![\"LPASLcover_sm\"](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/LPASLcover_sm.jpg\")
<\/a>Meg Day\u2019s debut collection of poems, Last Psalm at Sea Level<\/em> reveals the realities, at base, of the scientific age in which we find ourselves located: the clash between a quantum and a classical mechanical understanding of nature.<\/p>\nThat is to say, we can no longer situate ourselves; the very matter of which we are composed is both here and there, wave and particle. Einstein heaved the first volley, teaching us that matter is actually energy, but even he was unprepared for the wavering dislocation that quantum mechanics has introduced into our understanding of the world. And we don\u2019t understand it\u2014we simply haven\u2019t the words.<\/p>\n
Last Psalm<\/em> shows us in just this state: clinging to the language of traditional understanding of the self, as to Newtonian mechanics, while faced with the fact that the underpinnings of our consciousness\u2014not to mention the terminology, the very words we use to understand ourselves\u2014are fundamentally unstable. The poems show this statelessness and explore the alienation of the terms we usually associate with our selves: our age, our gender, our sexuality.<\/p>\n What happens when two fundamentally opposing worldviews collide? In a word, violence. In manner and subject matter, Day\u2019s poems are alive to the brutality shown to the alienated\u2014the othering, the creaturing, until we can rationalize the terrorizing and humiliation of our fellow humans. It\u2019s an old tale, sure. But the poems are also alive to resistance and challenge along with the commitment to the disenfranchised (or the never-enfranchised). In short, these are not poems focused on the aesthetic. If we take Horace\u2019s word, that art should instruct and delight, these poems clearly tilt toward instruction. Together they triangulate a rhetoric whose vagueness is as integral and native to these ideas as an electron cloud.<\/p>\n It is appropriate, then, that it would be night in this book. It is dark and cold. We are often just awakening, bleary, trapped momentarily in the dusk before consciousness. We begin in \u201cThere\u2019s Snow in the West\u201d in this dark, and even a light bulb is veiled:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026the wasp nest<\/p>\n swallowing the bulb<\/p>\n in the porch light has gone<\/p>\n leaden & each night the asphalt<\/p>\n is honeycombed in its half-<\/p>\n lidded light<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The poem operates as an invocation, setting a tone from which the poems never waver, one of deep longing: \u201cI am not praying. \/ I\u2019m longing: Please.\u201d<\/p>\n Not praying, to be clear. \u201cGod\u201d and \u201cLord,\u201d then, become figures of vagary. The next poem, \u201cHymn to a Landlocked God,\u201d presents an agnostic prayer to find faith, even to be forced to it:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Make me a barn<\/p>\n with a spine so swayed<\/p>\n it pulls back my neck<\/p>\n to crane toward the sky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is a deeply violent image, one later repeated in \u201cBatter My Heart, Transgender\u2019d God\u201d: \u201ckeep me on all fours. \/ My knees, bring me to them; force my head to bow again.\u201d It would take a human in great pain to submit to such a thing, but omnipotence would be the only thing able to reconcile the battling selves, where enslavement would be a welcome last resort toward some kind of integration.<\/p>\n The title with its apostrophized \u201cTransgender\u2019d\u201d brings us to an important point: a word, which surely didn\u2019t exist when the convention of apostrophizing words to bring down a line\u2019s syllable count did, that operates as a sly metaphor for the new seen through the lens of the old. And inherent here is the form-play Day engages in throughout Last Psalm<\/em>.<\/p>\n It demands attention. One could look at it from Robert Creeley\u2019s statement that \u201cform is never more than an extension of content\u201d and get a lot of purchase from an inspection of the formal aspects of the book. The problem is that it is a collection of poems that reads very much like a collection of exercises in form, none of them terribly impressive feats of formal skill within any of the variety that Day here arrays. We have several sonnets and pseudo-sonnets, a sestina, modified terza rima pieces, aubades, blank verse, a ghazal, among probably many more, and one is reminded of Pound\u2019s dictum that technique is a test of sincerity: \u201cif a thing isn\u2019t worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t take the quote too far, but Pound\u2019s point inheres: what is the point of a loosely composed sonnet, and does it do its subject justice?<\/p>\n And it is here that we should perhaps focus most keenly. The poems in form seem to use form very loosely. How is one to interpret a ghazal (\u201cGhazal for Finally Leaving What Has Already Left\u201d) that lacks the meter and internal rhyme so essential to the form? It is a ghazal in name only, one that on inspection is actually a poem of unevenly metered couplets that more or less repeats some version of the word \u201cbed\u201d at the end of each second line.<\/p>\n The sonnets, too, are loosely metered and rhymed. In the sonnet \u201cAlone with Patrick,\u201d rhymes like \u201ctadpoling\/taking\u201d and \u201cpeel\/mouthful\u201d don\u2019t take, and they raise questions of purpose; e.g. if we\u2019re not going to let the dictates of form get in the way of a good line, or a good sentence, have we not abandoned the form?