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4.23 AVERAGE
4.23 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I enjoyed reading this so much. It was dark and violent and sad. It was loss and pain and grief and desire and longing. And it was fucking clever as hell, the way that she used the literary allusions / mythology, especially the Ovid. My favorite poems were "Nightingale: A Gloss" (which also plays with the Romantics, of course) and "Pear" but I also really, really loved "Four Marys," "Philomela," "Gokstadt/ Ganymede," "Marsyas," "Driving to Santa Fe" and "Pythagorean."
From Nightingale:
Is the metonym, finally, for Philomela art, or silence, or raving? Later
poets' use of the nightingale suggests she is able to sing about and
against suffering, but Ovid never mentions song. Instead, he symbolizes
Philomela and Procne by the murder of Itys: "And even so the red marks
of the murder/ stayed on their breasts: the feathers were blood-colored."
What is our longing to hear Philomela's song but our own desire for
retributive justice?....
What if it is the form, not the content, of The Metamorphoses that is
the terror? Each story unfolding into another, perpetually disrupting,
thus delaying the ending? What if, because we came to listen, we are the
reason the story keeps not ending? Why should Philomela sing, when our
presence only increases her suffering?
.....
In life, time's passage allows us to see ourselves change, but a poem's
chronology forces us to see repetition: lyrics time is not progressive but
fragmentary and recursive. Traumatic time works like lyric time....
Mourning is merely the process by which we remain frozen: the birds
always in flight, the hoopoe continually in pursuit....
The nightingale hovers between trauma and memory, its song meant to
bring one into concert with the other, to integrate event into narrative, to
bring pain out of the body and into language. But the song isn't heard, it's
longed for....
I have spent my life devoted to an art whose foundational symbol is one
of unspeakable violence. Did I seek poetry out for this? Or was I, that
day in the woods, made into a poet? Perhaps, whether we are changed
into our opposites or shrunk into the form that best defines us, some part
of transformation is always a curse.
From Nightingale:
Is the metonym, finally, for Philomela art, or silence, or raving? Later
poets' use of the nightingale suggests she is able to sing about and
against suffering, but Ovid never mentions song. Instead, he symbolizes
Philomela and Procne by the murder of Itys: "And even so the red marks
of the murder/ stayed on their breasts: the feathers were blood-colored."
What is our longing to hear Philomela's song but our own desire for
retributive justice?....
What if it is the form, not the content, of The Metamorphoses that is
the terror? Each story unfolding into another, perpetually disrupting,
thus delaying the ending? What if, because we came to listen, we are the
reason the story keeps not ending? Why should Philomela sing, when our
presence only increases her suffering?
.....
In life, time's passage allows us to see ourselves change, but a poem's
chronology forces us to see repetition: lyrics time is not progressive but
fragmentary and recursive. Traumatic time works like lyric time....
Mourning is merely the process by which we remain frozen: the birds
always in flight, the hoopoe continually in pursuit....
The nightingale hovers between trauma and memory, its song meant to
bring one into concert with the other, to integrate event into narrative, to
bring pain out of the body and into language. But the song isn't heard, it's
longed for....
I have spent my life devoted to an art whose foundational symbol is one
of unspeakable violence. Did I seek poetry out for this? Or was I, that
day in the woods, made into a poet? Perhaps, whether we are changed
into our opposites or shrunk into the form that best defines us, some part
of transformation is always a curse.
beautiful, lovelovelove. read this a while back but it's stuck with me ever since
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Rape
This collection is much like the pear: pale, crisp, sometimes juicy and fragrant, often dry and elusive in flavour.
the cool flesh
cellular or stony, white
as the belly of the winter hare
or the doe's scut, flicking,
before she mates. (Pear)
The cover is a gorgeous trace of the poems: the body, often female, made into art or seized or looked intimately upon or showing up in blank, stark language.
Perhaps the greatest desire a victim of violence has is to look at the violence dispassionately in memory. But remembering, the heart pounds, the body floods with adrenaline, ready to tear back off into flight... Poetry, with its suggestions that time and pain can be ordered through language, strains to constrain suffering. It suggests, but rarely achieves, the redress we desire. (Nightingale)
Paisley Rekdal writes a wonderful story. At the level of craft, she is a strong writer, intelligent and controlled in recited passages and original images—I have studied Ovid’s Philomela, and took some interest in Rekdal’s theory-driven personalization of the myth. But the poems that her stories take the form of are many times washed away, without closing or reaching their climax. Without spreading completely. Some of them attempt newness through the unusual body, another kind of metamorphosis: I didn’t like how “Io” approached disability, I wasn’t sure about where “Tireseus” was growing from.
