Astoria: Poems Book

The first poem in Astoria, "If There Is Another World," is in several ways an ars poetica for what comes after. Morling writes:

If there is another world,
I think you can take a cab there--
or ride your old bicycle
down Junction Blvd.

And the poem's ending,

And if you're inclined to, you can continue
in the weightless seesaw of the light
through a few more intersections
where people in cars
pass you by in space
and where you pass by them,
each car another thought--only heavier.

invites us forward, setting the tone for a volume both grounded and otherworldly.

The single detractor, for some readers, will be the occasional wordiness that distracts a bit from the image at hand: "A / red rose of the same material // as the dress was attached to / the middle of the upper / lining which was also red." This is a small complaint in a book so lovely and enjoyable.

Lorca's influence is notable, not just in his mention in several poems but in the gentle surrealism that enters the poems in the form of televisions washing up on the Shiomachi shore, a man in a business suit with garbage cans for wings, a man on the train eating himself up:

Limb by limb,
pant legs, shirtsleeves
shoulder blades and all.

"Seemed Pleased," in which a little girl on a plane frankly announces that her mother is dead, recalls Wordsworth's "We Are Seven." A Romantic sense of the beauty in the everyday infuses this collection, especially in such poems as "Simply Lit," in which the poet asks:

Isn't it enough to be a person buying
a carton of milk? A simple
package of butter and a loaf
of whole wheat bread?

Throughout this book is a similar delight in everyday sights and tasks, in the imaginations of children, and in the oddities of human perception. Astoria is a beautiful contemporary volume whose poems draw me back again and again.