As a hummingbird beats its wings so that it might be still to feed on a flower the poet concludes, “The equation keeps balancing out, and / I’m drawn to how it does not settle.” Aware of the difficulty of loving the world while feeding upon it, the poems of Dwelling Song hope vision is levity as they press language to make sight and song. This writing is a form of mimicry yet an act of dangerous flight. Whether from the voice of a hunter, shepherd, farmer, or bugle-blowing boy on a city street, the song recognizes that moving forward necessitates turning one’s back.
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"'I'm almost opened,' say the final lines of Dwelling Song, 'and / the color is about to come out.' Keith hides in broad daylight, and she becomes herself by changing constantly into something else. Smart, visceral, poised, reckless—these poems are content with discontent, at home when most at sea; their syntax turns wildly toward each new revelation. 'What I first said was not enough,' says Keith. Dwelling Song will leave you famished, hungry for more."--James Longenbach, author of Fleet River
"Full of sharp, tight perceptions and even sharper, tighter sounds, Keith's second collection manages to embrace both the quotidian and the timeless at once. From their fusion, she fashions a vibrant immanence; this is poetry that takes place on the page right before your eyes. Lyrical yet mathematical, at times unnerving yet always compelling, these poems never stop opening up new territory."--Cole Swensen, author of Such Rich Hour
"'How many ways am I missing?' asks the speaker of one of Keith's moving poems—poems that dwell on the problem of having inherited spiritual burdens without reliable spiritual means; poems that seek a dwelling place in the remnants of lyric address. Keith's work struggles on behalf of the reader, and on our behalf it roams across sites of pained encounter. And it refuses not to sing."--Mark Levine, author of Enola Gay
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Winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition
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4.0 out of 5 stars
an Orphean lament,
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This review is from: Dwelling Song (The Contemporary Poetry Series) (Paperback)
I came to Dwelling Song expecting the poems I had seen in Keith's first book, Design. Or at least that part of those poems I could most keenly remember. Keith has a way of working with detail, of sharpening an image until it occupies a time, space, and potential outside of reality, and yet reflective of reality. That may sound too circular. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Keith has a capacity to simultaneously see and feel an image within the space of her poem, opening the reader to the possibility of its intellectual and emotional significance. This is what I brought to Dwelling Song from Design.
And that precise descriptive power is in this second book, though it takes different shapes. Certain deeply voiced poems, like "The Gallery" or "Song for the Rain", describe the sharpness the world assumes when loss becomes the only lens for viewing the world, when it might seem better for the speaker to hold herself away from this world, because it offers only an intent encroachment upon her peace. These poems are ruddy and inspiring. When I finish one, it makes me want another as potent & emotionally dense. And so when Keith offers only six or seven I react by first wondering if this move away from the deep voice is a flaw. And it may be. However, the intelligence in this book, and in Design, makes me trust this poet. I am willing to look and allow Keith to teach me how I should read her book. These poems outside the deep voice are still dealing with the book's premise in an equally sincere way. It's just that their method of shifting from one image to the next bring their emotional affect too close to the reader's face. And I guess what I start to see is a flattening of that precision Keith offers throughout the book. For example, in the book's center poem, "Rooms Where We Are", Keith uses a clipped fragment to torque her syntax, and because most of these fragments refer back to images she's described in the previous section of the book, the reader, hopefully, experiences through language the sadness and waywardness that can safely be called a theme throughout the book. Unfortunately, my personal experience reading these poems is a hollowness. The repeated images are too heavy with agenda, and too typically gesturing back. There is little subtlety and too much strategy displayed in these poems, and so I find it difficult to let them sink deeper. Even with this criticism, I recommend Dwelling Song. Partly because of the real talent I see in this second book of poems, and the ambition. I feel that Keith's modulation of voice (the third full section seems to combine the deep voice, and the language voice) gives me more to think about, and though some of these poems may not involve me emotionally, they all interest me intellectually. What I see is a poet who won't settle for the safe, Keith poem, but one who will continually redefine what a Keith poem might be for today.
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