Wow, that was an amazing work! It started off a little clunky, but the stream of consciousness style, line breaks, and vivid imagery really give it a punch that's quite effective.
Thanks for introducing me to another excellent poet (I should have known the name, though--I've always admired Saturnalia). I was hooked from 'He sets paper sailboats afloat on the pond' in Stalin's Ghost. And what range! A poet who knows when to write long and when to write both--and does both equally well. Excited to read the interview if I have time later today :)
this is my favorite poem-type, a freight train, just keeps coming at me, won’t give up, won’t let go, leap to leap to Woah--those last four lines, i wish I wrote this poem.
Wow, that was an amazing work! It started off a little clunky, but the stream of consciousness style, line breaks, and vivid imagery really give it a punch that's quite effective.
Unless it's the Iliad or the Odyssey, I can't stay with a poem that's so discursive. My ADD won't allow it.
Thanks for introducing me to another excellent poet (I should have known the name, though--I've always admired Saturnalia). I was hooked from 'He sets paper sailboats afloat on the pond' in Stalin's Ghost. And what range! A poet who knows when to write long and when to write both--and does both equally well. Excited to read the interview if I have time later today :)
Oh I’ve been so in love with his poems since I encountered his work. All his books are wonderful and worthwhile.
This poem feels like grief breaking into surreal fragments, where memory and absurdity collide in dreamlike images.
The mother trying on hats in heaven’s department store embodies loss softened by strange, almost comic tenderness.
The father’s absence is a loud silence, his words remembered as pillars now missing from the landscape of thought.
The body appears fragile and estranged, bread refusing to rise, the coccyx tying us back to forgotten origins.
The refrain about the body’s desire for eternity haunts the text, questioning instinct, mortality, and the violence within us.
Trauma reshapes perception: beds become bombs, briefcases become threats, keys lose their meaning in a world of fear.
The dead return grotesquely, dragonflies drying wings on skulls, bullets placed gently as if relics of despair.
Even resurrection is distorted, the father celebrated as savior while graves yield only empty shells.
The poem stitches satire, horror, and longing into a theatre of mourning, where eternity is both desired and denied.
Ultimately, it humanises despair as a surreal ritual, showing how love and loss echo even in chaos.
this is my favorite poem-type, a freight train, just keeps coming at me, won’t give up, won’t let go, leap to leap to Woah--those last four lines, i wish I wrote this poem.