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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226885766 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 04/30/2001 |
| Series: | Phoenix Poets |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 72 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
the world's room
By JOSHUA WEINER
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Copyright © 2001 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-88576-6
Chapter One
Psalm
When I sing to you I am alone these days and can't believe it, as if the stars -while gazing up at them-just shut off. Astonished: I search out the one light, brightest light in the night sky, but find I cannot find it without weaker lights to guide me like red tail-lights on a car up ahead after midnight when I'm sleepy, that illustrate how the highway curves, curving to a hook, and maybe save my life and it means nothing to me because nothing has happened, not the faintest glint of drama. (Raining gently, the tarmac turns slick, moistened to life with renewed residues; I can sense it with my hands on the wheel, the drops-not too heavy- drumming off-time rhythms on the metal roof, the metal surface like a skin tense and sweating and the road empty now, there are so many exits ...) Where is my family, both hearth and constellated trail of flicker I have always followed to your word? There, but mastered by fear of dark compulsions and loathing atrocities committed in your name, they hit the dimmer switch and extinguish themselves whenever I sing your praises ... Who can blame them? (I can't help but blame them.) And anyway they are far from me (farthest when they come to visit)- I should be self-reliant, in my armchair like Emerson reading by a single lamp; I should not need them, finding in you myself, little firebug needing no outlet, my soft light blinking as I oxidize my aimless flight to love, to the good, even my glowing chemistry unnecessary now in the ultimate light of day. But what good would that do me? With you, in you, perhaps others do not matter, but this isn't heaven, and I cannot make a circle all on my own- Photon, luciferin, meteor: as I burn myself to pieces, I only pray let my sparking tail remain a moment longer than our physics might allow, some indication, however brief, that there continues (amen) a path to follow. The Yonder Tree Bought myself a ticket, the ticket freed me, I flew through a storm to the yonder tree. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a horse, the horse pleased me, I rode my horse to the yonder tree. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a cat, the cat pleased me, I chased that cat to the yonder tree. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a dog, the dog pleased me, I walked my dog to the yonder tree. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Found myself a woman, the woman pleased me, I followed my woman to the yonder tree. The woman said maybe, baby. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a knife, the knife pleased me, I cut two names into the yonder tree. The knife said hungry, angry. The woman said maybe, baby. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a house, the house pleased me, I built my house from the yonder tree. The house said comfort, come back. The knife said hungry, angry. The woman said maybe, baby. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a watch, the watch pleased me, I checked my watch at the yonder tree. The watch said tick, take. The house said comfort, come back. The knife said hungry, angry. The woman said maybe, baby. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself now I can see, now I can see. Bought myself a stone, the stone pleased me, I placed my stone beneath the yonder tree. The stone said good-night, this night, all night. The watch said tick, take. The house said comfort, come back. The knife said hungry, angry. The woman said maybe, baby. The dog said bow down. The cat said me, me. The horse said nay, nay. I said to myself what did I see? I thought I could see ...
Over looking Berkeley
Clear night. The endless stream of shivering lights seems to release a heat you feel even this high, this removed from sirens, guitars, a gunning motor. A shout. Up here I imagine in the bright clotted stream denials of love, money exchanged. The moon hangs like a bell between hours. An owl opens over the drop, soft-plumed and silent above the research lab. Back on my bike, pumping further up the steep incline, only the sound of each labored breath, each revolution of the crank, the air a damp whisper. Musk. From a plant? At the peak one poised moment- then dropping, the everyday momentum of the world pulling me fast and faster still down the buckled hillside, body tipped toward the city's braided excess, its colonies of scrap, invention, coded impulse, the rush itself a promise beyond mere falling past these blind solicitations: movies, songs, fast food, a few dollars, her voice vibrating along the wire I fly beneath. I'm tingling, taut against the bike's clank and rattle. I can barely breathe.