I did like it, but the joy and longing I had from the five or six poems that ignited my senses—
The tree traffics
in a singular astonishment, its gold tongues
lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notes
are left to rot upon the pavement. (Psalm (!!))
—wasn’t satisfied by the rest.
The best (for me):
Psalm
Four Marys
Nightingale
The Olive Tree at Vouves
Driving to Santa Fe
Pear
the cool flesh
cellular or stony, white
as the belly of the winter hare
or the doe's scut, flicking,
before she mates. (Pear)
The cover is a gorgeous trace of the poems: the body, often female, made into art or seized or looked intimately upon or showing up in blank, stark language.
Perhaps the greatest desire a victim of violence has is to look at the violence dispassionately in memory. But remembering, the heart pounds, the body floods with adrenaline, ready to tear back off into flight... Poetry, with its suggestions that time and pain can be ordered through language, strains to constrain suffering. It suggests, but rarely achieves, the redress we desire. (Nightingale)
Paisley Rekdal writes a wonderful story. At the level of craft, she is a strong writer, intelligent and controlled in recited passages and original images—I have studied Ovid’s Philomela, and took some interest in Rekdal’s theory-driven personalization of the myth. But the poems that her stories take the form of are many times washed away, without closing or reaching their climax. Without spreading completely. Some of them attempt newness through the unusual body, another kind of metamorphosis: I didn’t like how “Io” approached disability, I wasn’t sure about where “Tireseus” was growing from.
I did like it, but the joy and longing I had from the five or six poems that ignited my senses—
The tree traffics
in a singular astonishment, its gold tongues
lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notes
are left to rot upon the pavement. (Psalm (!!))
—wasn’t satisfied by the rest.
The best (for me):
Psalm
Four Marys
Nightingale
The Olive Tree at Vouves
Driving to Santa Fe
Pear
i feel weird giving star ratings to poetry collections, so i’m not going to. some of these were excellent. others i was completely indifferent to. (sorry that’s my incredibly enlightening review—ganymede and nightingale: a gloss were the ones that stood out to me the most.)
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Direct link to this review can be found here.
As always, a copy of this book was provided by the publisher or author in exchange for my honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.
You never forget your first encounter with a good poet. Nightingale proves this. When I read it, a few months back, I found myself wanting to take it slowly. Savor it. Because, Paisley Rekdal writes in a way that is smooth, in depth and completely moving. There were a few poems I wasn't terribly keen on but for the most part, there was so much good in Nightingale.
If ever there were a perfect place to start with one's work, a real introduction to their core, this is it. I'm glad mine was with Nightingale--I will be reading more by Rekdal in the future. It is beautifully written, completely captivating and art in its truest form.
What I liked most about this collection was the ties to mythology. Everything felt in place. Raw. It felt like exploring something new and feeling something new. Every inch of Nightingale is a revelation and worth the read. Although it is short, it is certainly biting and will leave its mark on you in the long run. What an unforgettable collection.
As always, a copy of this book was provided by the publisher or author in exchange for my honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.
You never forget your first encounter with a good poet. Nightingale proves this. When I read it, a few months back, I found myself wanting to take it slowly. Savor it. Because, Paisley Rekdal writes in a way that is smooth, in depth and completely moving. There were a few poems I wasn't terribly keen on but for the most part, there was so much good in Nightingale.
If ever there were a perfect place to start with one's work, a real introduction to their core, this is it. I'm glad mine was with Nightingale--I will be reading more by Rekdal in the future. It is beautifully written, completely captivating and art in its truest form.
What I liked most about this collection was the ties to mythology. Everything felt in place. Raw. It felt like exploring something new and feeling something new. Every inch of Nightingale is a revelation and worth the read. Although it is short, it is certainly biting and will leave its mark on you in the long run. What an unforgettable collection.
A gut wrenching rewriting and reimagining of mythology, Ovid, and violence again girls and women.
“It was built into the equation of any body:
the waning mind, waning desire, the flicker
of a life just fading into the distance.”
these poems are absolutely stunning. Rekdal captures human transformation and feminine pain in a really raw and empathetic way. “Four Marys” was a really imaginative look at perspective and was very powerful for me. But I think “Nightengale: A Gloss” and “Gokstadt/Ganymede” are just perfect. This is a book of poems meant to read together, it simply wraps you up and pulls you into prose that is equally imaginative as it is heartbreaking.
the waning mind, waning desire, the flicker
of a life just fading into the distance.”
these poems are absolutely stunning. Rekdal captures human transformation and feminine pain in a really raw and empathetic way. “Four Marys” was a really imaginative look at perspective and was very powerful for me. But I think “Nightengale: A Gloss” and “Gokstadt/Ganymede” are just perfect. This is a book of poems meant to read together, it simply wraps you up and pulls you into prose that is equally imaginative as it is heartbreaking.
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault