Goest by Cole Swensen

Goest Reviews

• 
  Dawn

  In the heart of the white world next to Paul's bed. This was in the Fall of 2004. This was at the edge of Paul's bed in the apartment with two floors. On the left side of the bed in October. On the dull slope of saying no. On the roof in the morning smoking while he sees me. Goest thru the white rooms of a down house, driven underneath the bed like a dog. The play of light on all these surfaces?
  
• 
  Lightsey

  I love Swensen's style, but this is not my favorite of her books. The long central section feels a bit too sketchy--the subject material/collage material changes so rapidly I can't get a hold of anything deeper in it. (I like the opening and closing sections, though.) Still, it's Swensen, and any time I get to look into her picture of the world is a good time.
• 
  M.W.P.M.

  "Life is not a personal thing."
  -
  Gilles Deleuze

  
  
  Asked in an interview how she felt about her writing being labelled "confessional",
  Chris Kraus responded, "'Confessional' of what? Personal confessions? There’s a great line from a book we published by Deleuze: Life is not personal. The word ‘confessional’ is not a good descriptor of my work. We were talking about the New York School poets – they were the ones who pioneered this use of this 'I,' an active 'I' that’s turned out onto the world. “I” in this case isn’t the point – That would be memoir. The story of 'I.' And mostly I hate that – everything else becomes merely a backdrop to the teller’s personal development. It’s an utterly false, uninteresting view."
  
  In Goest, Swensen seems to following a similiar train of thought as Kraus... Or perhaps they are both passengers on the same train? Swensen writes with an aversion to the first person, instead remaining impersonal with the reader, with her subjects, by writing in the second and third person.
  
  Divided into three parts, the first and third parts, "Of White" and "On White", evoke the depersonalization alluded to with Swensen's inclusion of the quote from Deleuze. In particular, the poems of "Of White" have the strongest depersonalizing effect with their short stark form and their bland content...
  

  Oddly enough, there was always a city block of clear weather on every side of her, a space just large enough that the casual passerby simply thought, "What an odd spot of calm," and often even people who knew her well never quite put it together, as, after all, it's not that unusual to have a break in a storm, though they'd developed, after a while, an odd inclination to be with her without really thinking out why. Other than that, her life was neither better nor worse than most, except, of course, for the crowds.
  - The Girl Who Never Rained, pg. 3
  
  
  You walk into a house
  in which several people are sitting in the dark
  around a dinner table, eating, drinking, laughing.
  - Others, pg. 4
  
  
  One
  
  Green moves through the tops of trees and grows
  lighter green as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the
  greys, or beyond them,waning finely into white, there is one white spot,
  absolute; it could be an egret or perhaps a crane at the edge of the water
  where is meets a strip of sand.
  
  *
  
  Two
  
  There is a single, almost dazzling white spot of a white house out loud
  against the fields, and the forest in lines
  receding, rises,
  and then planes. Colour,
  
  in pieces or entire; its presence
  veneers over want; in all its moving parts, it could be something else
  
  half-hidden by trees. Conservatory, gloriette, gazebo, or bandshell,
  a door ajar on the top floor.
  
  *
  
  Three
  
  The trees are half air. They fissure the sky; you could count the leaves, pare
  time
  defined as that which
  no matter how barely, exceeds
  what the eye could grasp in a glance:
  intricate woods opening out before a body of water edged
  with a swatch of meadow where someone has hung a bright white sheet
  out in the sun to dry.
  
  *
  
  Four
  
  A white bid in a green forest is a danger to itself. Stands out. Shines. Builds
  up inside. Like it's dangerous to cry while driving or to talk to strangers or to
  stare at the sun and a thought other things
  we've always heard
  people who wear white see better at night, though they gradually lose this
  trait as they age.
  