<\/p>\n Can this be read as working against form, using it, as Day does the word \u201ctransgender\u2019d,\u201d ironically? A case could be made. But the tone of the book, one of absolute sincerity, would argue against it. More likely, the symmetry and patterning with which the majority of poems in Last Psalm <\/em>are involved suggests that the formal is deeply important, claiming old modes to buttress the ethos of the poems\u2019 arguments. And that would make it doubly important, it seems to me, to compose these to Dante\u2019s perfection.<\/p>\n The triple sonnet \u201cWhen They Took Her Breasts, She Dreamt of Icarus\u201d is a microcosm for these concerns, but ultimately the poem is a deeply moving exploration of further alienation, from gender, from sex. \u201cI never wanted to be less woman. But I was \/ more monster than man, a leviathan in gauze.\u201d Icarus becomes a metaphor for being high, literally and figuratively, a winged morphine haze, commenting savagely on the speaker\u2019s state: \u201cYou\u2019ll be lighter \/ without all that weight\u2026<\/em>\u201d and \u201cIf you relapse \/ it\u2019ll be the last time<\/em>\u2026\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ve always said hubris was stored in the chest<\/em>\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n It is not coincidence if the character of Icarus here reminds us of Anne Carson\u2019s insouciant gay man-child Geryon in her Autobiography of Red<\/em>, and Red Doc><\/em>. Carson\u2019s work explores identical themes of gender and femininity, often couching them in ancient forms or using ancient tropes. \u201cOn the Day That He Goes, I Will\u201d is a poem that uses a similar form to Carson\u2019s \u201cBlended Text,\u201d a poem that can be read across a typographical caesura that creates two columns of text, or down those columns, so<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your belongings\u2014\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stripey, a whoopee cushion\u2014my heart,<\/p>\n stowed in secret \u2014will lurch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 pitching, heaving, tumbling\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n can be read \u201cYour belongings\u2014 \/ stowed in secret,\u201d or \u201cmy heart, \/ stowed in secret.\u201d It\u2019s a method that could bear fruit if it were explored further. The problem is that no form in the book is fully explored, and it argues with the possibility of integrating the subject of most of these poems with a form for them that so often they seem externally prompted: the form seems not to be integral to the content.<\/p>\n Day is at her best working outside them. \u201cWhat I Will Tell His Daughter, When She\u2019s Old Enough to Ask\u201d is an example. The poem deserves more space than I can quote here, but the situation is simply harrowing. It starts with the impending<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When they removed the yellow tape<\/p>\n from the doorway, our neckless birds<\/p>\n still sat, unfolding, on the tabletop\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n and proceeds to tell the story of an unnamed \u201chim\u201d in the poem sending the speaker to the hardware store for fishing line to hang their \u201cattempts at a thousand\u201d origami cranes. The speaker \u201cwhistled the eleven short blocks \/\/ back from the hardware while he folded his apologies \/ & suspended himself from the ceiling of cranes.\u201d The understated horror fascinates even as one feels one\u2019s schadenfreude<\/em> bite.<\/p>\n There is much more to say and examine here. That should be a testament to the complexities raised in this book. Ultimately, one\u2019s enjoyment of it will depend on how comfortable one is in the dark places Day puts us. It is a state of destabilization, but ultimately a state for which we have no word. That is what metaphor, what poems are for. Last Psalm at Sea Level<\/em> shows that poetry\u2014\u201clanguage charged with meaning\u201d in Pound\u2019s terms\u2014is the best, the only<\/em>, place we can hope to find direction to stable footing.<\/p>\n Last Day at Sea Level<\/em> \u00a0 Meg Day\u2019s debut collection of poems, Last Psalm at Sea Level reveals the realities, at base, of the scientific age in which we find ourselves located: the clash between a quantum and a classical mechanical understanding of nature. That is to say, we can no longer situate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":28147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/LPASLcover_sm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 07:24:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28142"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39813,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28142\/revisions\/39813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMeg Day<\/em>
\n72 pp<\/em>
\nBarrow Street Press (October 2014)<\/em>
\n$16.95<\/p>\n<\/a>Meg Day<\/span><\/b> is the 2015-2016 recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a 2013 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street 2014, winner of the 2013 Barrow Street First Book Prize in Poetry), When All You Have Is a Hammer (winner of the 2012 Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest), and We Can\u2019t Read This (winner of the 2013 Gazing Grain Chapbook Contest). Selected for Best New Poets 2013 and winner of the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award, Meg has also received awards and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Hedgebrook, Squaw Valley Writers, the Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities, and the International Queer Arts Festival. Meg is currently a PhD candidate, Steffensen-Cannon Fellow, & Point Foundation Scholar in Poetry & Disability Poetics at the University of Utah. www.megday.com<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"