The Bounty Book

An acute sense of observation and surprisingly inventive language--surprising to me only because the blurbage focused heavily on the landscape, and it's been so long since I've read any of Galvin's poems that I'd forgotten how razor-sharp his utterances can be. I'm reminded of some of my favorite poems by Mark Strand, but Galvin's voice is his own: sometimes formal, always imaginative. Yes, the landscape is a figure--a looming presence--in many of the poems, but it's Galvin's manner of *seeing* and *thinking* and bringing that vision to the page that is, at times, astonishing.

Here's one of the quieter poems in its entirety:

EXPECTING COMPANY

Death is when the outside world
Wants to get away from itself
By going inside of someone.

Till the walls cave in.
Till the roof is gone.

I'm floating face up
On a sea of adrenaline.
A broken window hangs around my neck.

I have to make more room in here.
I have to get rid of the furniture.
* * *
And here, in contrast, is a passage from "You Know What People Say":

They make a mockery of irony.
They hold Special Olympics in wit.
What was Shakespeare's blood pressure?
Verical river, cloister of thunder,
Bleeds the ship's fell sail.
God comes in for a landing. He lowers God's landing gear.
He raises the holy spoilers, lowers the sacred ailerons. He imagines
Reality.