{"id":55233,"date":"2020-11-29T12:44:32","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T18:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=55233"},"modified":"2020-12-03T21:27:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T03:27:29","slug":"wit-wonder-and-wisdom-in-rob-carneys-facts-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wit-wonder-and-wisdom-in-rob-carneys-facts-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"Wit, Wonder and Wisdom in Rob Carney’s “Facts + Figures”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Rob Carney\u2019s\u00a0Book of Sharks<\/i>\u00a0(winner of the 2019 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry) was a ferocious tour-de-force. The poems in\u00a0Facts + Figures<\/i>\u00a0are more gentle, though not entirely toothless. Carney, whose poetry is grounded in the re-enchantment of the world, begins the collection with a sequence titled \u201cThirteen Facts,\u201d but he falls off the fact-check wagon almost immediately. By the second poem, Oregon\u2019s Crater Lake already has an anthropomorphic voice that ponders, \u201cWas I warmer when I used to love the sun, or always cold like this?\u201d It\u2019s characteristic of Carney\u2019s writing that his poetic inventions seem just as true as the facts that inspired them. In another poem from the sequence, a storm front moving over the Wasatch Front makes him think, \u201cThat clouds aren\u2019t just one mass, for starters. And second, where bison come from.\u201d\u00a0In a classic Carney twist, the bison descend from the sky in order to graze on prairie grass fed by rain and snowmelt. But isn\u2019t this also a fact? Without rainwater, prairie bison really could not exist. Taken as a whole, the \u201cThirteen Facts\u201d sequence is about drought and wildfire, and so at a larger scope it is also about climate change affecting the ecology of the American West. Ever the teacher, Carney ends the poem by assigning homework. Suppose one morning a deconstruction crew arrived to dismantle the built environment and restore it to a wild state? Professor Carney prompts you to continue thoughts that arise in the poem: \u201cThis is your midterm, and yes it\u2019s still due Monday. What weather is best for a morning like that, sunny, rainy or overcast? In 623 words, explain your reasons why.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Carney\u2019s poems are deceptively simple. The straightforward language draws you in with storytelling, humor and a kind of faux naivet\u00e9 and then shifts direction. You think he\u2019s played out an idea but it pops up again in another poem and another context, giving thematic coherence to the whole collection. The homework assignment reappears in the contents of a lost backpack “scattered like leaves across my yard\u201d by an (imaginary?) third-grader named\u00a0Jes\u00fas, whose poorly spelled report on space exploration explains, \u201cFact 1.\u00a0Utah look so much lik Marz that Marshun Moovy\u2019s make there moovy here. Lookit up.\u201d To Carney\u2019s delight, Jes\u00fas has focused his childish obsession with outer space on a heart-stopping comparison between a spaceship and an origami swan.\u00a0 \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the swan, that anchor in their story,\u201d Carney wonders, \u201cwould it stick? Would anyone hold still and listen?\u201d \u00a0<\/i>Now that Carney has drawn attention to the origami swan, it\u2019s impossible to ignore. Can it really be true that scientists fold origami spaceships and send them to Mars? Carney\u2019s mythmaking is such that the reader feels compelled to follow Jes\u00fas\u00a0advice and look it up. Sure enough, \u00a0NASA scientists, inspired by the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, have built spacecraft designed to unfold like flower petals once they enter zero gravity.<\/h4>\n

Carney\u2019s obsession, as always, is the intersection of nature, human beings and the built environment. His scientists use microphones to record the calls of Orcas, \u201cthen listen as they badmouth dolphins.\u201d His engineers are inspired by the waterproof feathers of ducks to invent GORE-TEX, while the ducks themselves fret about the best color of yellow to use for a Duck Crossing sign. Even as human scientists are observing them, sentient animals are always watching back, often with an attitude of curiosity and perhaps unwarranted goodwill. In Carney\u2019s eyes, the world is full of ecological wounds, but it nonetheless offers a possibility of kindness, as in the poem “Since Some Crows Used to be Angels,”<\/h4>\n

A woman standing at her mailbox, for instance \u2026
\nnot junk this time but an unexpected present.<\/h4>\n

A crow flies over, then circles back
\nto memorize her smile.<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Facts + Figures<\/i><\/div>\n
Rob Carney<\/a><\/div>\n
Hoot n Waddle
\n2020
\n91pp.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Carney\u2019s\u00a0Book of Sharks\u00a0(winner of the 2019 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry) was a ferocious tour-de-force. The poems in\u00a0Facts + Figures\u00a0are more gentle, though not entirely toothless. Carney, whose poetry is grounded in the re-enchantment of the world, begins the collection with a sequence titled \u201cThirteen Facts,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1518,"featured_media":55234,"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":[2751],"class_list":["post-55233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts","tag-rob-carney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/9781733585927.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 20:42:52","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\/55233","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\/1518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55256,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55233\/revisions\/55256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}