Drawing equally from Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, John Berryman, and Robert Frost, Samuel Amadon’s award-winning Like a Sea is a collection of poems where personality is foregrounded and speech is both bizarre and familiar. Central to this weirdly talky work is “Each H,” a sequence of eleven monologues and dialogues wherein an unknown number of speakers examine their collective and singular identities while simultaneously distorting them. From a sequence of pared-down sonnets to a more traditional lyric to a procedural collage inspired by J. D. Salinger, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, Walter Benjamin, Jane Kenyon, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Primo Levi, Eugenio Montale, and Edwin Arlington Robinson, Like a Sea is a book of significant variation and originality.
Amadon’s electric collection begins with the line “I could not sound like anyone but me,” and through a wide range of forms and styles and voices he tests the true limits of that statement. The image of a half-abandoned Hartford, Connecticut, remains in the background of these poems, casting a tone of brokenness and haplessness. Ultimately Amadon’s poems present the confusion and fear of the current moment, of Stevens’s “river that flows nowhere, like a sea,” equally alongside its joyful ridiculousness and possibility. Rather than create worlds, they point out what a strange world already exists.
Drawing equally from Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, John Berryman, and Robert Frost, Samuel Amadon’s award-winning Like a Sea is a collection of poems where personality is foregrounded and speech is both bizarre and familiar. Central to this weirdly talky work is “Each H,” a sequence of eleven monologues and dialogues wherein an unknown number of speakers examine their collective and singular identities while simultaneously distorting them. From a sequence of pared-down sonnets to a more traditional lyric to a procedural collage inspired by J. D. Salinger, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, Walter Benjamin, Jane Kenyon, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Primo Levi, Eugenio Montale, and Edwin Arlington Robinson, Like a Sea is a book of significant variation and originality.
Amadon’s electric collection begins with the line “I could not sound like anyone but me,” and through a wide range of forms and styles and voices he tests the true limits of that statement. The image of a half-abandoned Hartford, Connecticut, remains in the background of these poems, casting a tone of brokenness and haplessness. Ultimately Amadon’s poems present the confusion and fear of the current moment, of Stevens’s “river that flows nowhere, like a sea,” equally alongside its joyful ridiculousness and possibility. Rather than create worlds, they point out what a strange world already exists.
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Overview
Drawing equally from Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, John Berryman, and Robert Frost, Samuel Amadon’s award-winning Like a Sea is a collection of poems where personality is foregrounded and speech is both bizarre and familiar. Central to this weirdly talky work is “Each H,” a sequence of eleven monologues and dialogues wherein an unknown number of speakers examine their collective and singular identities while simultaneously distorting them. From a sequence of pared-down sonnets to a more traditional lyric to a procedural collage inspired by J. D. Salinger, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, Walter Benjamin, Jane Kenyon, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Primo Levi, Eugenio Montale, and Edwin Arlington Robinson, Like a Sea is a book of significant variation and originality.
Amadon’s electric collection begins with the line “I could not sound like anyone but me,” and through a wide range of forms and styles and voices he tests the true limits of that statement. The image of a half-abandoned Hartford, Connecticut, remains in the background of these poems, casting a tone of brokenness and haplessness. Ultimately Amadon’s poems present the confusion and fear of the current moment, of Stevens’s “river that flows nowhere, like a sea,” equally alongside its joyful ridiculousness and possibility. Rather than create worlds, they point out what a strange world already exists.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781587299254 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2009 |
| Series: | Iowa Poetry Prize |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 100 |
| File size: | 381 KB |
About the Author
Samuel Amadon was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Boston Review, VOLT, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the author of the chapbooks Advice for Young Couples, Goodnight Lung, and Each H,he is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston and the co-editor of Projective Industries, a chapbook press.
