Days 8 and 9: Two Kinds of Re-Reading
Sam Sax's Pig and Daniel Khalastchi's Manoleria
If you’re new to reading this Substack, you may not know that I often review new books of poetry for journals. I have the great pleasure of reviewing Sam Sax’s new book, Pig, which will be out from Scribner Poetry next month. Since the book is NOT yet released, I cannot share poems here, but I can say with confidence that this collection is well worth your time as a poetry reader and as a human animal trying to navigate the world. (This is the first type of re-reading. When I review a book of poems, I read it a minimum of five times, so this was my third pass at Sam’s, the reading where I start pulling quotes to support the thematic strands I want to talk about in a review.)
Today’s re-read was of a collection I first encountered twelve years ago when I took a manuscript course with Daniel Khalastchi (a class that clarified the final version on my first book, A House of Many Windows, which was picked up the following year by Sundress). Daniel’s work in Manoleria (Tupelo Press, 2011) is another example of a writer’s work that is so different from my own that I want to learn from it. It is also not an easy book to read in terms of content. Its depictions of oppression physical suffering (with surreal vignettes full of body horror) are difficult and unnerving. But beneath the startling images lies a heart of hope, where “somewhere inside I hear calling a shepherd.”
A couple of striking images:
from Fear and Greed Index:
My eyes have/been nested. Robins and//grackles weave wheat to/my lashes and twice/a week I find eggs//in my leg. In my/leg. It opens like a piñata.
from A Series of Movements:
Bent back from the/waist, the birds/fill me with shells until//my throat won’t close. I cough like/a night bell of Spanish maracas.
(In other writing news, I have two prose poems from a new manuscript in the latest issue of Bending Genres. Check them out here!