The Hotel Oneira
August Kleinzahler
Farrar Strauss
Giroux
New York, NY
© Copyright 2013 by August Kleinzahler
Hardbound, $24,
89 pages
Review by Zvi A.
Sesling
What makes a poet
memorable to me is the ability to make me sit up and feel a wow moment, an idea,
a poetic line or a usage of words that says to me this poet is unique.
August
Kleinzahler is that kind of poet. In
three previous poetry volumes of his that I have read I have had those moments
when I get excited about what I am reading.
In his latest
book Kleinzahler produces many wow moments for me. Take for example
A History of Western Music: Chapter 63:
They follow you
around the store, these power ballads,
you and the women
with their shopping carts filled with eggs,
cookies, 90 fl.
oz. containers of anti-bacterial dishwashing liquid,
buffeting you
sideways like a punishing wind.
You stand, almost
hypnotized, as the rosticceria counter
staring at the
braised lamb shanks, the patterns
those tiny,
coagulated rivulets of fat make,
both knees about
to go out from under you.
So many images in
the supermarket. We have all experienced
these moments, though I must admit I have never spent much time looking at
coagulated rivulets of fat, though I have been buffeted sideways like a
punishing wind. This has been
particularly true in a Whole Foods where they seem to push the carts the way
they drive their cars—blindly and with abandon.
.
Then there is
this scene from Hollyhocks In The Fog
in which a reader who has spent time at a seaside shore might relate:
Every evening
smoke blows in from the sea, sea smoke, ghost vapor
of lost frigates,
sunken destroyers
It hangs over the
eucalyptus grove,
cancels the
hills,
curls around
garbage outside the lesbian bar.
Kleinzahler is a
favorite because not only do the images come with super glue so they stick in
your mind and warp your senses, but because the poems themselves are written to
make you reread and thoroughly enjoy them.
And there are the
memorable lines like: my name is on everyone’s lips:/-August, they say,/with resignation and dismay, pulling up their
collars against the wind.
Or: Two turkey vultures, wings unfurled like
spinnakers,/dry and groom themselves,
Hotel Oneira is
out this week by the author of nine books of poetry, winner of the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep and the
2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sleeping
It Off In Rapid City.
There is much to
discover in Kleinzahler’s poetry: individual lines, couplets and whole poems. It is highly recommended.
_________________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene
Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams
Publisher, Muddy River Books
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8
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