Alluvial Cities: Poems

by Christopher M. Hannan

Overview

The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Louisiana

Alluvial City, Louisiana, is a small fishing village in St. Bernard Parish, roughly 30 miles southeast of New Orleans. Lying between the Mississippi River and Lake Borgne's open path to the Gulf of Mexico, the land has built up through accretion and worn away through erosion, leaving remnants of its history like a genealogy. The poems in Alluvial Cities are drawn from this layered landscape's geology and history, its people and language, and the kindred ties between earth and water, flesh and blood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680030235
Publisher:	Texas Review Press
Publication date:	07/09/2015
Series:	The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	927 KB

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER M. HANNAN is an attorney in New Orleans. He was the runner-up in the 2010 Faulkner-Wisdom Poetry Competition for his poem “Epithalamion,” and winner of the 2011 Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Award for his cycle of poems, The Nephilim. He lives in the Mid-City neighborhood with his wife and son.

Read an Excerpt

DEUCALIONIDS

The waters broke from the void before first light,
a divinity ripping through the trembling flesh
of marshes and the levees’ old clay thighs,
covering every mile of St. Bernard Parish.
 
Houses with their cement slabs have floated
light as the rinds of watermelons you ate as a boy
and chucked into Lake Catherine, swelled to overflowing
by the god that surged into the Rigolets estuary
 
and left an afterbirth of sweet crude leaked
from foundered tanks.  Cars hang like carrion
birds on the highest branches and torn roofs.  Leached
of mud and flood waters, the houses we pass cry out
 
broken window panes, duct-taped fridges, and a stillness
that leaves us on the dead grass of this
woman’s home, like so many thrown bones.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Alluvial Cities

Salt Water Intrusion 1

1 Breton Island, 1939 1

2 Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, 1958 2

3 Hurricane Betsy, 1965 4

4 Erosion-December, 2005 6

Hot Water Canal 8

The Nephilim 9

I Deucalionids 9

II Diagenesis 10

III Katabasis 11

IV Nekuia 12

V Nostos 13

Part 2 Trinities

Ars 17

Fata Morgana 19

ΙΧΘΥΣ 21

ΔΟΛΟΣ 23

I See You Boys Of Summer 25

Caminada 26

L'heure Bleue 28

Acquamorta 30

Vespers 32

Part 3 Altars

Pasta Milanese 35

Pesce Rosso Al Forno 37

1 I Pescatori-The Fishers 37

2 Il Sventrare-The Gutting 38

3 Il Forno-The Oven 39

Teaching My Wife To Peel Garlic 40

Part 4 Hymns

Tipitina 45

Junco Partner 47

John Henry 49

Leadbelly 51

Casey Jones 53

Joe Mckennedy 55

Kawliga 57

Frankie And Johnny 59

Irene 61

Little Liza Jane 63

Part 5 Taxonomies

The Elephant Graves 67

The Minoans Of Angola 68

Polyneices 69

Epithalamion 70

An Oak 71

What People are Saying About This

John Freeman

"Much is made of "the quotidian" in contemporary poetry. Chris Hannan often uses the quotidian as a starting point in the exploration of the universal themes of being human. Teaching his wife the Sicilian method of preparing and cooking garlic in marriage, combining two of humanity's oldest continuous rituals. In his grandmother's house, digging through the deep alluvial debris of a hurricane for her wedding ring, he realizes that he is salvaging a powerful symbol of the continuity of family. He goes far beyond the mere quotidian to express those issues and values that matter to most of us. Chris Hannan's poetry matters, greatly."
—John Freeman, author of In the Place of Singing, Louisiana Literature Press

William Wright

"Christopher Hannah's Alluvial Cities is a testament to place's importance in great poetry. In this remarkable debut collection, Hannan renders a brilliant narrative of time, geography, family, and memory. Though many of these poems are regional, they are necessarily so: the words urge us into a humanness and universality that transcends the personal. Indeed, these poems reflect a powerful intellect and emotional intelligence that marry to create highly evocative art. Even as the cities in these poems are often doused in the storms that leave little more than detritus, the new landscapes renew us and reshape our understanding of the past and of mortality. Alluvial Cities is a striking and important first book, one that I believe will weave Hannan into the vast and textured fabric of American poetry."
—William Wright, author of Tree Heresies and Night Field Anecdote Series, and editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology 

Julie Kane

"Fusion is the most powerful of all energy sources, and in this collection Christopher Hannan fuses Sicily with South Louisiana, Greek myths with blues lyrics, history with current events, coastal erosion with moral human flesh, the sacramental with the sensual. Driven by a powerful intelligence, his poems push language to its very limits of meaning and resonance. There can be no doubt that a major new Southern poet has just exploded onto the literary scene."
—Julie Kane, Louisiana State Poet Laureate, 2011-2013