The Dog State
Her reproach gathered in my inside atmosphere. I fantasized my finger drawing a tear line down her cheek to trace a trail of hurt I thought to follow. I hoped to touch her with a lightness signifying sorrow, with a touch leading me to sorrow's place where I could feel it, and in that feeling compose the man I imagine she loved. The new dog loved me like a story-book dog, slept curled tight into a cinnamon bun by my bed at night, the AC cranked so high my room was a box of winter inside the heart of suburban summer heat. She'd wait outside the houses of friends for hours till I appeared like a miracle to acknowledge her, to praise her loyalty, her patience, all sounds emerging from me sounding like approval and I did approve, rewarding with my kind attentions. While working down a bone, she had a way of glancing up at me, jaws never pausing, and I swear she was flirting, it made me feel funny as if she weren't just a dog, the way animals sometimes express the human- but like a suggestion it embarrassed me, having so recently arrived to that year my image first reflected back as alien and corrupted: I am enclosed in my own fat, my face scarred; besides God, who could love me? And who could I tell what happened, what might seem just a mindless act without consequence, like jamming firecrackers up a frog, but is only disguised beneath some hunched and secret purpose, like waiting to steal the report card you know will come, must come as she came to complement my ugliness: there in the yard she tensed on a shaggy haunch, black muzzle moist with slobber, ears erect, her gaze stitched to my every movement, the wanting so condensed her tail sailed without wagging as I retrieved the bone from beneath the bench and snapped it back to sling it as far beyond the yard as I could throw when she crumpled cringing beneath the arm now writing this cocked then to fire without harm. Not a story-book dog, in fact she was pure mutt bought cheap from the mailman who must have beat her often and hard, she cowered so low to the ground, eye lids fluttering with fear and acceptance at the human hand (his knuckles, unlike mine, sprouted hair thick as wire) preparing to punish without reason. I felt sick. Why wasn't I destroyed by my discovery of what I could make her feel as I raised my hand again to see her sink before me and again five minutes later. Like sneaking beer or jerking off, each time I gestured violence and marveled as she tried to disappear into the ground, to become ground yielding enough to absorb blows that never followed, it seemed a crime inflicted on the house I slept in, which kept me cool at night and sheltered grown-ups still in charge. A hidden voice whispered cold fury against me, I had polluted my estate, and it seemed she heard it too the day she broke her chain and bolted down the well-groomed street muted in shade. Adult sympathy arrived as if on cue, even bellowing Mr. Shreck, the shop teacher from next door, lowered his voice to add I once lost a dog in a register I had never before heard him speak; and they looked at me as if I should know what to do so I acted sad, it seemed required, hopped on my ten-speed and set off like John Wayne to search for what I loved. I slid through a neighborhood broiling with kids caught in games that could never engage me, not that day, with my script, A Boy and His Dog. But how could I love what now lived to shrink from me? She was anywhere away from me as I circled the driveways to peek in each backyard, each house a replica of the house before, each kid recognized by haircut, height and gait, connected to a street, parents and a school, until the catalog of likenesses collapsed into a single field sucking into itself everything I was told should matter. And I thought New Jersey: The Dog State- more dogs than children, cars, or criminals. The idea of caring had somehow decomposed although authored by a conscience- my conscience?-until affection scattered like an element unleashed by heat. Soon it would turn dark. Clouds of gnats thickened. Wanting it to end I pedaled further into humid green watching the grown-ups on my mind's screen project into me, to see my sadness shine into a searcher's hopeful panic. They would love me for living, at that moment, in a shape they once fit, their own story of loving too much what they had to lose burnished by the distant confidence of age. Yet my boredom remained unwritten ... (The first trail of hurt and I had lost it as the woman, whom I loved, would say to me as to an emptiness, you have lost me.) The twilit streets narrowed to a funnel drawing me through the hours to an air-conditioned residence inside myself with a bean bag chair and a TV showing snow. And through self-knowing's static I could almost see how the dog, gone forever, conjured up me- Masterlove, Good-feeder, now mere Boy-with-Hands shifting gears beyond town limits where no one might call out my name.
