What a nervy, original book! I'd dipped into it before but only recently read the whole. Here are a few favourite passages.
I lean forward on a nerve ebullient
my sweet alive and roasting in a current
from "Exercise 1 (11/28/00 PM)"
Good for M the comfortable-with-people to be away from me. tauten the cord to make it all more urgent
from "Exercise 7 (12/3/00 PM)"
The wheatrows flattened
gold, another dark
combed curve opened
like a stretchy
machine.
opening lines of "Exercise 21 (11/8/01 Am) [Back Seat of Minivan]"
Snow
starred when I looked straight up
sky dark gray, geese rose
in alarmed soft shh and hasping
long-necked geese
a-gossip all upset
*
all along I was alone to that
though everyone saw me
checking myself out by talking to them
when they checked themselves out in me
I tried to say O here have it all
warm woolen flood welcomer
some spider-netting held it back,
kept growing over my warm and my intention to befriend
from "Exercise 34 (1/3/02 PM)"
All the following poems come from a section titled, "Everyone in the Room Is a Representative of the World at Large," and all the poems share that title. Each passage comes from a different poem.
I make the bird a flying fist
my violence goes on out along the stream.
---
My beast came up and hit me in the self.
---
It is not a hero
who will approach the mirror of
this appointment
and glide her thighs and torso to it.
That is me
These passages can't convey the experience of the undulations of a whole Wagner poem. For that, please purchase the book from Foyle's in the UK or your independent bookstore in the US.
