Rave: Poems, 1975-1998 - Softcover

Broumas, Olga

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556591268 ISBN 13: 9781556591266

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 1999

Synopsis

The Choir

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.
Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds,
the garbage truck suspended in shy light,
the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway,
the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm.
Holy the handmade and created side by side,
the sapphire of their marriage,
green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell
rinsed by the buzzing tide.
Holy the light--
the poison ivy livid in its glare,
the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens,
the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques.
The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we,
cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale,
inscrutable until divulged by god
and sex into its gender, every touch
a secret intercourse with angels as we walk
proffered and taken. Their great wings
batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons.
Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs
the shock of the divine crash-landing.
I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail,
the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight
themes of the carbon sea where we are joined:
zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths
crowning the compost heap.

Elegy

Somebody left the world last night, I felt it
so, last minute, last half-breath before the storm
that hit all night last night drew back. Midmorning
windows streaked with mud like sides of ears. How long

the journey? Sails, the windowpanes the black
thick tarp that kept the woodpile. Dry
Southern wind, in minutes clothes bone-hard, clamped
to the line. Clouds heaving in. The sky, the sky, who did arrive

to kiss the eye behind the windswept sheet? Who was it, solo
no longer, shy and desirous to be clean? What song
arose, what crust between the lids
spat and forgot? I woke, my fingers in my eyes

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About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Throughout this hefty selection from a quarter-century's work, Broumas stays loyal to materials, themes and scenes that marked her Yale Younger Poets' Prize-winning collection of 1977: female figures from Greek mythology and European fairy tales, contemporary women loving women, light-filled landscapes, horror-filled history, meals that offer communion and promise community. Broumas grew up in Greece, with Greek as her first language. RaveAthe title suggests rites at once pre- and postmodernAbrings together poems from five books Broumas wrote alone, two sets of collaborations and a prose statement ("Moon," about her influences and aspirations). Many of the earlier poems recall reams of small "i"-driven magazine verse, pushed on by an insistent eros ("some weird mutation of orgasm/ a spasm"), but often lit by stand-out images, as in the stammered "Foreigner": "Down is stove and the stack of logs/ Up is bed and the climate the tropical." Abstractions can turn the work prosy, and politics can emerge as mere assertion, but at her best Broumas is learned and adventurous. "Days of Argument & Blossom" ends part II of the recent Perpetua: "Earth on a new eve, no lover/ no later that won't echo as refrain.... Stubborn and generous/ about our pleasure let us be as we,/ unaccountably happy here,/ escape the wait to hear the spit/ fall on the scythe of hours." Such lines head straight for the big questions, without looking back. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"I live within the ancient tradition," writes Judevine Mountain, the hermitic Vermont sage in whose guise the poet narrates his spare, lyrical meditations. The tradition is that of Han Shan and Lao Tzu, whereby one exiles oneself from society in order "to live in solitude and stillness, to see the world with clear and simple eyes." Problem is, society is ever-present in the mind, and the poet must continually confront the contradictions between his pure ideals and his crass desires ("Struggle/ is what it means/ to be alive and free"). The poetry of rural isolation can be hard to separate from naturalist note-taking, but Budbill's uncertainty and self-consciousness within this mountain paradise lend the poems a recognizable immediacy and honesty, accompanied by an endearing wit: "The true hermit/ answers the phone/ on the first ring." While Budbill's economical, brush-stroke approach may sometimes enshrine the obvious or slip into slightness, his work by and large evinces a hard-won clarity, a pure, human tone among the many portentous self-advertisements and stridencies so often heard in poetry these days. He "gives [his] soul to [his] senses," and the gift is ours as well.AFred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.-- soul to [his] senses," and the gift is ours as well.AFred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1556591268
• ISBN 13: 9781556591266
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320