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janedallaway's review
4.0
I’m still always taken aback by Dorianne Laux’s poetry. It has the ability to take me on a journey, to take me somewhere unexpected. I love that it’s straightforward. Or at least that I can read it that way. I don’t have to approach it like a cryptic crossword analysing every word and wondering what else it could mean.
In this volume, I put marks against the following poems:
- the life of trees
- my brother’s grave
- moon in the window
- facts about the moon
- her first
- afterlife
- cello
- the birthday party
In this volume, I put marks against the following poems:
- the life of trees
- my brother’s grave
- moon in the window
- facts about the moon
- her first
- afterlife
- cello
- the birthday party
readwithmikey's review
4.0
From my undergrad class:
It is going to be difficult to write this journal entry and not simply turn it into an excuse to launch into a session of effusive praise for Laux’s work. There were some great poems in here—and I’m not fully sure if I like this more than Collins or Hoagland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did in the end. I’m not going to lie; I love the moon as a poetic image, which Laux seems to use often (especially in the title; and it is the first book of poems so far, perhaps the only one, where the cover image matches the title). In this, I can’t help not talk about the title poem, filled with not only facts about the moon but with a sudden twist in “the mother who’s lost a child,” which becomes the centerpiece for the remainder of the poem. The last line couldn’t have been a better conclusion, I felt: “You know when love when you see it, you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.” I love it because I can relate to it. It’s like my selective memory is a jigsaw with only my favorite pieces (excuse the obligatory poeticism). There were probably some nights in high school when I came home furious, feeling unloved and spurned by society. But now when I remember it, my mind only chooses to remember the good parts, such as the chicken patties at lunch and the late nights at Starbucks spent studying for a statistics final. Laux pulls me in and lets me think and I appreciate her for that.
The title poem also exhibits a couple other things about Laux, the second much more present than the first, I feel. The first is the twist, which seemingly all authors have or utilize in some poems, which can be found in “The Crossing” (using the metaphor of a patient elk, one “stubborn creature staring down another,” as a portrait of marriage), “Puzzle Dust” (using the idea of puzzle as a gateway to something philosophical about children, though I couldn’t tell if the child was with her doing the puzzle or in the puzzle itself), and “Sisters” (which, for such a short poem, moves toward a sense of impending danger in the second half). But second, and perhaps more importantly, Laux manages to do what perhaps—in some strange way—all poets should do. She does not gloss over the truth and, while she is unabashedly honest, she manages to make the grotesque beautiful. There is a strand of hope throughout most of these poems that I wouldn’t naturally expect. “Democracy” is realistic but not desolate, “My Brother’s Grave” is genuinely sweet in how—even though Laux didn’t know her brother fully—she can still understand the void his passing leaves in her life, “Facts About the Moon” as mentioned, “Afterlife” with its touching slice of waitress imagery (I still sense a sweetness in a poem that ends with “Quite dead”), and—most notably—“It Must Have Been Summer.” Laux doesn’t idealize the landscape but she can speak truth into it, which is beautiful without being fully despairing.
In addition, I appreciate that her poems live at various parts of the spectrum. To be honest, if the entire poem took the tone of the nature-based “The Life of Trees” (“If trees could speak they wouldn’t, only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind” is a great line too because it takes the hackneyed forms of nature and molds them into something more unique, for example), which even manages to be political in a few lines, I wouldn’t have minded. But Laux surprised me with things like “The Last Days of Pompeii” (I could even see Collins doing that one on one of his “commentary days”—maybe), the picturesque and sensitively drawn “The Germans,” the out-of-nowhere “Face Poem” (This stuck in my head, half because I liked her perfect characterizations, half because random things stick in my head. Seriously, though—“Your steep, crumbling cliff of a face,” “your used car lot of a face,” and “toss of the dice face” are just fantastic; the entire poem reinforces an important point that in imperfections we can sometimes find the greatest beauties. What can I say, Valentine’s Day is on the horizon), or the eerie back-to-back commentaries on womanhood with “Sisters” and “A Walk in the Park.” She also gets ten points for “The Idea of Housework,” which she must have written with my dorm room in mind. Laux is not a one-trick pony but, even if she were, I think she would have enough poetic insight within her to pull it off, “it” being whatever one trick she felt meant the most to her. (7.5)
It is going to be difficult to write this journal entry and not simply turn it into an excuse to launch into a session of effusive praise for Laux’s work. There were some great poems in here—and I’m not fully sure if I like this more than Collins or Hoagland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did in the end. I’m not going to lie; I love the moon as a poetic image, which Laux seems to use often (especially in the title; and it is the first book of poems so far, perhaps the only one, where the cover image matches the title). In this, I can’t help not talk about the title poem, filled with not only facts about the moon but with a sudden twist in “the mother who’s lost a child,” which becomes the centerpiece for the remainder of the poem. The last line couldn’t have been a better conclusion, I felt: “You know when love when you see it, you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.” I love it because I can relate to it. It’s like my selective memory is a jigsaw with only my favorite pieces (excuse the obligatory poeticism). There were probably some nights in high school when I came home furious, feeling unloved and spurned by society. But now when I remember it, my mind only chooses to remember the good parts, such as the chicken patties at lunch and the late nights at Starbucks spent studying for a statistics final. Laux pulls me in and lets me think and I appreciate her for that.
