Nevernevernever is what i told myself about reblogging.
This is totally worth every ounce of reblogging shame that I might feel.
Congrats on the amazing and beautiful book, Kelli!!
x
So a while ago there was a group of poets who all sat down separately with their own ideas set toward a single goal. When they met later, they saw that their words were good. The work held weight, Anchor Baby.
So, check out the nominated poems from www.BluePrintReview.de :
http://just1m.blogspot.com/2011/11/blueprintreview-nominations-best-of-net.html
It was nice to be included in this group. I’m sure at least some of us will bring it back around again. Where the letters touch the line, and so forth, we hold our own. We hold yours, too.
I suppose I could explain a little about our poem, but I’d rather just answer questions directly than flail wildly with my suppositions, explanations, opinions, rexaminations, etcz.
The Trees The Trees
by Heather Christle
Octopus Books, 2011
Words that draw across the page—space, shift, vouch, vault—into eyes. Do they look like eyes? What about the iris? How about retinas? When a hand is on the book, and eyes, void becomes more possible. The shape of it melts into snow, the trees. Which poem will you tell to lie down and read itself for once and for all?
Let’s pretend I didn’t meet HC in Echo Park at Machine Gallery where she read brilliantly from this collection. How then would the voice of the poems take shape? See the cover? A book in bloom. A red letter day bed. Hmmm, floral, faunal, filial. Relax into it, life time; lead the way, we’ll let you.
From somewhere around these trees we see it all, from everywhere around these trees. HC puts fingers down on each point, stretching the time, elapsing moon, tree, baby. Maybe the trees pass us: pass the ice cream, pass the swing, pass the noise. In what way is it noise? Can we remember to put the line of it all back together? Was this brain too trained on the markers, penciled in? Here we are without. Go inside now and bring what you will back out. Sock it up against the back of your mind, the black of your eye. The part where the hole dives through is totally the place, the piece.
Perhaps what I am meaning to say is more like, I wasn’t sure about this book, I wasn’t sure about anything. After reading the book (and the book, repeat…) the trees and the balloons and baby and blue shirts are all symptoms of what it is to be alive. No, one does not have to be much more than alive to experience these things as things and even more. How to decide which piece of world, life to put where is barely a choice when nature moves where it will. How do the words draw themselves across the page? Maybe you can find out. Maybe you can help them out. Draw them as easily across the page as you would your own conclusions, your inclusions.
Repeatedly I try to make the point of your own version. Where will you lead? The black hole of your eye meets the black [w]hole of the wor[l]d. You don’t have to get it, it’s already coming for you. In daylight, or whatever, it traces you though and through to overflow. HC sets up the word, knock it down. HC sits up in trees, knock them down. Though I want nothing more than to relay an entire poem here, my quickdraw will not do the figure of it justice. The sweetness of the justification, the wide bright spaces, the dark texts. The bloom here lights up like cave flame. The bloom will keep well. Or will it? (sigh, with this attempt to catch some light through my own noise here)
through your hands oh hands cannot keep
anything together pretty baby oh it beats me why
we try
Been reading it.
Look forward to the post on it.
Soon.
