Customer Reviews

What the Sea Means: Poems, Stories & Monologues, 1987-2002

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The wonders of Dave Awl's book became apparent to me within 12 hours of it taking its place on my Kramer-style coffee table. A friend, not one normally to be seen within page-turning distance of a book - let alone to be seen sitting still on the sofa for longer than a nanosecond - suddenly (and without prompting) began reading aloud some of these stories, poems and monologues. Then she started laughing. Soon, she was recommending stories for me - I hadn't even begun reading 'What The Sea Means' at this point. Soon, we were passing the book back and forth, each reading aloud, exchanging "the good bits" (and there are many), and suggesting the book would make an excellent Christmas present for our friends.
OK. I'm biased. But I highly recommend, in no particular order: 'A Perfectly Empty Room' (story); 'The Idea of You' (monologue); 'Glastonbury' (poem); 'What The Sea Means' (poem); and a poem about Magritte, which I can't seem to find in the index but which I know has to be there ... Reading this book wouldn't be complete without its own little mysteries.
In a nutshell, word paintings that are surreal and full of revelations. Best of all, at the back of the book is a section of notes. It answers questions you haven't asked yet and poses some you wish you had.
Diving into Dave Awl's work is like discovering a continent or a magical island: You thought it might be there but you didn't dare hope it would be this weird, this different.
Do your brain cells a favour.

It's about time Dave Awl published a book of poetry! His delight with language and exquisite mind have been well-admired by his fans for years. He's a long-time writer/player of "The Neo-Futurists," which is famous here in Chicago -- and indeed across the world -- for its "thirty plays in sixty minutes" theater experience called "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind." I've always loved Dave's Too Much Light plays because they challenge me as much as they entertain me, and I feel like I've gained a tiny glimpse into an amazing brain. It's good stuff. I've also managed to catch Dave in a few productions of the Pansy Kings Cotillion performance group, which he founded. He's been a major asset to the "fringe theater" scene in Chicago. Didn't I see him in a Theater Oobleck show, too? I can't remember. Everything I have seen him in has really just been awesome and I am a bona fide fan. I consider it a personal badge of honor that I was among the first to hear his bit on NPR's This American Life segment about Sissies. It was cool. But that's to be expected from Dave Awl, I guess.
This book, What the Sea Means, is pretty darned good! It includes really recent poetry, monologues from his gazillion shows, and some older poems. Words that come to mind are, "Range" "Depth," "Breadth," "What the . . .?!" How can a Jungian Surrealist write in rhyming quatrains? I don't pretend to know how he does it, but he does it well. And now he's doing it on the page, not just the stage.
Among my favorites in this collection are "What the Sea Means 2.0," "The City Slept and Metal Phantoms," "The Idea of You," "Stitching a Dummy," "A Perfectly Empty Room," "Immensity," "Talking to Myself," "Map of the Body," and "The Bestiary." I LOVE the Bestiary! If you like Rexroth's, you'll appreciate Dave Awl's. Hilarious!
I haven't decided which of these I'll give to my students when we study poetry this spring. I know they'd really get a lot out of and really get into a bunch of them.
Dave Awl is just a great writer and person -- I've had the pleasure of talking to him after a number of his shows. I can say with confidence that we could all benefit from having a little Dave Awl in our lives.

I've now bought seven copies of this book to give to people. I've personally read it three times and find myself refering to it periodically during the course of normal conversation. Sure, people look at me a little strange as we drive down the road in their car and I say something like "Please drive. Please drive slowly." but I simply smile with a self knowing satisfaction of what I'll be getting them for their birthday. It's really a fine piece of work this book. A bargain at twice the price.

In this delightful debut, Dave Awl explores relationships, identity and creativity with a great mixture of sensitivity, lyricism, humour, honesty and surrealism. In pieces such as Bestiary, Talking to Myself, Talking to Myself: The Interview, Immense Buddha Under Fire, Points of Connection, The Idea of You and the deliciously mysterious What The Sea Means, the strangeness and poignancy of life is examined with a refreshing vividity of style and deprecation of self.

By far my favourite piece is A Perfectly Empty Room, in which a man makes repeated attempts to clear out his room and, by extension, his life, only for everything to constantly find its way back in underneath his door - something I and, I'm sure, many other people can relate to. Dave Awl has a penchant for taking metaphors like this for a walk and seeing where they lead him. If you go along with him you'll find the journey is repeatedly interesting and above all, entertaining.

The best thing about this book though is how much there is of it. Dave Awl has been busy since 1987, and there is plenty here for readers to get their teeth into. The book is bursting with things to say, and even when it's said them it goes into some fascinating notes about where many of the pieces originated and how they were staged.

If you sometimes feel like the man that Vermeer painted over, and know that nobody can properly articulate the sadness of the tea kettle, buy this book.

It has been a few years since I first read this book. I recently picked it up again, and found gems in it that I had either forgotten (not likely) or that I now connect with in a brand new way.

There is a timeless quality to this work -- so many of the pieces touch a nerve, or make me smile, or are a complete distraction, or take a few readings before I understand them. In any event, many of Awl's recurring themes speak to me: a craving for silliness, sense memories, seeing things backwards, out-of-body experiences, serendipity, loneliness, sharing, insomnia, and flavor. There are more. And maybe even some that you would connect with that do not resonate with me.

In a word, Brilliant. A great writer, who gives this sparkling collection. I look forward to re-reading WTSM for many years (and for reading Awl's next book whenever it comes along).

For any speech coaches out there -- or cometitors looking for programs or scripts -- this book looks like it has a lot of stuff that could be used for competiton. As a performer, Dave Awl seems acutely aware of the aural beauty of his language, not just how it sounds inside your own head.

...buy it already! And prepare yourself for that wonderful tickling sensation that is the stimulation of your grey matter, in a way you've not experienced before. Genius.