenhauer warned us that it would
if we gave in to mere biology.
Of course, there was pity—pity, seed of love,
but there was more: a grown-up feel, quite new,
of separation. I saw it when my son
looked at his own first son; when he was first
shown me, I guess my father felt it too.
And so the hunter, after his freelance chase,
comes home to find another mouth to feed,
and, watching the woman lift it to her breast,
feels useless, yes, but more responsible,
and growls and frowns, and kneels to skin the kill.
–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
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November 23rd, 2008
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Fred Fox
HOSANNA TO LIFE
For years my ego fooled me.
I carried the world on my shoulders.
I now realize how inane that was
Living within a self-imposed island.Achieving inner peace, my vision expanded.
I embraced the vastness of the unknown.
Though I am less than a grain of sand.
That concept does not humble me.My ego remains big.
A grain of sand owns its Universe.
During my time alive
Increasing awareness makes life tastier.With each heartbeat one word resounds.
It keeps repeating, “yes, yes, yes.”
–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
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November 22nd, 2008
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Joyce La Mers
NIGHT VISITOR
We’ve seen you scurrying
through light spill on our deck,
bunched over tiny claws,
tail bare and dragging.
You’re there and gone
quicker than belief.
“A possum?” we ask each other,
shake our heads.Last night you stopped,
looked in to where moon faces
glowed from dim TV.
Our eyes locked for one instant,
yours deep and luminous
as starlight in a well:
eternal victim eyes, unguarded
like those we sometimes see
in mirrors.
–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
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November 21st, 2008
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Colette Inez
STALKING ee IN THE FIFTIES
I knew him by his tonsure,
head bare as a Buddhist monk
or a bowl holding lower case lettersthat poured out on a page.
I almost saw that spillage
running out of his hands as he unlatchedthe gate of Patchin Place;
O, ee, I followed him down Sixth
in jacket weather, he, neatly madeand wearing tweed. At the bakery
he pointed to swirls of pastry. A baguette
poked out of his paper bag like a periscope.I remember asters, mums at the florist. Purple, pink
peeped out of the wrappings.
In the deli he would pickGenoese salami, sliced thin, my favorite,
or half-sour pickles, the color of lagoons
in Lamour, Hope, Crosby films?Far from frangipani, ee turned towards Sixth,
his face a mask, and I followed like Old Dog Tray
pretending the letter I’d never mail:Dear ee,
Your “Somewhere I have never traveled”
charts my realm, too, even as I step from here to there,
too moony by half to ask for your autograph.
I failed to say I lived with Roethke’s “sadness of pencils”
in gray cubicles, carbon paper stains
on hands that itched to composemore than shaky notes for poems after squabbling
with a lover, “glad and big.”
Moaning through rooms of maybe and no,I wanted the impertinence of Edward Estlin C, to tease
like hima sort of antic beauty of words reckoned on the page.
O, ee I wanted to leavemy lip prints on the flap of an envelope
holding the poems I’d never send,
though I could have left them at your door,you were that near
when I stalked you back then
in love with your line
–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
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