Death Obscura book review
There's a review of my book, Death Obscura, up on the current issue of
"The first poem ("The Mandolin") in Rick Bursky's comic, tender, elegiac, and surreal second collection, Death Obscura, begins "This was the night the police chased the musicians from the roof . . . ."
The Innisfree Poetry Journal.Take a look if you're so inclined.
"The first poem ("The Mandolin") in Rick Bursky's comic, tender, elegiac, and surreal second collection, Death Obscura, begins "This was the night the police chased the musicians from the roof . . . ."
And we're off on a romp through Bursky's fecund imagination, as if swept away with the Beatles from their 1969 rooftop concert. ..."
Workshop at UCLA Extension
I'm teaching an intermediate poetry workshop at UCLA Extension on Thursday nights starting April 19th. Hope to see you there!
Poetry Economics
The economics of writing poetry are unfortunate. Most journals don’t pay poets for their poems. Most journals don’t make money. Most of the time all the poet gets is a free contributor’s copy. No complaints here. Though when I say most journals don’t pay what I mean they don’t pay money. Those journals, and there are many, pay with respect for the writer and the work. I’ve been thrilled to have my poems in many of them and even continue to support those journals with a subscription. But recently I’ve had a poem appear in an anthology, Wait a Minute, I Have to Take Off My Bra, that's taking advantage of the writer’s who made the book possible. I was happy to let them publish my poem, didn’t even occur to me that I should be paid. When I saw the book was being sold on Amazon I sent them an email asking when I could expect a contributor’s copy. Their reply, it would be months before they sent contributors' copies, and this was followed by an email saying that I could buy books at a discount. Hmmm, they have time to sell the book but don’t have time for the people who made the book possible. Sending contributor’s copies shouldn’t be a troubling chore when it’s the only form of payment. The book has been selling for months. If and when they send a contributor’s copy I’ll let you know. Let’s start a pool and see how long it takes. I’ll send the book to whoever gets closest.
Two poems in the fall issue of the Disquieting Muses Quarterly
Two of my poems, "The Cenotaph" and "The New," are up at the Disquieting Muses Quarterly. Click here: www.dmqreview.com/11Fall/index2.html and it'll take you to the table of contents. From there simply click on my name. Hope you like the poems.
"Poetry just like painting is something that you have to give your entire life to – and that includes all your life." Jim Harrison
Poetry Reading In San Diego
Reading in San Diego this weekend, Sunday, Oct 9, 3pm.
Open Door Books, 4761 Class Street, San Diego.
Once again, I will try not to be boring.
Open Door Books, 4761 Class Street, San Diego.
Once again, I will try not to be boring.
Inteview with The Coachella Review
Lori Davis interviewed me for The Coachella Reiview:
http://www.thecoachellareview.com/blog/?p=692
http://www.thecoachellareview.com/blog/?p=692
Prose Poem Workshop
What happens when poets feel the need to rebel against the tyranny of the line break? They signup for my one day prose poem workshop at UCLA Extension. It’s on Saturday, October first. I’ll be fun. Hope to see you there.
Reading at the Skirball w/ UCLA Extension
The Aerodynamics on PoemFlow
My poem "The Aerodynamics" is on PoemFlow today, (May 29th) poem: http://www.poemflow.com/1070
PoemFlow is really an app for your smartphone. But you can see it online.
PoemFlow is really an app for your smartphone. But you can see it online.
Book review of Death Obscura by Victoria Chang
Book review of Death Obscura
by Victoria Chang and posted at On The Seawall.