Read an Excerpt
LIKE A SEA
By SAMUEL AMADON
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS
Copyright © 2010 Samuel AmadonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-58729-860-8
Chapter One
EACH H (I) I could not sound like anyone but me, not like who's interested in more than where we worry, where we were worried how to call that righteous, when my father says we say righteous call; I could not sound like anyone, but wanted to myself sound convinced it was easy like I got this, don't stress what's easy like the expression "how it was all we could do not to go down to" the piers, see there are piers, we understand their general function, but how to specifically have at them, well that them's the heart of what we have not yet learned, such as why the city seems both (see there someone who decided to see the city) the means of its rivers and like in my interior, where what seems holy is not by the decoration, but that I had not chosen them (lamps, blinds, furniture) myself. OF DEADISH NEW ENGLAND TOWNS SUPS THE INCANDESCENCE It was always different after there were no moments it was always different after. Now that we are not this bridge, but these bridges, no one has anywhere to go other than the store everybody will live on is Jackie in track pants. Jackie in track pants has a leg around the sodamachine is empty, Jackie. Can we ask you to know us like sports radio? A morning commentary figures prominently when one hasn't been to sleep after every situation in the bar ends with the ice-cold window, watching one Honda without another. Doesn't this feel like when drowsy and nondrowsy come together? As one tells an opponent be quiet all of you. Disconnected the clock was supposed to be how Brass thinks he's going to change the stock is spoiled. Can there be no restaurant? I don't know you from venison, but if that is the bunk, then this is the bunk, and which is too many voices to ask? Our town is these streets were here before it was decided where the streets would be. Don't move them. Don't fix them. Would you wish to fix us you would understand we aren't for it. Every time I run my hand through my hair, more of my hair comes with my hand whether or not that is a new thought is almost how I am pleased to think so. We are not this bridge and we are not these bridges. We are not this town is brighter than we have gotten up before we were this become light. EACH H (II) We are for the park, as we are for enjoying its proximity to how enjoying it for itself, as a park, is our sign we are clearly thinking. On a tangent as often as of two minds, but then, perhaps, also another, and yet, like pillows, I always feel I would be more, if I could have more, which makes me ask what gives us over to giving ourselves, don't end. Don't structure. If structure is over, we could have had it done. Like the seriousness become a better secret as a secret will gain more for it going on. From it we would become strangers better exchanging quarters in the station, or elevator home to my interaction with a mother asking her child a question I happily answered. We are so happy to know something. We forget our place. How winning has more feeling. Then we count the ways. NORTH MEADOWS There were no rods for where we were showing her the consideration or too cold telling her the difference was a little more ghetto than anyone gets to keep. The fish market used to be I'm not sure how hard it is to remember what was where when landmarks must be somewhat the same. Downtown was to walk her through which is the kind of brass we were too much to own any of it. There was carpeting went across the sidewalk with a hand in my pocket is the way I am the one carrying it. And by then it was best to take Homestead turned bulletproof or the carbon paper into an exterminator painted BE SAFE LEAVE THE KILLING TO US. The feeling better than watching the window over Bridgeport and told her Waterbury but the sound was a real Bridgeport over the fuck I'm from. Carbon paper hung under construction somewhere is open though and she wanders makes a good picture of who looked twice just wanted to bum a cigarette. Downtown was to bring her and set us where we thought we were going to be this plaza on top of ourselves never asking why she had come. Or we were still there and knew how it was who came up to your window and what you could tell the difference went into the line of the fish market's been closed for years. And by then the sidewalks were all carpeting even twice as long as I remember evenly placed was carbon paper with her on the rods still. EACH H (III) If there weren't close-minded people, who would love the action like this fellow here has his hair to practice. Blond as an angel food cake. Food cake? Food cake, he said, but was not hungry, not tempted, completely set with glasses. Well, giving him those flips his hair like a suggestion (no longer than the corner of your eye) nodding, note what folds the location (a laundromat, or all movement) into making your suspicion logical. How we remember to speak like at a dinner table, saying this is holy as not me who set it. Note a tree works its bark into the latticework works itself into the bark. Note the unattended vehicle will be cedar as often as cement, will flee as the fence goes at whether we can keep together as "we hear" jars back "I meant" better not to leave the container open. QUOTES FROM THE HARTFORD POEMS That was tri-state, like Jersey. That was at least drugs never make me buy them dinner. That was don't feel bad, buddy, you just got pinned by one of the top fighters in the NHL. This is the sort of place where you bring your own. That was I alone am to blame for mine was folly. That was the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own. That was I see you spinning and spinning never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others. That was the unspoken word is capital. That was he no believe me. This is the second time this has happened since we moved here. We need to move somewhere else. This is who wore baggy jeans, but wasn't into thuggery. That was I never pulled a living body out of the river. This is depression as mostly the