Maya C. Popa, WOUND IS THE ORIGIN OF WONDER

/0 Comments/in /by

WOUND IS THE ORIGIN OF WONDER, Maya C. Popa, Norton, 2023.

In the opening poem in this collection, “Dear Life,” Popa writes, “I can’t undo all I have done to myself / what I have let an appetite for love to do me.” These lines set the tone for a book that again and again catches us on its barbed hook. Language hooks us. Ghost crabs are a “speculation on shape,” water, “an artifact of loneliness.” Can I capture the essence of this book after only one reading? Probably not.

Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

The bee that worshiped the mouths of those flowers
dropped to your window like a spent priest,
its thud comedic in the coded silence.
You were making a change to the order of your hours,
had announced as much in the prior moment,
and if I thought of Virgil’s Georgics, it was only
not to mention them. I brought up my eye
to its abdomen, offered an ounce of my human life.
What would you do with the knowledge
that I’d grieve for a bee? Someone like me
could be played by the threat of endings.
I’ll lose you one day, have lost you always,
a long ongoing Westwardness of thought.
It’s not metaphor that bees make honey
of themselves while language only dreams
the hunted thing. Let’s be hungry a little
while longer. Let’s not hurt each other if we can.

—Maya C. Popa (p. 32)

Toward the end of the book, toward the end of a long poem, “Pestilence,” Popa writes: “Each day I remember /
Each day I strategically forgot,” and “how human     is the future / will it let us let / I am listening through my terror for yours…”

Olawaseum Olayiwola in The Guardian described Wound Is the Origin of Wonder as “purposefully heart-decelerating.” It balances contemplation with a sense of walking through the natural world, balances woundedness with a deep, profound healing. I’m wholly intrigued.

Learn (much) more by visiting Popa’s website or Poetry Foundation.

 

Pádraig Ó Tuama, KITCHEN HYMNS

/0 Comments/in /by

KITCHEN HYMNS, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Copper Canyon Press, 2024.

I am going to cheat and just give you a few notes, then send you to other, smarter reviewers. You might begin with the first paragraph from Mary Grace Mangano’s review at Jesuit Media Lab, which elegantly makes Ó Tuama kin with Flannery O’Connor. Both raised Catholic. Both wrestling like Jacob with God.

Another bonus with this particular poet is that he and his Irish brogue host On Being’s Poetry Unbound.

If you search the Internet, you will find multiple recordings of Ó Tuama reading aloud from Kitchen Hymns. Another bonus.

Some of these poems are love poems, some are conversations. Some are blessings. As you settle into the collection, you find Persephone greeting Jesus in hell. Ó Tuama’s sexual poems are both blessings and rites of passage. I wonder if the tradition of metaphysical poet John Donne might be evoked here: “Batter my heart three-person’d God.”

What else can I say about a book that includes this line—

One way or another, shame
can teach you what nothing else can teach you.

(from “Rite of Baptism,” p. 82)

I spent a few hours reading and rereading Kitchen Hymns, but I have a feeling it’s a book that will have to be mulled over—for months or years.

Here is the final poem in the book, which, by the way, has lovely symmetry with the opening poem.

[untitled / missæ]

I bless myself in the name
of the deer and ox,
the heron and the hare,
evangelists of land and wood
and air. The fox as well, that red
predator of chickens, prey of cars.
And salmon and the trout
sleeping the reeds.
When the wren wakes, I’ll ask
her blessing, and if she comes out
she’ll bring it. The squirrel buries
when she thinks no one else can
see. I bless myself in her secrecy.
There’s a fieldmouse I’ve seen
scampering at dusk, picking up the seeds
dropped by the finches and the tits
throughout the day. Some nest of frenzy
waits her kindness and her pluck.
I go in the name of all of them,
their chaos and their industry,
their replacements, their population,
their forgettable ways, their untame natures,
their ignorance of why,
or how, or who.

— Pádraig Ó Tuama

If you are new to Ó Tuama’s work, his mission, here’s a link to On Being, and Krista Tippett’s 2022 interview with him.

white and black bird flying

Jane Alynn, NECESSITY OF FLIGHT

/2 Comments/in /by

NECESSITY OF FLIGHT, Jane Alynn, Cherry Grove Collections, 2011.

As planned, I am spending my April reading poetry, though some mornings a blogpost feels out of reach. This book, not new, but a fairly recent addition to my book hoard, is one I definitely want to share.

Necessity of Flight is a showcase for its author’s craft. Jane Alynn is also a photographer (see her website for a sampling), and these poems are filled with images and light. To quote the back cover blurb from Lana Hechtman Ayers, at the heart of this book is “a profound reverence for and kinship with the natural world.”

I heard Jane read at Edmonds Bookshop about a year ago, and I can still hear her reading this poem:

In Want of Wings

The trumpeter swans are standing in the field
alongside the road. White, outsized, magnificent.
Suddenly, agitated by something, these birds take off
running, their bodies remembering the risk to living
in the open. The mass as it moves for flight stops all song.
The swans face the wind with wide-stretched wings,
arcs of luminosity, lifting their heavy bodies skyward.
Filled with awe, I watch them
until I am looking only at the distance.
And I think of things that make us disappear,
what harm the fowlers do. When I have wanted
wings. A child launched into darkness dreams
of human flight not forbidden, being borne
swiftly on a rush of wind, those miraculous pinions
in perfect rhythm of progression, blood feeding feathers,
wings pumping, breastbone heaving, breathing
easier when she comes to a sweet end,
having brought herself from the brink of extinction.

—Jane Alynn

Necessity of Flight is alive with wings, “cloudburst / of starlings”; hummingbirds “keen on honeysuckle”; “feathered beggars”; a gull, “dull and brassy and fat / as a wallet on payday, / swelled with longing.” Dreams and memories are longing, too, and almost fly, long-deceased loved ones passing through, and everywhere the rising of the poet’s words from line to line and page to page.

You can visit Alynn’s website to learn more. It’s worth the trip.

Paula Becker, A LITTLE BOOK OF SELF-CARE FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE

/1 Comment/in /by

A LITTLE BOOK OF SELF-CARE FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE, Paula Becker, Girl Friday Productions, 2021.

I want to share this book with you. It’s not poetry, but it’s a lot like poetry, and recommends it: “Poetry can crack grief open and smooth it down, howl its depths…” The book combines beautiful illustrations by Rebekah Nichols. The design is by Rachel Marek, but the book is a collaboration. The art and ample white space give the words room to breathe.

Ask friends for help when you are overwhelmed. Do not set time limits for yourself. If grief flares suddenly, as grief will do, cancel plans, even at the last minute.

The book is available widely — your local independent bookshop may have a copy waiting for you.