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Open Books: Events
June 16, 2009 07:30 PM
JOSHUA BECKMAN
There’s not much narrative in Joshua Beckman’s fifth collection of poems, Take It ($14 Wave Books), but there is most definitely a narrator -- a voice captivating in language and thought that can puff along with antiquated mannerisms and then deflate itself with a contemporary sharpness. At times a quirky echo of centuries earlier letters or travel diaries, this compulsively readable book presents an observer of, well, humanity -- and the speaker most prominent among the observed. The poems are intimate and inclusive despite their often unexplained or clearly whimsical locales and participants. Through this vigorous voice (voices?) comes a fresh, tender poetry -- “Packs of boar were trampling in the / moonlight some needle or piece of shit / that the earth needed pushed into it. / God has made this hotel in his image. / The fluctuation of life. Yes. Yes, / I understand folly, we’re the creatures / he explained that to.”
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