Patrick Dunagan reviews 2012 by Joanne Kyger

Check out poet Patrick Dunagan's terrific review of Joanne Kyger's latest book & be stoked.

Before it’s news

Not so much as a ripple on the surface

& that scramble of clouds above

Pacific Pipe Works & the methadone transfer facility
 

Luanne, Tyrone, Miss Betty Blue & the Aloha crew

sporting Santeria ink & telling tales of drunkeness & cruelty

like Ray Davies in the summertime
 

& I’m counting down from The Odyssey to

The Book of Nods on a ship-to-shore set-up

which looks like something leftover from Blade Runner
 

that washed up on the shore in Tahiti sometime in the

late 19th century not unlike a lost poem by Rimbaud

in a bottle 

& the light gets heavy on the coast

as we drift from one side of the beach to the other

one grain of sand at a time

Song is one way to say it

Dreamed of a small flock of red-

wing blackbirds.  They flew in a

diamond formation, the largest

one at the very center of the

diamond.  When gliding in low

the large bird at the center of the

diamond pulled its wings tight against its

sides, held aloft & within the

formation by wind-shear aerodynamics

I guess.  How could I know?  I followed them

hoping to discover their

secrets. 

                Catching a thermal I tried to

explain the significance of the red-wing black-

bird, in general, & this small flock, in

particular.  Attempting to articulate a

theory in a dream is like playing

the piano w/your knees.

                                              I was reduced to

making a series of whistling & trilling

sounds with my tongue.  A poor imitation

of the song of the redwing blackbird. 

Some laughed at this.  Others

wept.

The Zero Effect

Circling back the

sad white sky reclines

above the rattling bones

of the sea           as if to say the

shortest distance between two

points is the long way around

The spacing required to

fit these things together

more than enough

I can drizzle & quake with the best of them

flesh on the bone

water on the brain

sand, dust, cinder block, what have you

Any possible color           rhododendron,

absinthe, razor wire, candle wax, a

herd of jellyfish stampeding through the

kelp grove, whatever

Have it your
way.  Any way you like.

Exit Strategy

Fancy footwork

                        from the street to

            the beach &

                                    further

 
farther           (SPLASH)

            The stain & the rain-

drops            metaphors           the lack of
tends to sparkle        the surface does     
 
later & at the same time
something tumbles
 
What can & can not be seen as much as feeling allows
before & after the same           “Who are you hearing
this time?”                Listen―             
footstep            fin splash          wing flap
 
“I mean, really, how often do you look
at a man’s shoes?”

A Definite Maybe

Lost & found & lost again

if one means to be the least bit accurate

there are bigger mistakes to be made

along with more interesting

consequences as you take it an

octave higher than any dog-eared hymnal would

ever recommend

Sworn to green scenes right out of the tide book

w/bubbles & like glistening

catalogs of subtropical flowers

as printed on silk sleeves of fog

If I wasn’t there you’d have to

dream up someone else to talk to someone

else who wouldn’t listen because the song the

wind sings in the palm trees is cranked up to

10 on the voodoo dial & if you had wings

you’d probably make a similar sound

drenched in corrugated steel

if there was any other way to say it

15 April ‘13

Headlands

going under        undaunted     

undulating

could get you DQ’d

A showing of hands

flickering red neon No Vacancy

Thomas De Quincey

(Pale turquoise in the shallows

gets darker the farther out you go)

Smashed windows in the ocean rush

settling into cracks in the pavement

a heel of sidewalk

groaning with albatrossian hang-time

bedecked with seaweed brocade

Eric Dolphy “On Green Dolphin Street”

(with a rail of mist tuning E-strings in the eucalyptus

a definite maybe

14 April ‘13

I forgot to mention the waterproof mascara

This morning morning’s breezes

bending back around.  Ocean view

through dusty asthmatic palm trees.

Dead batteries spilling rust.

I am building a boat                 in my head

it will transport all of us to our private islands soon enough

w/ukuleles & bongo drums triumphant.

Just as saying “Please” in German is bitter the

near rhyme a tear scores when torn

echoes in the heart’s house when no one’s home.

The sky          swept up          in haze        

Waves of timeless          silver-green          glass

with brocade          & collision insurance.

Apparently there is a difference.

She calls out their names

            tracing the veins of each steeped in ruin

            & candlelight.  Dark motel room throwdowns

            w/plenty of ice.

All that glitters remains

            carving across the face of a Tijuana pipe

like bending silver spoons in your sleep.

As it happens

If you are expecting poetry to

tell you something you can use, you better

reconsider the wings on the poet’s sandals

and the rules of the game Elegua plays.

―Duncan McNaughton

                        Green glass, amber, bronze

glass from beneath the sea.  Several

thousand pounds of Wagnerian pressure

& a Japanese road map.

The main part of the first section is blue.

Blue is still a color, right?

I was going to call the second section “Surfin’

with the Zoroastrians” but my karma made me

stutter.  Z-Z-Z-Z, & I wasn’t sleeping.

Popping the thought balloon

                                    with a feather

            or a crowbar

                                                either way

                        gives us a clear view of the beach.

27 April ‘13

Primer Gray Tikis in the Mist

            An ill-advised leap from the pier

            because Jim Castro said I didn’t have the balls

            I had the balls all right but not the

            brains to tell him to go fuck himself

            What was it 1972?              

                                    Way out at the far end of space & timelessness

                                    like it was only yesterday, or the day before that

 

Are these the same blue eyes that learned to

read the tide that year at Playa del Rey?

Probably not                   given what we is now

                        Anyway it was really Dockweiler Beach

the sewage effluent & the El Segundo refinery

made it a “special” place

            I never knew it any different

                        my DNA all over that scene

I should have died in TJ that time

I had my ticket punched & everything

shuffling through the damp pages of every ocean

            in the backseat at 90 miles an hour

            & she was gazing out thru the windshield

                                    inventing thermodynamics

            pictured as a beautiful blue tide

                        rushing in beneath the burnt-pink windows

            of no place special

            like what’s left when you drain the pool

& I never noticed until someone mentioned

there was blood all down the side of my face