Hot, Crush

It's hot in Seattle. A high of 89 yesterday, and might hit 90 today. We are not used to this kind of weather in May! Dean and I sipped ice cold lemon drops on the back patio in the shade last night after work, and cooled off while the salmon cooked in the too hot kitchen. Today we hope to get some work done in the yard before the heat becomes too unbearable.

I've been reading Richard Siken's Crush, winner of this year's Yale Series of Younger Poets award (see Emily Lloyd's GAP review here). I was trying to explain to my writing group Wednesday night what I like about this book, and I couldn't really put it into words very well. I guess it is the voice: it's a young, brash, cocksure, yet vulnerable voice. And it's also the look of the poems on the page: the long flowing cascading lines, with a wonderful music to them. And it's also the imagery: sensual, visceral, sexy, and at times dangerous and violent. And finally the humor: amid the darkness, he can make me laugh out loud, as in the long series of prose poems, where all the characters in it are, ridiculously, named Jeff!

Here's a poem from the book (it can probably speak for itself better than I can speak for it) (sorry I had to reduce the font to get the line indentations to fit). It's the opening poem, and I read it as an invocation of sorts, to Scheherazade, who told her stories to keep alive, just as Siken seems to be telling these urgent poems: "just one more, just one more . . . . "

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
                                                            and dress them in warm clothes again.
          How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget they are horses.
                It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
    it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
                     how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
                                                                                to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon. That means
         we're inconsolable.
                                    Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
                                                                Tell me we'll never get used to it.