result of not drinking enough water. That was well, if, for whatever reason, one of us were to turn into a vampire, because of her books, we'd know how to relate to the other vampires. This is Okie? I'm Okie! Okie? No, I'm Okie, what's your name? This is joy! Joy! Joy! That was On Incline Accelerate to Maintain Speed. That was don't worry, buddy, I'm not going to let anyone shoot you. EACH H (IV) And look at those soccer players looking for Stamford. Could Stamford have ever seemed the attractive option before passing it became regular like this knee in my back, I don't like it, but that it is there is something I can recognize the value of being familiar with what's close to you. You know what's buried in the chest of me could be my bright new self, or night soccer without the neighborhood looking, even waking despite how the players are running like running is breathing more than closing a distance. This where you couldn't see your hand, but felt there was rain filling it, rain warm as this couldn't really be what was in front of us. TOUCHES THE HELICOPTER If I allowed myself to smell corduroy, I would say it smells like urine, but I could say anything when corduroy is pink. Sheik came by, said How you expect to smell anything with no flowers. I listen, and take busy to mean wondering what overwhelming would do to my sense of how to turn back to the linoleum after taking gray for blue. Still, I'll decide which tube is scentless. What's wrong with a patch of fabric? Floating in your pocket, folded. If I made a hole, I could sew it over, but won't while my fingers sweat. I can't say I've gripped a knuckle in years. Train; three times a month to realize I am appropriate in my seat. Sheik gets regular. He brings the paper and onions. We discuss too much for me to let him past the screen. Finally, I don't know why nothing happened. Or, he doesn't leave home and the paper comes subscription. I lost my silver and won't split onions with teeth. People are pulled places for not wanting to go. I remember my business is to keep feet under the seat before me. My regular aisle is as filthy as my regular row. Across, a man puts fingers in his shirt, bites his collar. The ways people treat their clothes. It should have been ten years ago I found six cans of coin I didn't know I hid in the garage. An old woman looks like a small cousin of mine, crosses her ankles, and goes to sleep with her mouth open. Outside, the grass is gray, or a blue hill. I have to hold my knee to keep my hand still. She's wearing a pink scarf under a boy's winter coat. I come back regular as I leave, but Sheik refuses to admit he's silent. Busy, so he can't smell print. Numbers and letters on the end of the shell. It doesn't feel like anything. I say this, and the train continues to remind me where we are going to be stranger and left alone. The girl came by while they were landing, said It's empty. We're only high enough to send people. Left the car running to free the door. Or, because the children climb porches, everyone should have games. I won't believe in number when we have further than I thought we'd go. Through the screen, I hear an acre of high grass. Think I won't face it. Even with hours. I watch it gold. Enough, a difference in gray and blue. Then I saw Sheik in the grass, red plaid with nothing to tell me. EACH H (V) Something to be said for how long what has been growing along the road, has been growing along a road, must change how it grows. Louder then, when you see the sign guns has an actual white picket fence around it. Around where the little blue houses start everywhere with what they collect the position between arbitrary and how long has it been since you were assigned something? Look, they have a harbor, and where the dock is gone someone left the poles in. Something to edges rests, settled between poles, one feels this preference like being still doesn't worry us, this is what we have chosen, to value this looks like we have chosen before. A DISCRETE OR CONTINUOUS SEQUENCE OF MEASURABLE EVENTS DISTRIBUTED IN TIME I had not approached, but could have prepared a distance just like interested in crossing put some muscle to blue paint on this porch looks like tin, the branches cross over makes more than I can keep the house shut sooner or neighbor, we're going to decide who owns the tree, sweeps the playoffs I have to tell you I cared about hockey games were what I couldn't bear which is what this is now whether or not I am more the man to understand them I have prepared the onions in quarters with horseradish you can never tell what won't work before experiments with you for me including my mother finds my father's grandmother's diary notes that she is wondering what this century will bring her an answer no one was expecting anything else eating the peas with my fingers I am just close enough to know they will run out has everything to do with changes in their texture it is the distinction between the rain is on the roof and is it morning makes me notice where this light is that refrigerator I have left strawberries mold in how many I have left I am afraid I am like this all the time for a reason I am afraid is something I am not going to know how to tell what it is from everything is a box-cut of we don't know the orange from light from light we measure is everything here is not everything was selected whether or not is everything right.
THE CURTAINS ARE
eager to speak with glass-green their demonstration that welcome colors the passage of hello to hello the wood you have come to in just to feel how thick felt velvet as learning to examine fingers know who touches begins to resemble how touching a hole in the wall becomes you vulnerable when sitting back to answer what used to be here was a mantle of considerate fireplace discussion about the headlines covering introduction further than this may not be the time everything was clean and ours for five more minutes until appointment arrived after the meeting seemed to be over how that's a strange order to hurry along with baskets show the way they were woven palms sway as reminders that this was the border and could it expect what greeting came for.
