POEMS IN THE NAVAJO (AND OTHER) MANNER(S): 73 page chapbook
Although these seventy-three pages of poetry are divided into a dozen sections,
about half thematic and half formal, the collection features two other
specific patterns –-again, thematic and formal. In many cases, a
poem at or near the end of a section loops to the first one in the next.
For instance, the imagery in #7 of “Poems in the Navajo Manner”
blends very old rocks with computer motherboards, and the first poem in
“Age” speaks with the voice of an old man describing old Manhattan
buildings. The “Age” section is, in turn, linked to “Politics”
by “Sleepless Man,” a body crumble poem, and “War Has
Broken Out,” in which the aging body is a microcosm for the warring
planet. Metrically, the poems also divide into older and newer. To generalize,
the ones in traditional meter (such as “Farewell Kiss” and
the three sort-of sonnets) are accentual-syllabic and use a long line,
seven to ten or more syllables. The more modern, more oral ones are either
in verse paragraphs, where the unit is approximately a long breath; or
in very short lines, one to four syllables, organized either by sound
clusters (“Rhyme-Scale Poem”) or by a stuttering, hopping
meter that might feel to some readers like a sort of unholy alliance between
Emily Dickinson and Puff Daddy (“Vacation Plans” and “The
Pre-Death Scene”).
CONTENTS:
Poems in the Navajo Manner (7) |
3-10 11-14 15-18 19-21 22-34 35-47 48-52 53-56 57-58 59-70 72 73 |
SAMPLES:
|
Inside Out |
| The panel on the side of the bus says “Maidenform,”
but the models are clothed, their underwear, well, under. The passengers, however –men, women-- are topless, as you can see when the bus goes by at night, lit up. I can’t make out the driver. He’s on the other side. I’d like to ask, but it says “You may not talk to him.” |
--Right Hand Pointing, #16, August 2007. link to text |
| Fly, Firefly Insect inside: deer fly died fear fly fried. Firefly, fire, flare, firefly, fair fly, fire. Flee, firefly, fair fly, higher, drear fleet fear. Flee, fly, dear, flee, fly, flow from dire fly fighter. Fie, fly frighter! |
--Island Advantages, 1998; Poetry Midwest, 2006 |
| In a Stranger’s House Middle-aged men wake up in the night and (not stopping for toupee) toddle off to pee. (“He never met a pun he didn’t like.”) In a stranger’s house, blind dark and full of barking furniture, slowly, stiffly rising, flashlight left behind, feeling for walls, the door, out and round the corner, shuffling forth placatingly. (“Some footage from your dotage, smacking of senility.”) Let’s hope it’s only that, and not a foretaste of some ghastly afterlife where you stumble till you find the hole and then they push you in. Be glad that, though you pee so long it seems like immortality, you have a bed to go to, the voyage home, easy, quick, a wife to wrap you in her arms and ask your back what time it is. |
--Waterways, 2005 |
-7- |
| Eroded red rock looks like bone, red rock swirled, wheeled and scored, tipi-pinnacles, pots and cones, red rock swirled, wheeled and scored. Roadside cairn, a hitchhiker; his knees, his pack, slouching hat. Beside the road, a hitchhiker, crouching cairn beside the road. Tiny ruins cling to a cliff, tiny ruins on massive rock, dots and lines, a motherboard, dots and lines cling to a cliff. Eroded red rock looks like bone, crouching cairn beside the road, dots and lines cling to a cliff, tiny ruins on a motherboard. Humans, rocks: the “what,” the “if.” |
--from “Poems in the Navajo Manner, Windsor Review, v.35, #1, Spring 2002 |