Reviews for Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2000

The average rating for Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2000 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-09 00:00:00 Francine Rutigliano My mother came up for Mother's Day and it snowed hailed rained and bloomed again it gave her four seasons in a week a month later she was dead. Her legacy of anger unrelenting unforgiving that I exert again and again against myself, the world, a partner is no accident I gathered this anger on my own and she was the perfect vehicle of instruction: ancient woman of the earth who comes up howling, red, her hands running with lava Catalyst for my own voice privately infuriated with pots and pans, with handbags any single object not exactly in its place That woman appears before me stark, beating the earth with her fists I can't disown her every shred of her dress is mine She comes because I call her into the light, her white hot anger gathered through lifetimes will set us both on fire or set us free ' ' ' You red dress in the coffin your dead lips sewn together I'm wailing out in the parking lot, you would not approve I look at our friendship how you served me as loyal back-up to my vagaries ' the confidante, the faceless friend across the table how I served you as visiting sister bringing you eager news from the outside, bringing you someone to talk to We have known each other before. Only in the working out of fixed roles, mother and daughter, did we fail I serve the life you would not in yourself ' ' ' Goodbye. I won't come back waving at your window, or visit your house the rooms, end to end, empty the door ajar I know as well as you what I go to find I carry inside I am not blind to the uselessness of travel A dead board sits where my heart should be if you knock on it now it echoes I am going away You're right I should have been an actress chosen a roll with all the passionate intensity that returns the day, obliterates the past, brings the house down Snip snip snip the scrape of garden shears out the window cutting the sky in half and we can never go back to where we were I am leaving in a black night rigid heart and smog covering my exit you will not be at the table when I return

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-08 00:00:00 John Marshall I put this on hold at the library thinking it was a book about Trieste and instead what I got was a book of poems by a poet I hadn't heard of. I often love these accidental library books, and this one I am particularly enjoying as 1) I've been wanting to read a bit more poetry these days 2) she writes a lot about river, sea, sky, land, island, birds and our daily human free-fall into mythology. I appreciate her movement from small moments to vast landscapes and back again. Here are a few I particularly enjoyed. Plaza De Armas I make my way a rocking boat down the pavement penicillin poisoned swollen joints my neck stiff with anchors I am slowly circling, waiting for the moon waiting for the face of Huascaran waiting for an homage of flowers to sit in, and watch the sunset Huascaran wears pink on the last skirt of glacier There are two ways to do it: one is to sit and love and watch, the other is to climb The Geminids I can see it in the set of furniture the curve of ornaments against the wall a stepping off place from what is known to what is not and the body there in its water swimming picks up the threads ferries the mind home listening for meteors as though a chord were struck and one saw it, green some vast piano. Himalayan Air In The City Odd this night to have risen to have lost a glove, to have sunk into mountains, into forests and the forest's edge People luminous over thin streets, quaking bodies, ecstatic hands two visions of the Tree of Life from the bat tribe Show me the bat who is crucified to his wings and I recognize acorn, serpent, seed in the furrow In back alleys of the mountain town we sat crosslegged, calling the stars by name, the radiant entities conjoined in a figure eight and not an eight and not conjoined. A cup with a golden rim. See? You forgot. Let me along with ten thousand deities bless the depths of the forest lose my gloves in a thicket peer into the well see no reflection. Islands of the Sun When horizons are blurred and you cannot see where shore and sky meet you could be on any island off the Irish coast, in the Aegean Sea a line of sailboats leaves the port in a stiff wind from the north and all enclosures seem like a waste of time they round the lighthouse at the tip of the lizard's tail and fan out there will be fish in all the kitchens tomorrow.