one of those
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ISBN 9780982354230
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The phrase Russian novel suggests thickness, density, and richness. All those terms apply to Cantwell's poetry or, more precisely, to the life in the poems. These are active pieces that plunge into the thick of things and pulse with motion, regardless of whether the setting is past or present. They show as they describe or recollect, and they don’t recollect in any apparent tranquility or with regret. "A late cousin speaks, "walking and talking the life of addiction--the needle, coffee, cannabis, the white rock--that culminates in the recognition of happiness, however sordid, however self-isolating. Old friends reconnect at a convention's hotel bar, last to be seated and staying so far beyond closing that the management gives them an unsubtle hint, "and yet we linger." Three poems realize incidents from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a big paragraph of which is this book's epigraph. Poems on the deaths of artists and friends, even when they're very long gone, indeed--see " Marlowe in Italy"--hail their subjects' follies and vices equally with their achievements. This is poetry teeming with light, darkness, color, movement, heat, cold, sound, and silence. Reading it is like watching a complicated, demanding movie or, in full consciousness, life.
—Ray Olson, Booklist, October 15, 2009
—Ray Olson, Booklist, October 15, 2009
These new poems locate the panhandle coast of Florida and an imagined Italy of Christopher Marlowe's sponsored and protected exile. The voice of a cousin tours the landscape of vice; the memoirs of U.S. Grant note young officers climbing a local volcano in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican War; in overtones of political anxiety, Ben Jonson is heard in a new invitation to supper; and a closing poem observes a list of local complaints and jokes, warns off proselytizers, and remembers from childhood the night-noise of an oil-well.
on SOMETHING BLACK IN THE GREEN PART OF YOUR EYE (2002):
"Song of the Black Corona," "Choral Lines from the Sumerian," the title poem, "The Wooden Trap"—these poems say that the world is on fire but only the steadiest and most masterful hand can show us the burning. Kevin Cantwell's steady and masterful poems blend poise and intimacy in a style that is his own and built for the ages.
—Frank Bidart
"Song of the Black Corona," "Choral Lines from the Sumerian," the title poem, "The Wooden Trap"—these poems say that the world is on fire but only the steadiest and most masterful hand can show us the burning. Kevin Cantwell's steady and masterful poems blend poise and intimacy in a style that is his own and built for the ages.
—Frank Bidart
Cover art and logo by GRONK
Copyright 2009-2012 What Books Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2009-2012 What Books Press. All Rights Reserved.