The url is http://www.ronslate.com/nineteen_poets_recommend_new_recent_titles
The second book I want to recommend is Death Obscura by Los Angeles-based poet Rick Bursky. At first glimpse, Bursky’s poems might seem deceptively simple, colloquial, even a bit light, to use a word that would be a slap to the face in any poetry workshop. But any careful reader who digs a little deeper and continues reading Bursky’s poems will discover that his poems are anything but light. Bursky’s poems use levity as a way to manage the darker aspects of life, of living. His poems are simultaneously funny and sad—if there was a way to bottle a stand-up comedian and a mortician, Bursky would be it. The poems in Death Obscura are death-obsessed, as in “Cardiology” where the poet begins with humor and ends much differently:
Seven years ago I bought a pair of crutches,
just in case. Each Sunday morning I practiced
walking with them, bent my left leg back
from the knee as if the ankle had been mangled
while stepping onto an escalator....
Twice each week the phone rings
at three in the morning. I never answer.
Someone is practicing sad news, I’m certain.
An oak will one day grow from my heart.
No amount of practice can prepare you
for the first push through dirt.
Bursky’s poems also evoke a sense of longing, whether romantic or not. The speakers in Death Obscura are always waiting for something to happen, longing for a different life without loneliness, as in “The Waiting”:
Standing in front of the toilet urinating, I lowered my head and my glasses fell into the yellowed water. So much for beauty. There are parts of ourselves we don’t want to touch, stories told in small gestures. Using the tips of two fingers I fished them out, let them soak in a sink of cold water. That was over a year ago. The past smells like a lost dog. The past is so damned tired, following us around. The past can be forgotten for a while, like you can forget you’re wearing glasses …
Bursky’s poems may have thematic preferences across Death Obscura, but he never dwells or lingers too long within his poems, especially within poems that focus on love and relationships. The reader only receives small scenes and we are left puzzled, in the same way the speaker is often left puzzled. Bursky captures the mysteriousness of love through these small glimpses, as in “Heroine in Repose”, here in its entirety:
I wasn’t sure if she kissed me
or simply used her lips
to push my face away. Yes,
the moist warmth was enjoyable,
but when my head was forced
back over the top of the sofa
the intention grayed.
Earlier that day I planned
to quit my job and pursue
a career writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs.
But if I couldn’t distinguish
between a kiss and a push
what chance do I have
or writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs?
After the kiss, and I prefer
to think it was a kiss,
she sank back into the pillows
and watched me
out of the corner of her eye.
In the end, what I love about Rick Bursky’s poems is his ability to take life seriously, yet to poke fun at himself and his travails. So many poets focus solely on the dark (I am quite familiar with that terrain myself). And rarely do poets inject humor into their poems, a task that poets seem to know is fraught with danger and failure. Bursky uses humor successfully to counter the darkness in his poems, in the same way that comedians use humor to break discomfort. He is a master of this and poetry is fortunate to have him.
[Death Obscura by Rick Bursky. Published November 16, 2011. 88 pages, $14.95 paperback]
by Victoria Chang and posted at On The Seawall.
The url is http://www.ronslate.com/nineteen_poets_recommend_new_recent_titles
The second book I want to recommend is Death Obscura by Los Angeles-based poet Rick Bursky. At first glimpse, Bursky’s poems might seem deceptively simple, colloquial, even a bit light, to use a word that would be a slap to the face in any poetry workshop. But any careful reader who digs a little deeper and continues reading Bursky’s poems will discover that his poems are anything but light. Bursky’s poems use levity as a way to manage the darker aspects of life, of living. His poems are simultaneously funny and sad—if there was a way to bottle a stand-up comedian and a mortician, Bursky would be it. The poems in Death Obscura are death-obsessed, as in “Cardiology” where the poet begins with humor and ends much differently:
Seven years ago I bought a pair of crutches,
just in case. Each Sunday morning I practiced
walking with them, bent my left leg back
from the knee as if the ankle had been mangled
while stepping onto an escalator....
Twice each week the phone rings
at three in the morning. I never answer.
Someone is practicing sad news, I’m certain.
An oak will one day grow from my heart.
No amount of practice can prepare you
for the first push through dirt.
