Lynn Behrendt Sent Me This Lovely Book...

Luminous Flux.

Here is the front cover. The back has a similar profusion of exquisitely colorful, frighteningly alien species with their mix of aesthetic poses and predatory instruments.

I think it's a snapshot of the literary world.

Okay, that was cynical. Sorry.

It's just a great panoply of things that are in the world.

Luminous Flux is a book-length poem, and it's rife with adornment, love of adornment, doubt about adornment, fear of adornment, replacement of adornment with human love, fear of human love, adornment of humans with love (with concomitant fear of adorning humans with love) and other processes equally absorbing to witness, equally leading to fertile wonder...

It reminds me of some of my favorite poets (like Bernadette Mayer, to mention one) but it's not those poets. It's Lynn. It's the joy of discovering a new permutation of the light. A moment before this encounter you had no idea the light could look like that. You know how this works. That's why you keep going to the poetry section in that bookstore, despite all your bitching.

I would call the poem confessional poetry only if we can admit that there is such a thing as great confessional poetry sometimes, when the poet gets the language to confess as much or more than the poet.

I like to hear language's confession, though I am not worthy to be language's Confessor. But I'll still listen in. The booth doesn't even have to be Gothic with scary spires. Lynn's booth is comfortable even when it is ornate.

I don't know if it's just this reader, but there seems to be a subtext and transfiguration of the whole Confessional (sacred meaning here) thing going on. You can see some of it even in the memorable lines below I wanted to share with you.

I'm quite honored I received a copy since this is more along the lines of the typical run for a livre d'artiste, a micro-edition of only twenty books.

If there are any left (or if the poet chooses to issue more) you can procure here:

Lines Chapbooks 2009
23 Linden Avenue
Red Hook, NY 12571.

I would just ask Lynn via email (Google "Annandale Dream") through her blog about availability.

I wanted to share the close of the poem with you...

I take 2 Tylenol p.m. tablets
to help me sleep
wait to feel them placed
on my tongue
like a thin crisp sweet
cake I can chew
until morning.
Is there any such thing as morning?
It's a stupid question
but why was I only young once?
What kind of author am I?
Surrendered a long time ago
cell divided sex steeped
it starts in my chest
like an old scar,
empty space
beneath a pillow.
It starts with this ache
to tell you something
and the purpose of telling
is to connect
and it seems to me--not sure why--
that to connect I need you closer.
I'm not a sea monster
not raw meat
I don't give correspondence courses on how to read lips
not a lamb either the top of my head
no reed wind instrument or harp.
I kind of sink the letter L
into the concrete
of your ever-changing memory
though I would rather
put something on your plate
that you like to eat
and speak in a calm, clear tone.
Gulls larvae tired larynx
am I too late?
Can you see through me
into this storage space
between my neck and belly?
Will it always feel this full?
Do you have any idea?
It's not much of a poem
but I'm not trying to write one--
I am trying to tell you something
but can't get my lens right,
grey smoky words
you don't really see,
words to fall asleep by.
I used to be somebody--
I forget who--is that symptomatic?
Is there a letter on my forehead?
a K for karmic disaster
or A for you know what,
or is it just the L
I've always known
verbal turtle in luminous flux
to & fro, fraught & tumbled
a ship passes under a bridge.