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2000s's review
3.75
Some beautiful poems overall, but I think none of them really surpass the titular poem or I Am Not Ready To Die Yet, which I discovered before reading this collection.
sloatsj's review
5.0
I first read an excerpt of a Girmay poem somewhere in isolation and it reminded me of the strangeness of some Garcia Lorca poems and weird boldness of Cesar Vallejo.
This is the second stanza of the poem “Kingdom Animalia” -
Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn away
from the hair on the floor of his house
& how it got there Monday,
but my one heart falls
like a sad, fat persimmon
dropped by the hand of Turczyn’s old tree.
I want to sleep. I do not want to sleep.
That at once reminds me of Garcia Lorca’s Gacela of the Dark Death (I want to sleep the sleep of apples / I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries …) and of many odd, bold poems of Vallejo, such as Prayer on the Road (I don’t even know who this bitterness is for!).
In the same vein I loved “Science,” which begins:
We were trying to refind the eye & brain
we had when we were pelicans,
but the wind came down, it had ten hands,
it had more mouths & took & took us far to sea.
Girmay writes hauntingly about family, lost things and about injustice. I really enjoyed the striking and original voice. The book is split into six sections, the last one —"the book of one small thing"— contains just one poem. It’s terrific:
Ars Poetica
May the poems be
the little snail’s trail.
Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record
of the foot’s silver prayer.
I lived once.
Thank you.
It was here.
This is the second stanza of the poem “Kingdom Animalia” -
Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn away
from the hair on the floor of his house
& how it got there Monday,
but my one heart falls
like a sad, fat persimmon
dropped by the hand of Turczyn’s old tree.
I want to sleep. I do not want to sleep.
That at once reminds me of Garcia Lorca’s Gacela of the Dark Death (I want to sleep the sleep of apples / I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries …) and of many odd, bold poems of Vallejo, such as Prayer on the Road (I don’t even know who this bitterness is for!).
In the same vein I loved “Science,” which begins:
We were trying to refind the eye & brain
we had when we were pelicans,
but the wind came down, it had ten hands,
it had more mouths & took & took us far to sea.
Girmay writes hauntingly about family, lost things and about injustice. I really enjoyed the striking and original voice. The book is split into six sections, the last one —"the book of one small thing"— contains just one poem. It’s terrific:
Ars Poetica
May the poems be
the little snail’s trail.
Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record
of the foot’s silver prayer.
I lived once.
Thank you.
It was here.
kierli's review
Don't enjoy the style, though I think the content would mesh with me (hard to get into when it's yanked to and fro).
qingyigeshu's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
5.0
Absolutely stunning. I want to write like Girmay does, full of the heart’s knowledge and the hand’s audacity.
nick_jenkins's review
5.0
As this blog post says, it is almost impossible to single out one poem from this luminous volume, but I agree that this one is well-deserving:
http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/2012/08/for-patrick-rosal-who-wore-dress-said.html
http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/2012/08/for-patrick-rosal-who-wore-dress-said.html
raluca_p's review
4.0
If you buried
all the women standing, the killed women,
kept women, women loved & unloved
who lost something important to this
river Mississippi, if you buried them standing
on one another’s shoulders, from the bottom of the silty bed,
they would rise higher than the water, than the buildings.
The raucous of their skin & feathers are not seen by every eye,
but sometimes a woman will look you in the face
& say the name your grandmother was called. I mean,
it is possible to wear your ghosts like a face,
which is to say, my face has been here before.
(from Mississippi Burial, On the Ferry to Algiers )
*
Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…
(from On Kindness )
*
Resourceful Gretel who, in eating all the bread,
lets her blood down to mark the way back home!
Like this:
I carry my meat over the earth’s lion mouth
& slowly feed my bodies to the dirt.
(from Self-Por trait as the Snail )
all the women standing, the killed women,
kept women, women loved & unloved
who lost something important to this
river Mississippi, if you buried them standing
on one another’s shoulders, from the bottom of the silty bed,
they would rise higher than the water, than the buildings.
The raucous of their skin & feathers are not seen by every eye,
but sometimes a woman will look you in the face
& say the name your grandmother was called. I mean,
it is possible to wear your ghosts like a face,
which is to say, my face has been here before.
(from Mississippi Burial, On the Ferry to Algiers )
*
Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…
(from On Kindness )
*
Resourceful Gretel who, in eating all the bread,
lets her blood down to mark the way back home!
Like this:
I carry my meat over the earth’s lion mouth
& slowly feed my bodies to the dirt.
(from Self-Por trait as the Snail )
robinsamanda's review
5.0
Wonderful poems about death, animals, family, and friends. She is a storyteller poet.