Bursky’s poems also evoke a sense of longing, whether romantic or not. The speakers in Death Obscura are always waiting for something to happen, longing for a different life without loneliness, as in “The Waiting”:
Standing in front of the toilet urinating, I lowered my head and my glasses fell into the yellowed water. So much for beauty. There are parts of ourselves we don’t want to touch, stories told in small gestures. Using the tips of two fingers I fished them out, let them soak in a sink of cold water. That was over a year ago. The past smells like a lost dog. The past is so damned tired, following us around. The past can be forgotten for a while, like you can forget you’re wearing glasses …
Bursky’s poems may have thematic preferences across Death Obscura, but he never dwells or lingers too long within his poems, especially within poems that focus on love and relationships. The reader only receives small scenes and we are left puzzled, in the same way the speaker is often left puzzled. Bursky captures the mysteriousness of love through these small glimpses, as in “Heroine in Repose”, here in its entirety:
I wasn’t sure if she kissed me
or simply used her lips
to push my face away. Yes,
the moist warmth was enjoyable,
but when my head was forced
back over the top of the sofa
the intention grayed.
Earlier that day I planned
to quit my job and pursue
a career writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs.
But if I couldn’t distinguish
between a kiss and a push
what chance do I have
or writing romantic novels
that would be confused as memoirs?
After the kiss, and I prefer
to think it was a kiss,
she sank back into the pillows
and watched me
out of the corner of her eye.
In the end, what I love about Rick Bursky’s poems is his ability to take life seriously, yet to poke fun at himself and his travails. So many poets focus solely on the dark (I am quite familiar with that terrain myself). And rarely do poets inject humor into their poems, a task that poets seem to know is fraught with danger and failure. Bursky uses humor successfully to counter the darkness in his poems, in the same way that comedians use humor to break discomfort. He is a master of this and poetry is fortunate to have him.
[Death Obscura by Rick Bursky. Published November 16, 2011. 88 pages, $14.95 paperback]
Death Obscura Review from Booklist
Bursky’s unflinching honesty is certain to resonate with readers as he crystallizes the fleeting moments of life and then cuts to the quick with both precision of language and depth of thought in poems that are at once unsettling and comforting. The collection begins with snapshots of the everyday, then expands into a series of prose poems about death and the supernatural. A woman returns from the dead, another writes her own obituary, and the past smells like a wet dog. Bursky manages to be otherworldly without being inaccessible, somehow making strange phenomena feel all too familiar. The theme of death swirls throughout, yet the poems do not dwell on darkness. Rather, they are revelatory, pulling back the curtain to illuminate troubling and mysterious facets of life we usually choose to keep in the shadows. --Alizah Salario
See You At AWP
If you're going to AWP drop by the Sarabande table (A29, A30) Thursday at 1 p.m., Ill be signing Death Obscura. See you there.
Interview
I was interviewed by Beth Spencer of Bear Star Press. You can read it on her blog: www.theresabearthere.blogspot.com
The Inheritance
The Inheritance
The only known use of a Komodo dragon in war by the United States was in the battle for Okinawa. A ten foot long, 300 pound lizard named Syracuse was trained by Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Barry Fiske. We don’t know how he trained the dragon. Though we do know Fiske’s grandfather was an itinerant preacher who became a lion tamer. We do know, between whip cracks the elder Fiske shouted bible quotes, know the chair other’s kept between themselves and lions is where elder Fiske sat and read sermons to lions. In the Fifth Marine Regiment’s morning report of May 6, 1945, “… Staff Sergeant Fiske led a dragon on a raid against an enemy position at 0200 hours …” Syracuse took the foot of a sleeping Japanese lieutenant before crawling back into the night, bringing the foot, still in its boot, to Fiske. A man in San Diego, California, went 263 hours without sleep, no hallucinations. Japanese soldiers couldn’t duplicate this feat, but fear of the dragon kept them from sleeping for days, deteriorating combat effectiveness. No way of knowing if the Japanese believed Syracuse was acting on orders. The prehistoric nature of fear is handed down the generations. We know Fiske inherited the bible, whip and chair which he carried on Okinawa as talismans. At night mortars exploded above the trees, galaxies growing and disappearing in the black sky. Fiske read the bible to Syracuse at the bottom of their foxhole. After the war, Fiske left the Marine Corps, moved to Los Angeles and became a plumber. In a postcard to one of his sons, he wrote, “a man can make a life with a bible, whip and chair.”
