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Monday, June 02, 2008 at 07:30 PM
RAYMOND MCDANIEL
Raymond McDaniel follows his National Poetry Series Award-winning volume, Murder (a violet), with Saltwater Empire ($16 Coffee House), a book-length exploration of New Orleans and the tropical South that he began before Hurricane Katrina and finished in the wake of its environmental devastation and harsh social revelation. A native of Florida, Mr. McDaniel writes with the biting clarity of one who knows his topic intimately. Like the landscape and culture that are the focus of these lyric poems, his language can be lush and jarring, beautiful and disturbing. Class, race, history, geography, all come tumbling through a variety of voices. Some are straightforward --
I come from all over New Orleans. What I feel needs to be said / about this is that everything was done wrong. Some elliptically evocative -- To know what element of air is unruly rain. // What of your weight is wept or lost to sweat. // What water can be caught in a photograph folded half / and half again. This is a book mournful, angry, and praising -- We tangle our hands in our hair.... We suture the city with celebration.
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