leaflibrary's review
4.0
Poems about nature, death, and divorce.
Several poems relied on blunt twists or shocking natural truths. "When the Weak Lamb Dies" (do farmers really stuff abandoned lambs into dead sheep skins??) and "Stump" (in which the author invisions himself as a chicken with its head chopped off)....Rain: "It's raining women here in Cincinnati. / Parts of women, parts of one woman? / The police aren't really sure. Last week / they found an arm, a leg, another arm....")
My favorite full poems tended to be the simplest and most narrative: like "Ashes," about literally and figuratively dropping the cremated remains of a friend's sister; "Keys," in which the author ricochets through moods while locked out of the house; and "Why Stop?" which details a drunken dance at a bar ("Why stop? / To start again when we're stronger").
I also love these lines from "Hail":
Breathe, / I tell myself.
Death / is it's own season, out
of sequence, lapping, overlapping
And "After Muscling Through Sharp Greenery" (about stumps again, one of Hudgins' favorite subjects):
And now I own
what I desire:
a hole,
a nothing I can fill with anything.
But for a long
time I will leave it empty
before I make it something and diminish it
And "In the Red Seats":
Five seats away,
from an adoring, pink,
intoxicated face,
love shimmered, love radiated
like equatorial sunshine,
the way a lover's face
illuminates the lover,
the loved, and the dark world
in one strange, lucent moment:
satisfied and thrilled, intense
and effortless - as God
regards us every moment.
I couldn't bear it. I left
in the fifth inning, sidling
down packed precipitous
red rows, easing past strangers,
excusing myself.
And the entire opening half of "Wind":
Wind shook the dead but not-yet-fallen leaves.
Wind tugged and plucked and rattled the dead leaves,
the wind entreating come and the oak leaves,
already dead, saying no to death, no,
for that was what the wind through brown leaves was - death -
and I was afraid: maple leaves called take me
and the wind took them, and I was fascinated
because it snatched and pulled at me and I said no.
I said no but I loved its hands on me,
loved its familiar and insistent touch...
Several poems relied on blunt twists or shocking natural truths. "When the Weak Lamb Dies" (do farmers really stuff abandoned lambs into dead sheep skins??) and "Stump" (in which the author invisions himself as a chicken with its head chopped off)....Rain: "It's raining women here in Cincinnati. / Parts of women, parts of one woman? / The police aren't really sure. Last week / they found an arm, a leg, another arm....")
My favorite full poems tended to be the simplest and most narrative: like "Ashes," about literally and figuratively dropping the cremated remains of a friend's sister; "Keys," in which the author ricochets through moods while locked out of the house; and "Why Stop?" which details a drunken dance at a bar ("Why stop? / To start again when we're stronger").
I also love these lines from "Hail":
Breathe, / I tell myself.
Death / is it's own season, out
of sequence, lapping, overlapping
And "After Muscling Through Sharp Greenery" (about stumps again, one of Hudgins' favorite subjects):
And now I own
what I desire:
a hole,
a nothing I can fill with anything.
But for a long
time I will leave it empty
before I make it something and diminish it
And "In the Red Seats":
Five seats away,
from an adoring, pink,
intoxicated face,
love shimmered, love radiated
like equatorial sunshine,
the way a lover's face
illuminates the lover,
the loved, and the dark world
in one strange, lucent moment:
satisfied and thrilled, intense
and effortless - as God
regards us every moment.
I couldn't bear it. I left
in the fifth inning, sidling
down packed precipitous
red rows, easing past strangers,
excusing myself.
And the entire opening half of "Wind":
Wind shook the dead but not-yet-fallen leaves.
Wind tugged and plucked and rattled the dead leaves,
the wind entreating come and the oak leaves,
already dead, saying no to death, no,
for that was what the wind through brown leaves was - death -
and I was afraid: maple leaves called take me
and the wind took them, and I was fascinated
because it snatched and pulled at me and I said no.
I said no but I loved its hands on me,
loved its familiar and insistent touch...
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