Chapter Two
LIKE AN EVENINGComfort is not what keeps me here deciding I cannot like my seat as much as what it means to topple out and onto where it would be difficult to separate me from airport when it is instead the plane taking off; I could go several ways with how best to put everything should come together is no longer available now that I am aware I govern what makes what I govern differ not from how it must seem like discomfort staying where you wish to be.
Were I to ask where you were staying would that be what moves our discussion beyond whether repetition has more to offer than repetition will be enough when I say it has been enough is not enough is now and much like I remember drinking milk is just one of the many tasks I am often unable to accomplish as a result of mistaking seeing the necessity for the act itself; the first possibility we do not know how backward we determine ourselves.
Welcome to the hallway door! Have I forgotten where I was supposed to be sleeping and not paying attention to how much there is to worry about my room, if it will be warmer now that I believe production of a second person simply by speaking to them is no more unreasonable than for us to assume aspects of a personality exist by our requiring them to have less to do with our reasons the more often we remake them.
Accountable could mean to imagine withholding as an option rather than transition into who knows who to be kind to, why I would want a pet to clasp. It-he-will not stay still. I explain my lap is no more used to being held than the one heaving interaction with reason behind not everyone wrecks the possibilities for a relationship this new morning may develop with did you hear how to handle the interruption: make what you have more you are able.
And then went down to Sam's Quality Verité, had a comfy malt between shelves. Delicious, and could not see how unappeasable we would be after the parkway gardens, where dogs gather from gutters photographs of their owners in joy, distress. Expressions we examined and felt what we could from distress was more common and most like those hours I misunderstood how to quit pain in my bladder was why I brought you cup on cup of water.
Lost just losing sight of choosing to see everything at once as what directs us is not choice, is a result of what is there. And if I said I cannot be present the hour before, I am present the hour after, then why in both can I not be quiet? If someone just showed me settle down, I would not louder than before and longer after find the absence of the lovely day, or register the choice as now and choosing.
From the deep fissures of the Freestyle Amber Room, the Yew-tree bursts! Make proud your mossy contribution, you educate the leap by you are bounded. Is the peak well read? Then climber must concede a climb is not entertaining us more than who could have known the weather would be so pleasant. Cooler than expected a chance for the breezy cloud of pollen enveloping our mouths open when we disturb with recreation.
Cold where could have waited for what would wash up to be what could not be cleaner than what burdens you have your own display was careful to appear various with its location and time was nothing but as regular as I have been looking for you without discussion I was aware the moment you would believe the moment it was the bed washed up warm almost as we are what returns us.
Comfort what beached the early rocks smoothed growth into this silence is neither expected nor rest, but like the movement one notices not everything washes up to shore. Somehow already between the sand and unexpected subject we have come to what would have been here if we had not come thinking there was nothing here learning we do not decide our subject to.
Before each presence is our institution one could always learn forward disappears similar to Location is everything as irregular as you have a wall settling in you? Would you stay close or more like an evening degenerate to why I would drop the sentence is a distraction that comes when one fixes a solid as the solid we should not be asking for weight from sight.
Warmth not unlike what keeps the performance eyes and lids like ached and like cupped for remainder to be not taken as exit. We will have again neither yard of padded metal nor cool sheet that ends beyond appreciation of what around us deserves us no better sleep outside a home noise returns what we want from it.
Salt much more than decaying sounds like never failing is speaking possibility for the prose holding you is wild apart from your turn on door. Also less reasonable than what it was to serve the moment before shouting will no wrong heard windows corridor you to belief unwaking is unrelenting as I would not anticipate the effects your finger closes over mine.
Who can see more furniture in the future of this light or that disappearance must be like so much speaking by the river I am asked to remember questioning as what cuts a figure was read as me cut out of frame by fact of absence, not the same as what necessary glass comes to bank our looking further into why we are gone before we know what left.
Comfort is what burned exactly where you were, then that left guessing you would like your rest to mean take less. I was unable or constant as rain dispersing lenses into sewers. Where was the caution to enter with instructions for an hour unaware was lying the hour down or down to what could simply be called constant was living quieter with time after we were never sure before each presence is our last.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from LIKE A SEA by SAMUEL AMADON Copyright © 2010 by Samuel Amadon. Excerpted by permission.
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