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| Ms. Grace Cavalieri |
This is the lovely and gracious Poetry Book Reviewer, Grace Cavalieri. She has a monthly column with the above-bannered magazine called Poetry Book Exemplars, further indicated by pertinent year and month. This month's is called 2018 October Poetry Book Exemplars, and I have the amazing great fortune to have had my new collection, Horn Section All Day Every Day, selected as one of October 2018's outstanding books for review. It's a thing like delicious freezing ice cream mouth shock when I think of the magnificent company my book keeps among its fellow exemplars. Listen, and I don't go around prefacing sentences with single words like "Listen" or "Look" at all, ever, but this time, this time, let me tell you....
It's funny, because in Ms. Cavalieri's review you can see down below--I reprint the whole thing for you, that is the size of my overwhelmed state--she has a sentence that is more than precious. She says, "This girl's got game...." Girl. I love that. There's something about me that people sense doesn't get old. I can't deny it. It's not a deniable thing. I wear the lingerie. I dance the dance. Heck, I'm the one pulled over getting the speed ticket. And tomorrow's my birthday. I can't help it, it's my favorite day of the year. It's a very special day to me! Yours should be to you! Sixth decade and counting. Harry Winston, you can keep that flawless 15c. Burmese ruby. This is a birthday gift priceless to me. I'm overthrilled about this review because something like this has never come my way during my poetry career--my plus-forty-year poetry career.
So I'll sing a little while, and then I'll get back down to lacing up these word-boot Redwings, and climb on up those word-trees, have me some more looksee around.
Thank you for all time, Miss Grace. They named you exceedingly well.
Horn Section All Day Every Day by Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow. Salmon Poetry. 80 pages.
“Super Dan,” a hero from outer space, comes to Edlow’s
consciousness to observe our humanity. These thought shards are in the form of
“Super Dan Comics Question Box Series,” and they number 88 poems. Super Dan
poems are interspersed with others: riffs on music, animals, brothers, baton
twirling, policemen, drummers, and even a love poem to bison. What I’m telling
you is this is encyclopedic high holiday where Edlow romps with language, risks
everything, uses dialogue as if she invented idiom, and writes with high-octane
energy.
Edlow houses her imagination in couplets, haiku, narratives and
all respectable versification, but the end result is the same. The words burst
at the seams with insistence to be original and incorrigible and seem to say if
poetry isn’t fun, who needs it. This poet is in her own lane, and manages
structural success with unconventional methods. It’s intense reading because
Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow believes velocity is trajectory. The girl’s got
game. She brings it, and her verbal connections are skill, not coincidence.
Baton
Twirler With Horns
Only the
trumpeters and Sharon
drink the
peppermint schnapps
under the
bleachers.
Good
thing half-time is over.
Two-inch
white-heeled go-go boots
on a
spongy grass field don’t jive
with a
flying metal rod
above the
head. Keeping the free hand
L-shaped,
and pretty all the time,
the
non-stop smile even as her head is
thrown
back to gauge
shimmering
rotation against the overcast
sky. Blue
skies disorient the game out of her.
Through a
soft chilly schnapps fog
her mind
revives the crown of her routine—
the
forward bending at the cinched, spangled waist,
her mom
rising out of her seat. Dad, silent.
She
catches the descending baton
with her
right shoulder blade. The wand jumps high, still
in
revolution and on the arsis
she grabs
it from the air like an oriole. Then kicks on.
Which is
when the tassels finally get their due.
[end of review]
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