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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
reflective
Here's a poem from this book that I like: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/weekly-poem-the-mascot-of-beavercreek-high-breaks-her-silence
You know what I like about this poem? If you, or I, or any of a million other neurotics had written it, it would have been dark, cruel, ironic. Instead: such delightful sincerity in that ending! Sometimes, cheer is an unexpected blessing.
There's a lot of cheer in this book, and effervescence, and jewel tones, and melt-in-your-mouth pie crusts, and warmhearted affection for family and reptiles and everything in between. Nezhukumatathil's poetry reminds me a bit of Ada Limon's or Ellen Bass's -- you can't help liking it.
Of the book's three sections -- the first concerns the fauna of different lands, with an especial focus on the poet's parents' native lands of India and the Philippines; the second is about a happy girlhood, ending in becoming a wife; the third, on being a mother -- the last was overall my favorite, surprisingly. There's some lovely, folklore-savvy speculative poetry in there on what it'd be like to give birth to a hedgehog, a werewolf, a bird. And also, "Birth Geographic," which includes these two passages I'd like to end by quoting:
" My three-page
single-spaced birth plan shrank into one sentence--'Mother alive,
baby alive.' And when my husband wasn't looking, I snipped it
to just two words:
"Baby alive.....
"Because I know talk like this frightens you, I will say this only once: If I am ever lost or someone ever wonders if the cause of my death is by my own hand--let it be known that I will never leave you of my own accord.... I swear to you here and now: If I ever go missing, know that I am trying to come home."
You know what I like about this poem? If you, or I, or any of a million other neurotics had written it, it would have been dark, cruel, ironic. Instead: such delightful sincerity in that ending! Sometimes, cheer is an unexpected blessing.
There's a lot of cheer in this book, and effervescence, and jewel tones, and melt-in-your-mouth pie crusts, and warmhearted affection for family and reptiles and everything in between. Nezhukumatathil's poetry reminds me a bit of Ada Limon's or Ellen Bass's -- you can't help liking it.
Of the book's three sections -- the first concerns the fauna of different lands, with an especial focus on the poet's parents' native lands of India and the Philippines; the second is about a happy girlhood, ending in becoming a wife; the third, on being a mother -- the last was overall my favorite, surprisingly. There's some lovely, folklore-savvy speculative poetry in there on what it'd be like to give birth to a hedgehog, a werewolf, a bird. And also, "Birth Geographic," which includes these two passages I'd like to end by quoting:
" My three-page
single-spaced birth plan shrank into one sentence--'Mother alive,
baby alive.' And when my husband wasn't looking, I snipped it
to just two words:
"Baby alive.....
"Because I know talk like this frightens you, I will say this only once: If I am ever lost or someone ever wonders if the cause of my death is by my own hand--let it be known that I will never leave you of my own accord.... I swear to you here and now: If I ever go missing, know that I am trying to come home."
Aimee Nezhukumatathil's most recent collection of poems (I think) concerns itself with autobiography, genealogy, geography, relationships, motherhood, and nature, among other topics. I love her sense of humor; poems like "Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill" and "The Mascot of Beavercreek High Breaks Her Silence" include unexpected humor along with more serious, lonely, and heartbreaking observations and revelations. I know when poems are working for me when the images suddenly erupt in vivid virtual reality in my mind and I gasp; several poems in this collection had those effects on me. It took a few readings of the first stanza in "A Globe is Just an Asterisk and Every Home Should Have an Asterisk" before the asterisk-shape of a flat cut-out of a globe in manufacture that would later be "pressed into a sphere" arrived in my mind's eye, and I immediately loved that image. I was also really impressed by how she taught me to read with early poems poems later in the collection. For example, there's a description of witches as wearers of eel-skin in an early poem that I recalled when a woman in a later poem was described as wearing eel-skin.
Nezhukamatathil is reading at the University of Arizona Poetry Center next week and I wanted to sample some of her work before then. Pleased to discover in the process a new favorite poet. I also read her collaboration with Ross Gay, Lace & Pyrite, which was also fantastic.
Nezhukamatathil is reading at the University of Arizona Poetry Center next week and I wanted to sample some of her work before then. Pleased to discover in the process a new favorite poet. I also read her collaboration with Ross Gay, Lace & Pyrite, which was also fantastic.
fast-paced
Beautiful! " . . . Each word pokes out/ a new promise, a fortune, better than any cookie" -- from Bibliomancy
I enjoy the first 2 sections of this collection the most and the dog poems in section 3.
emotional
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This is a unique collection, becoming a mother is very prevalent. A master at weaving natural and humanity.
