KALEIDOREKDALSCOPE

I really love Paisley Rekdal's new book of poems, THE INVENTION OF THE KALEIDESCOPE. Big, fat, confessional reveries--glowing odes to art and broken loves, in their variable forms and subject matter: pornography, family, self and fruit. Her lyrics sting, sing, singe the edges until the spirit feels--"deliciously, yet delicately, fired." I'm finding it difficult to write about, because the poems are layered and dramatically centered. Each poem is a "clear song

of the dreamer's reverie--this one note--broken
or turned sweetly inward, romance of self
with self, awareness stirred

. . . . .


This week I'm married to Bjork and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. All horn and sail. California, fog or high knifing green. It's the end of the semester (FINALLY) so I'm split between grading term papers and final exams and dreaming about my re-print which is due out later this month.. . Summer school starts right away, but it's such a relief to feel myself at the end. These semesters feel like they go on forever. My secret May is filled with white turned inside-out, my beautiful hanging entrails, like Hawkinson's song at the Ghetty, UBERORGAN.. .

. . . . .

Here are a few more bits of her gold:

Post-Romantic:

"One day, you'll be half asleep in the dark, listening to a radio
play in another room, and feel yourself
suddenly filling like a jug with the cold
awareness nothing more will ever happen, the disaster
of your old ambivalence, the familiarity
of desire's wolfish teeth sinking into the body.
The body, as if it didn't belong to you anymore."