The title poem also exhibits a couple other things about Laux, the second much more present than the first, I feel. The first is the twist, which seemingly all authors have or utilize in some poems, which can be found in “The Crossing” (using the metaphor of a patient elk, one “stubborn creature staring down another,” as a portrait of marriage), “Puzzle Dust” (using the idea of puzzle as a gateway to something philosophical about children, though I couldn’t tell if the child was with her doing the puzzle or in the puzzle itself), and “Sisters” (which, for such a short poem, moves toward a sense of impending danger in the second half). But second, and perhaps more importantly, Laux manages to do what perhaps—in some strange way—all poets should do. She does not gloss over the truth and, while she is unabashedly honest, she manages to make the grotesque beautiful. There is a strand of hope throughout most of these poems that I wouldn’t naturally expect. “Democracy” is realistic but not desolate, “My Brother’s Grave” is genuinely sweet in how—even though Laux didn’t know her brother fully—she can still understand the void his passing leaves in her life, “Facts About the Moon” as mentioned, “Afterlife” with its touching slice of waitress imagery (I still sense a sweetness in a poem that ends with “Quite dead”), and—most notably—“It Must Have Been Summer.” Laux doesn’t idealize the landscape but she can speak truth into it, which is beautiful without being fully despairing.
In addition, I appreciate that her poems live at various parts of the spectrum. To be honest, if the entire poem took the tone of the nature-based “The Life of Trees” (“If trees could speak they wouldn’t, only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind” is a great line too because it takes the hackneyed forms of nature and molds them into something more unique, for example), which even manages to be political in a few lines, I wouldn’t have minded. But Laux surprised me with things like “The Last Days of Pompeii” (I could even see Collins doing that one on one of his “commentary days”—maybe), the picturesque and sensitively drawn “The Germans,” the out-of-nowhere “Face Poem” (This stuck in my head, half because I liked her perfect characterizations, half because random things stick in my head. Seriously, though—“Your steep, crumbling cliff of a face,” “your used car lot of a face,” and “toss of the dice face” are just fantastic; the entire poem reinforces an important point that in imperfections we can sometimes find the greatest beauties. What can I say, Valentine’s Day is on the horizon), or the eerie back-to-back commentaries on womanhood with “Sisters” and “A Walk in the Park.” She also gets ten points for “The Idea of Housework,” which she must have written with my dorm room in mind. Laux is not a one-trick pony but, even if she were, I think she would have enough poetic insight within her to pull it off, “it” being whatever one trick she felt meant the most to her. (7.5)
amyotheramy's review
5.0
Moon in the Window
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
I don't know how to review this? There is just so much good here. She dives into her own life and comes up with these beautiful words spilling out, and she just keeps reaching into her own chest, pulling them out, memory after memory, moment after moment, a life lived before our eyes in word and image. She writes about love and sex and it does not annoy me; it delights. That's almost the highest praise I can give to a poet. She loves books and language and it shows. She writes from a place of sorrow and brokenness and yet also boldness and joy and health. I am delighted to see she just had a retrospective collection come out (one of those 'new and selected poems' things), but I really do think I will also be gathering up all her poems, myself, just for me. Mine, mine, mine. All to keep. All to take out from time to time and savor again. All to tell you you really need these poems in your life, too.
jmandrake's review
4.0
I haven't read all that many poetry collections in my life, so I don't really have a wide range of comparison, but I really enjoyed this collection. I'd been reading a few Dorianne Laux poems from some books I had on creative writing, so I thought I'd give one of her books a try. There's really some BEAUTIFUL phrasing in here. Her concepts and language are truly stunning, and even if not every poem is your cup of tea, there's such a wide variety that I'm sure most people will find something to love about this collection.
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