The only known use of a Komodo dragon in war by the United States was in the battle for Okinawa. A ten foot long, 300 pound lizard named Syracuse was trained by Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Barry Fiske. We don’t know how he trained the dragon. Though we do know Fiske’s grandfather was an itinerant preacher who became a lion tamer. We do know, between whip cracks the elder Fiske shouted bible quotes, know the chair other’s kept between themselves and lions is where elder Fiske sat and read sermons to lions. In the Fifth Marine Regiment’s morning report of May 6, 1945, “… Staff Sergeant Fiske led a dragon on a raid against an enemy position at 0200 hours …” Syracuse took the foot of a sleeping Japanese lieutenant before crawling back into the night, bringing the foot, still in its boot, to Fiske. A man in San Diego, California, went 263 hours without sleep, no hallucinations. Japanese soldiers couldn’t duplicate this feat, but fear of the dragon kept them from sleeping for days, deteriorating combat effectiveness. No way of knowing if the Japanese believed Syracuse was acting on orders. The prehistoric nature of fear is handed down the generations. We know Fiske inherited the bible, whip and chair which he carried on Okinawa as talismans. At night mortars exploded above the trees, galaxies growing and disappearing in the black sky. Fiske read the bible to Syracuse at the bottom of their foxhole. After the war, Fiske left the Marine Corps, moved to Los Angeles and became a plumber. In a postcard to one of his sons, he wrote, “a man can make a life with a bible, whip and chair.”
Dean Young
Dean Young, quake-in-your-boots poet and wonderful, kind human, needs a new heart. Please consider donating if you can.
http://www.transplants.org/donate/deanyoung
http://www.transplants.org/donate/deanyoung
The Scarifice
The Scarifice
It was one of those rare tap dancing accidents – I broke both feet while transitioning from a Cincinnati time step to a maxiford with toe. As I love the sound of metal on wood floating through a quiet theater, I was rehearsing in the early morning, dancing next to the curtain where the sound is richer, muffled by the thick cloth. My feet tangled. I fell like a clown wearing bulbous red shoes rolling out of a car in a circus tent. A janitor who was about to begin mopping the aisles called for an ambulance. The driver was an amateur medical historian who had just authored an article on bone density in tap dancers and took me to Doctor Timothy Charlton, one of the few orthopedic surgeons in Los Angeles who specialize in tap dancing injuries. Doctor Charlton shook his head over the x-rays. The calcaneus in each foot pushed into the talus with such force that the nerve endings had been unalterably reversed. He had seen this many times, but only as a result of a faulty double stomp buck time step. My only hope of ever again dancing was for both feet to be amputated and sewn on the opposite leg. Doctor Charlton drew a foot on the x-ray showing me what my right foot would look like on my left leg. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I think people are admiring my shoes when they look down for a touch too long while standing next to me in an elevator. Sometimes I dream of that morning. They wheel me into the operating room. Gene Kelly is there wearing green scrubs. A mask covers the bottom of his face but I recognize his eyes. As he picks up a scalpel he begins to tap his foot and is soon doing a paddle roll. The doctors and nurses join in.
The Week of Harsh Holidays
(Originally published in the Hawaii Pacific Review, Hawaii Pacific University, Vol. 14, 2000.)
The Week of Harsh Holidays
Sunday: The Weatherman’s Holiday
In classical times this was the day
men consummated a threat and the season
changed. Bitter men call this Revenge Day.
