“That language, rescued from the machinery of war, can offer the consolation of being looked upon in relation to—or as through the eyes of—the ones to whom you are beloved.”
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha on the poetry of Solmaz Sharif
by Jaimie Li | Contributing Writer
“Through lamentation and joy, Smith’s poems lean their head back and sing, Not yet.”
Image: “Dreams In Black and White”, 2013, courtesy of the artist, Shikeith
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore on Steph Burt’s Advice from the Lights
For Dust Thou Art by Timothy Liu Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. $14.95 No bland heterosexist suburban poems of backyard sparrows here, Timothy Liu’s latest book, For Dust Thou Art, offers a smorgasbord of impudent isms: onanism, terrorism, “jism,” and solipsism. Titillating perhaps, but stick to the salad bar. The book’s title from Genesis 3:19 misleadingly window dresses a store of randy words, from “good head easier to get than a vintage Merlot” from the first section of the book to “linen falling off our laps as boytoys bathe” from the last section of the book. They sandwich some unsurprising poems in the middle that fetishize 9/11—“A fireman’s boot / exhumed at last—strange trophy / from rubble still too hot to touch” or “Every possible pleasure to be indulged for the world was at an end.” The middle section’s mediocrity begs the question: what of the failure of any poet so far to achieve a “Wasteland” from 9/11? While these poems may stimulate, they fail to surprise, much less catalyze new understanding of people and …