Art Pepper
Scared boy, he even fled a cloud reminding him of what might happen when his father returned from sea, wasted, to find him perhaps again locked out in the cold, waiting for other drinkers to come home (his mother, her lover)-the catalysis of routine violence passing close like a storm cloud insisting rain; until the rain did fall and the father left, returning though once with a clarinet ... And when the cloud came back in the sound of a memory the boy had grown, had learned to let it swell into the note he now holds in me as a laser reads his tone mastered for fidelity- sweet prismatic splinter and swing, a double-timing scrape aiming for my ear alone in a rented chamber. Nowhere, and I'm with him, fully in tune as if he stood hot before me, his life seeming no more dear to him than the sax he hawked for any kind of syrup he hoped might creep into his heart like fucked-up love that felt like love in the belly meadow warmth of his measured joy. Hungry Art, Art of wind, of lips upon the reed; Art of blue, foolish Art, would you be so nice to come home to?- Bragging his genius for a time turned rancid in San Quentin, swaggering with a ripped-off thuggery honor and sick with the terror of not seeming criminal ... White man junky thief whose skin glowed narco-green with the sound of Keats amped through Pound I repeat his name jacked-in to the straight blowing of a life clarifying like butter over flame: what's home, where's harm; how to fix; how praise- Lover, come back to me. Why are we afraid?
Island
Of course it happened on the Island where you spent your summer each year and do so still, the source of fantasy and old battles real enough they seem to live on, even after so many who would go are gone, grown, or down there somewhere beneath feet happy to trace trail blaze leading from peak to cove to dilapidated lobsterman's shack (he rowing his children everyday to school), the blacksmith's shop, the quarry slide worked by Italian immigrants, back to the house the shepherd built who, legend says, afforded it by pilfering the captain's safe on a ship harboring from storm: a path of anecdotes more hidden with each year, yet reaching further with each year's small adventure- but where do we follow a history disappearing on the mainland, so far from this wooded isolate memory machine activating the senses until once again you're the moment's maestro brimming with Spielbergian operatics composed by ghosts and set to a mental soundtrack? Something like fear's overture in that pocket of usness, I heard it then, it claimed me in no exaggerated form; you were oblivious, keyed to the wind, the rock, the smell of salt, my smell mixing with yours shining us forward so fast I turned a corner despite the past or because of it-standing on some granite and looking out at all the other islands confronting the Island, didn't I choose when I asked you? And when you said Okay. Yes, did you imagine the bolt of wind winding around us sang a mysterious sounding chorus for the story being written now, this current more powerful even in its calm pulling past islands the telescope can't see than we who would be its writers? As if we were its writers, and love took shape like a syllable from the mouth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from the world's room by JOSHUA WEINER Copyright © 2001 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsPsalm
The Yonder Tree
Overlooking Berkeley
The Dog State
Art Pepper
Island
The Not-Yet Child
Lines to Stitch Inside a Child's Pocket
The World's Room
Nursery Rhyme
Plot
Market Day
Who They Were
Mongrel Death Blues
The Visitation
Epitaph
The Knife
Riddle Book to the City
Connecting Flight
Tempest
Oakland
Kindertotenlieder
Bruno's Night
What People are Saying About This
David Rivard, 1999 PEN New England Discovery Award Citation
The World's Room reads as though it might have been written by a miracle child spliced together out of the mutually antagonistic DNA of Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. . . . Which is to say, I can't think of another poet now under the age of forty who has invented himself, as Joshua Weiner has, out of such an impressive array of forms.
Two powerful qualities lift Joshua Weiner's wonderful first book, The World's Room: music and moral generosity. These poems are a true pleasure to read aloud, and they have great human empathy. Weiner's cheerfully candid, fresh voice, his innovative but unfussy way of putting a poem together make me want to read more by the maker of this memorable, distinguished and disarming book.
Joshua Weiner's interest is above all in the sources, the beginnings, in the forms we develop from, whether the seed in the womb that becomes the born baby, or the riddle and the nursery rhyme that become the complex meditation on that child's life. From the title poem to the last poem in the book, he studies all this and more in an artful, varied, and beautiful first collection.