Greeting cards are expected.
Monday: The Day of The Atoned Rock
Candles burn. Prayers end
with a name. Young girls secretly
relish this day: the possibility of aftermath.
Tuesday: Adulteress’s Day
Who wears a blindfold?
Who’s ear is cut off? Anonymous gifts.
Wednesday: The Festival of Catastrophe
Windows are covered with red crepe paper.
Babies born this day are named after hurricanes.
Lavish parties and dances are held.
Only fast music is played. When this holiday falls
on an even date people buy blankets.
Thursday: The Assassin’s Carnival
Parties and dances are also held,
though the music is louder. Promises are made.
Gifts are exchanged. Imagination
is under siege. Doors must remain open after
dark, even if no one is home.
Friday: Electrician’s Birthday
Only two traditions are practiced.
From midnight to midnight sleeping
is forbidden. What people do to stay awake
is unique. Written confessions
are sealed and left with relatives.
Saturday: The Biographer’s Sabbath.
Nothing to do with memoirs or survivors.
Families eat breakfast together. By noon,
a sigh of pity. Men are given a chance
to change their names. The lambs
are slaughtered for dinner.
The Week of Harsh Holidays
Sunday: The Weatherman’s Holiday
In classical times this was the day
men consummated a threat and the season
changed. Bitter men call this Revenge Day.
Greeting cards are expected.
Monday: The Day of The Atoned Rock
Candles burn. Prayers end
with a name. Young girls secretly
relish this day: the possibility of aftermath.
Tuesday: Adulteress’s Day
Who wears a blindfold?
Who’s ear is cut off? Anonymous gifts.
Wednesday: The Festival of Catastrophe
Windows are covered with red crepe paper.
Babies born this day are named after hurricanes.
Lavish parties and dances are held.
Only fast music is played. When this holiday falls
on an even date people buy blankets.
Thursday: The Assassin’s Carnival
Parties and dances are also held,
though the music is louder. Promises are made.
Gifts are exchanged. Imagination
is under siege. Doors must remain open after
dark, even if no one is home.
Friday: Electrician’s Birthday
Only two traditions are practiced.
From midnight to midnight sleeping
is forbidden. What people do to stay awake
is unique. Written confessions
are sealed and left with relatives.
Saturday: The Biographer’s Sabbath.
Nothing to do with memoirs or survivors.
Families eat breakfast together. By noon,
a sigh of pity. Men are given a chance
to change their names. The lambs
are slaughtered for dinner.
Reading at Beyond Baroque
I’ll be reading from my new book, Death Obscura at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, on Nov 5th a Friday night, 7:30. I'm reading with two other wonderful poets, Diane Martin and Millicent Borges Accardi. I think they charge seven bucks to get in, but it's well worth the price . Hope to see you there.
Here's one of the poems I'll be reading
The Silences
for Deborah
She didn’t speak for twenty-four hours.
This was the first silence she insisted on.
Everything she needed to say was stored
in the cupboard with the thin-lipped
wine glasses that we never used.
Though I don’t remember if she did
actually need to say anything.
The second silence was mine,
not a word for twenty-four hours.
I should have mentioned it earlier, this was her idea.
I should also mention this wasn’t meant to suggest
that she was tired of my voice,
at least this was the last thing she said
before saying nothing. I tossed everything
I needed to say in the corner of the bedroom
with the dirty laundry. And like the dirty laundry
it was soon cleaned. The third silence,
this silence, we shared. Remember,
this was her idea, not mine.
Mine was to sing to each other during sex.
Didn’t even have to be the same song.
I was planning on Italian folk songs.
Early rock and roll would have been her choice,
something by her favorite, The Del-Vikings.
The first time I disrobed for her
she sang, “who am I, the voodoo man;
who am I, the voodoo man.” Thus my guess
on what she would have sung.
But she preferred silence.