Black Aperture: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets) 1st Edition

by Matt Rasmussen (Author)

40 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0807150863

ISBN-10: 080715086X

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In his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother's suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In "Outgoing," the speaker erases his brother's answering machine message to save his family from "the shame of dead you / answering calls." In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, "a flower / of smoldering filaments." A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, "a tinfoil lake," "vegetables / dying in the crisper." Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Black Aperture" addresses, with meticulous balance, a single event from multiple directions. Autobiographical, speculative, imaginal, at times bitterly comic, often lyrically surreal, Matt Rasmussen's transformative poems look outward they are built on the observable leaf, field, hand, bird, and act. But this book's central task is the alchemizing of experience by language: the subject here is the suicide of a brother. What cannot be altered remains; yet by changing saying, seeing is also made wider, more openly porous. The liberations of tongue, word, and conception held in these poems restore the possibility-sense that's as essential to us as oxygen, when a person stands in the chambers of unacceptable loss. --Jane Hirshfield

About the Author

Matt Rasmussen's poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, and at Poets.org. A founding coeditor of Birds, LLC, a small, independent poetry press, he is a 2012 McKnight Artist Fellow and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College.

Product details

Series: Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
Paperback: 72 pages
Publisher: LSU Press; 1 edition (May 13, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080715086X
ISBN-13: 978-0807150863
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 40 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #737 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > American Literature
- #2354 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #59797 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

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"Your Life/Was Just A Doorway,/And Hovering Above You/A Red Voice Urging/EXIT.

January 15, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Black Aperture lives up to the hype it has garnered. Rasmussen explores his brother's tragic suicide in Faulkner-esque perspective shifts, moving closer and farther with his linguistic lens to the actual event, its aftermath and the moments preceding it. Honestly, Jane Hirshfeld best captures what Rasmussen is about on the back of this book: "the subject here is the suicide of a brother. What cannot be altered remains; yet by changing saying, seeing is also made wider, more openly porous. The liberations of tongue, word, and conception...restore the possibility-sense."

With each poem, Rasmussen moves closer to acceptance and further from understanding. This discursive movement culminates in the penultimate poem, "Reverse Suicide" in which, taking a page out of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five, Rasmussen reverses the film of his brother's suicide; leaves "fall up" to the trees and we're back in a familial Eden. But courageously and perfectly, this reversal can't last. So the collection ends with the wonderful "A Horse Grazes In My Shadow," in which the speaker/Rasmussen prays for both the annihilation and purifying of his self: "I wish the god of this place/would put me in its mouth/until I dissolve, until/the field doesn't end/and I am broken down/like a rifle,/swabbed clean."

Absolutely wonderful.

4 people found this helpful

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Incredible Contemporary Poetry

October 15, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a themed book of poems in three distinct sections chronicling the effect of a brothers suicide on the authors life. It is written with an astonishing precision that is full of longing, beauty, laughter, sadness, and despair. The images and words choices are often brilliant, vivid, and unique.
Section I begins very strongly. Surprisingly to me, the high quality of the poems began to taper off noticeably by the end of the section, a bit of a let down considering this is a 60 page poetry book. On the other hand, Section II, Elegy in X Parts, is so beautifully written it more than makes up for the momentary dip in quality, and the strong current of the work continues into Section III to finish out the aching beauty of this collection.
Slight inconsistencies notwithstanding, Rasmussen is a prodigiously talented writer, and this is one of the finest and most moving collections of contemporary poetry I've read. Highly recommended!

One person found this helpful

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Aperture as Hole and Light Source

February 7, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

When reading Matt Rasmussen's poetry collection, Black Aperture, it's important to remember that the word "aperture" means more than a hole. It's also a space that light passes through. Perhaps stemming from the imagined bullet holes in the body of Rasmussen's brother, a suicide, images of holes appear in many guises. But it's the places where the light pours through the space that elevates this collection above the merely good. The milk that pours through the brother's body in the midst of the refrigerator light. The flashlight in the mouth of the dead brother creates "a coin of light [that] hovers / like the miniature sun." The power of the poet's imagination becomes strongest when, in "Reverse Suicide," he tells the suicide story in reverse order, hence bringing the brother back to life and the bullet back into their father's gun.

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Floored me again and again

May 21, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book kicked my ass so hard. It wouldn't stop. Usually the middle of a book of poems is the weakest, and in this book the middle section might be the strongest. Brilliant poems.

3 people found this helpful

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Exemplary and brave voice in contemporary American poetry

November 8, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Matt Rasmussen's Black Aperture approaches the subject of suicide in a way that is clipped down to a bare essential—observation. The role of perspective in Black Aperture is shifted, multidirectional, and unwavering in its vantage point. Also, we are witness to the grief that breathes amid a silence violently and momentously disrupted on each occasion, each poem.

These poems are vulnerable, brave, and resonating like the click-photo snap sound of an aperture in a quiet, dimming room. Beautiful, outstanding, and inspiring collection of poems.

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DEFT HANDLING of a PAINFUL SUBJECT

December 21, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

No wonder this has been nominated for awards.

This is quality writing to admire and learn from.

I believe the subject is one that needs to be addressed. For this I thank the author.

2 people found this helpful

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You'll love it!

November 16, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A wonderful and moving collection of poems! I am so glad I purchased this collection; the poetry is beautiful, and it was quite an experience to witness this poet's struggle with his grief.

2 people found this helpful

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How many times can you read a poetry book cover ...

July 20, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

How many times can you read a poetry book cover to cover and then read it again....and then read it out loud pacing the house...all the time wondering how....how...how....come?

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