  *
  
  Five
  
  The air across the valley is slightly hazy though thinning though patches
  remain between the groves of trees that edge a clearing in which stands a
  single house. A child in a white t-shirt has just walked out of the house and
  is turning to walk down to the lake.
  - Five Landscapes, pg. 10-14

  
  
  It can be said of the poems of the second part, "A History of the Incandescent", that depersonalization is created by approaching a subject entirely apart from the poet herself. In fact, reading the poems of the second part, I found myself asking, "What is this? Why am I reading a history of the incandescent? What does this have to do with anything?" I was confused until I chose to read these poems not as a departure but as a continuation of the theme of depersonalization...
  

   noctes illustatas
   (the night has houses)
   and the shadow of the fabulous
   broken into handfuls - these
  can be placed at regular intervals,
   candles
  walking down streets at times eclipsed by trees.
  - The Invention of Streetlights, pg. 23

  
  
  The third part is almost a hybrid of the first and second parts, returning to the theme of depersonalization of the first part, and yet taking the form of the poems of the second part (illuminated, if you will, by this form). What's most interesting about the poems of the third part is the shift from the impersonal to the personal, as Swensen finally adopts the I and inserts herself into the narrative...
  

  One
  
  I'm on a train, watching landscape streaming by, thinking
  of the single equation that lets time turn physical,
  equivocal, almost equable on a train
  
  where a window is speed, vertile, vertige. It will be
  
  one of those beautiful equations, almost visible, almost green. There
  
  in the field, a hundred people, a festival, a lake, a summer, a
  hundred thousand fields, a woman
  places her hand on the small of a man's back in the middle of the crowd
  and leaves it.
  
  *
  
  Two
  
  A wedding in a field - the old saying: it's good luck to be seen
  in white from a train. You must be looking the other way; so many things
  work only if you're looking away. A woman in a field is walking away.
  Gardens early in the evening. Trees
  planted a few hundred years ago to line a road no longer there.
  There's a lake, pale teal; its light, field after field. Spire, steeple, sea
  
  of trees that line roads long disappeared along with their houses, which were
  great houses in their time.
  
  *
  
  Three
  
  A vineyard unleashed. The varieties of green. One glances accidentally
  into entire lives: plumage, habitat, and distance between
  the girl raising her head, turning to her friend
  lost under the trees - you say it was a ring?
  Engraved, the birds rise up from the field like grain
  thrown. Into a line of birds planing just above the wheat.
  
  *
  
  Four
  
  Each scene, as accidental as it is inevitable, so visibly, you look out on, say
  a field, say leaves, with a river on the other side, another life, identical
  but everyone's this time. Trees in a wallpaper pattern. An horizon
  of dusk that barely outruns us. He started with pages and pages
  
  and then erased. This one
  will have a thousand pictures.
  
  A field of houses pierced by windows.
  
  *
  
  There's a wedding in a field I am passing in a train
  a field
  in the green air, in the white air, an emptier here
  the field is everywhere
  because, it looks like something similar somewhere else.
  - Five Landscapes, pg. 59-63
• 
  Melissa

  My favorite of hers that I've read.
• 
  Leena

  It's a little ridiculous how much I loved this book.
  
  Full disclosure: I bought a new phone and finally had the ability to use the Libby app to check out things from my library, to read on my phone. I don't read on my phone much, but I am happy to have the option. I was testing the app and settled on poetry as a genre to browse, because it's short and not meant to be read in one sitting, you know?
  
  I honestly picked this book because it had an award on the cover. I figured, this one looks good. Why not?
  
  And it turned out to be this lovely, nerdy book of poems. I found it interesting, observant, and introspective. I felt it played with scale a lot, which is always super fun in any work. And the historical references just brought me joy.
  
  You may be saying to yourself, geez lady? What the heck do you know about poetry? Why should I care about your review? And that's fair. I read a lot of haiku/senryu and tanka, but that's about it. But, hooray for the serendipity that brought me to this book. I wanted to share the love.
• 
  Ann Michael

  I really like Swenson's work. I find her language and ideas inspiring.
• 
  Harry

  This a remarkable collection by Swensen, but I had to read it three times through and even memorize one of the poems ("The Development of Natural Gas") before the internal sound logic of these poems was revealed to me. Thus I was able to move from a stance that was somewhat dismissive of what I saw as purposively obfuscatory work to a deeper appreciation of the aural quality of Swensen's rhythms. The final poem, "Five Landscapes," is a strong and appropriate coda.
• 
  Katherine Factor

  pythagoras rules!
• 
  Elizabeth Metzger

  Just bought this at Woodland Patter. Lovely first poem, but still to-be-read.
• 
  Jessica

  I especially like the invention section in the middle. Any book of poems mentioning Leibniz gets my vote anyway.
• 
  hali salome

  i liked the prose poem w the bees (is this a theme in books i like?)?
• 
  Haley

  This is how I wish all histories were taught—in verse.