{"id":60780,"date":"2021-12-12T00:18:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T06:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=60780"},"modified":"2023-11-13T13:51:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T19:51:44","slug":"its-about-time-steven-cresons-big-day-new-and-selected-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/its-about-time-steven-cresons-big-day-new-and-selected-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s About Time: Steven Creson’s “Big Day: New and Selected Poems”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For the past couple of decades, I\u2019ve enjoyed the works of Steve Creson<\/a> across artistic formats and disciplines: screenings of his own and selected other short films in Belltown basement theaters, back when we met while living in Seattle (way back in years that started with a 1); gallery and studio shows of his paintings and photo collages; live readings of his works, both in-person and online. And as technical director of my Seattle Fringe \u201802 play, Steve nailed the light and sound cues, night after night.<\/h4>\n

Truly, I\u2019ve been glad to call Steve and his wife Lisa friends for these years, (and I\u2019ve enjoyed her artistic endeavors as well: her audio production mix as part of a theater reading; some of the liveliest garden evenings I\u2019ve known with performances of her group Tripod; solo performance art pieces; and her intricate, delicate craftworks). So I bring personal connections as I read and review Steve’s Big Day: New and Selected Poems<\/em>.<\/h4>\n

There is a lot to admire in this slim volume. Collecting works of decades past with recent writings (“recent” as of publication in November 2020), Big Day<\/em> is a bit of a career retrospective. Really, though, it\u2019s early to begin wrapping things up for a poet with a good dozen years or more left to work with, by his own reckoning at his mother\u2019s bedside, on the occasion of her passing, as recalled in “1.26.13”:<\/h4>\n

\u2026 holding her hand, lightly, her fingers,
\nas if I were afraid of dying myself,
\nyet calm, because it will,
\nme, twenty years
\nor so from now, this first
\nanniversary of her death.<\/h4>\n

From the back of the book forward, time follows a familiar forward line in roughly chronological order. Or you can pick up the book and read from current to past, with the recent works at the start. The poems of Big Day<\/em> (2015-2020) are followed by earlier works, previously issued in other forms, going back in time to Now Poems, 1995-1996.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Time flows throughout the pages, too. The poet grounds the reader in set and setting where events underlying the words occur in moments of life happening now (in poetic past perfect progressive\u00a0 tense) and happening all over the world; from Hove, England, to Pony, Montana, to just down the street, perhaps, in \u201cEvaporation Blues,\u201d where:<\/h4>\n

\u2026 pear tree
\nindicates passing breeze
\nworkmen replace telephone pole
\nat the corner
\nkatty-corner from my house
\nrattling compressor muffled
\njackhammer the ever morning
\ntraffic exchanging
\nmotion with pause at changing
\nred, amber, green rotation constant
\nrhythmically unpredictable.<\/h4>\n

And time passes through the structure of this poem, as well, subtly, but with natural rhythmical predictability. Early on, the poem marks time, showing without telling. It\u2019s a day in early summer (the start of June, say) as the poet savors, \u201cThe weight of the early heat\u2014” and recalls a winter spent anticipating the return of the warmth, all while strolling sweat-dampened through city streets, in section three. Carrying on through the comings and goings in each of 16 numbered sections, the heat of the season builds, number six with its \u201csummer concrete and shade cool\u201d to number ten with its \u201chigh heat of mid-day warming, evening still far off,\u201d and on through to the penultimate section, number 15, when the flow of time has progressed to “the week leading up to labor day\u2026\u201d.<\/h4>\n

In the space of 16 sections of varying lengths, \u201cEvaporation Blues\u201d seems to mark out the steady flow of a season in numbered weekly segments, measuring roughly the span of Summer, from the end of May to the start of September.<\/h4>\n

So when the final section starts with a plea:<\/h4>\n

I need a first line a
\nfresh start a poem a
\nform as sophisticated as Wallace Stevens\u2019s<\/h4>\n

I tend to believe that it\u2019s been here all along, in plain sight, right here now in these words.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Steve Creson is a Salt Lake City-based poet and artist. Big Day \/ New and Selected Poems\u00a0<\/a>
\n<\/em>published by Elik Press(2020) is
\navailable at Weller Book Works.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past couple of decades, I\u2019ve enjoyed the works of Steve Creson across artistic formats and disciplines: screenings of his own and selected other short films in Belltown basement theaters, back when we met while living in Seattle (way back in years that started with a 1); […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1699,"featured_media":61089,"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-60780","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\/2021\/12\/IMG_9423.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 23:23:30","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\/60780","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\/1699"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60780"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70654,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60780\/revisions\/70654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}