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Overview
Whether wandering the paths of the imagination, driving through sparsely populated countryside, or listening for the voices of animals, Joseph Campana’s poemsattend to the ways we are indelibly marked by habitat. Shot full of accidental attachments and reluctant transience, Natural Selectionsproduces from vibrant contradiction potent song. In poems both lyric and expansive, Natural Selections finds in the simplicity and strangeness of middle America a complex metaphysics of place and an uncanny perspective reminiscent of the landscapes of Grant Wood. Birds and beasts, frequent storms, country roads, a fraught election, and some of Ohio’s literary guardian angels (James Wright, Hart Crane, and Sherwood Anderson) haunt the poems. Whether enigmatically refracted or brutally direct, these poems attend to the way life is beautifully, violently, and unexpectedly marked by place. With a boldness of vision that might overwhelm a lesser talent, Joseph Campana gives us a collection guided by a focused intelligence and yet containing wonderment and awe at its heart. By turns ferocious and charming, contemporary and mythic, grief-stricken and funny, the poet’s voice is always original, direct, and pitch-perfect. The poems in this book are a wonder.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609380922 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2012 |
| Series: | Iowa Poetry Prize |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 88 |
| File size: | 372 KB |
About the Author
Joseph Campana teaches Renaissance literature at Rice University. His poems have appeared in Slate, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, and many other venues. His first book of poetry, The Book of Faces, was published in 2005. He is also the author of The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity (2012).
Read an Excerpt
Natural Selections
By Joseph Campana
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS
Copyright © 2012 Joseph CampanaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60938-081-6
Chapter One
CrowCrow said murder and
then there was one. If
there were two, if
there were myriad
black wings covering
black winds beating sky.
Sky said malice. Crow
saw it shining. Glitter
of the needful, glitter
of the wanting ones:
dark hunger dark in
trees. Whither, crow,
now: who will you run to?
Crow said murder. And
then there were more.
And then there were more.
Ohio 229
Afternoon hawk circles.
Another senseless road
ripped around a bend.
How potent the longing,
how potent the fear.
The two as one, the two
as hawk and shadow
comb a lifeless road.
Doesn't empty mean
safe? Another snap,
another twig, another
instinct ended. We
were all hungry,
circling each other's
flesh as if it were
nourishment. How
did the hawk know
what was left
on the side of this
road would spite
appetite, never end it?
Natural Selections
1.
Evidence that life invents
the conditions of survival
was visible, there, on those
roads. Driving away from
the center, away from
distraction: what is life
if not the index of what
waits to be desired?
2.
Leaving you was something
else entirely. And for what?
A little nowhere: a few hills,
islands of rarefied growth
isolated from the streams
of death and convergence
below. Driving back and
forth I could hear some
whisper of the new.
Everything was wrong.
The principle of evolution
is change, not growth.
3.
Nothing to do now.
Nothing but leave trees,
find streets of shoes and
the myriad satisfactions
of stores. In one a woman
identified our particular
species. When I said I
was a teacher, she sighed.
You probably have to teach
Darwin, don't you?
No, I said, Shakespeare.
Well, she said, warming
to her theme, it's all
the same in the end isn't it?
4.
Careless watcher
of dark thinking birds
without anywhere to
roost, climb to the top
of the sky, look down
and see everything:
how deeply small,
how slowly moving
without purpose or
origin or end. From
this distance you
can pretend you
are one of the sad,
one of the small
animals below.
5.
Tell me again how we were
at the top of the food chain,
how the climb to the leafy hilltop
made us believe it. This is not
to answer the question you
asked me. Nothing here
resembles an answer.
6.
When I arrived there were only
hand-wrought planks, work
of a banished carpenter, and
green light from the windows
creating the suggestion
of forest floor. It was,
I was told, an old and storied
place I was moving to, moving
away from you. At night I
could hear only myself and
the motions of unknown animals.
In the bookstore, the biography
of a great and suicidal poet. What
held the book together, the glue,
was so dried up, each page pulled
out as I read. Not all of them,
I thought in the dark, and in
the darkness, I wanted so much
to live I would have killed to live.
7.
Nothing is more complacent
than a house. Its secret,
in the end, is what is shared.
8.
Every so often I heard noise
without a body between the walls
of my kitchen and the world.
I tried not to think ill of
what I could not see and
remembered there is nothing
either good or bad but thinking
makes it so. This seemed
one of many exceptions.
Unable to sleep I listened to
its travels. Where could it go?
The house was so cold it made
no sense anything would stay
day after day, night after endless
night knowing at some moment
one of the tired animals would
falter while the other would
live on, awake and obsolete.
9.
Imagine there was no reason
to live as we did, in danger
of nothing at all. Imagine
there was something wrong
with being harmless. That it
was, in fact, a form of harm.
No, the house would whisper.
It was always a matter of survival.
The fittest were those with
the least to lose. I sat in
the center of a house that was
nowhere particular in Ohio,
in the world, in my life, missing you
so deeply someone might have
mistaken my song for the elusive
language of beasts and birds.
Owl
It's you, said the tree, and
the darkness said nothing.
Summer turned to snow
and still no answer.
It's you, said the sky, but
the darkness scarcely blinked.
Eyes opened wider and wider.
So the world began: it showed us
nothing. It's you, I said. And then:
I'm waiting. The night was so dark
and still so real. I was tiny, and
the trees tired. All was silence:
ravenous, unmoved.
Omen
Outside, and without warning,
the inexplicable raised its ugly
head. The temperature went,
again, and the sun went too:
all south. And wouldn't you
know a single dark crow was
sitting on a gravestone like
a vicious monument to patience,
mocking sleep, as if the world
needed more cheap significance.
All night through the woods
rain made the same sullen song
because the world had drunk
and drunk and drunk it in. All
the bottles are empty: all the
storm clouds have given up.
You are not yourself a form
of truth. You are drowning but
knowing so will not help you.
Hare
Hare says Moon but Moon
won't answer. Hare twitches.
Overhead darkness. Moon peers
down at the blues and greens:
scuffle, darken, fade, fade to black.
Everything's shutting down now.
Moon says where am I?
Hare rolls its eyes at circling
lights. Hare trembles. Even
the light will grow weary.
Moon all alone bleeds out
a reddish wake of grief. Moon
says I never mean to leave you.
Hare says no. Tremors from
the treacherous undergrowth.
Says, I know I know I—no.
Rural Morning
There's no irony in storm.
There's no irony in Ohio
as strong as the force
that binds torn petals
to the soaked porch.
What you wanted
from leaf, what you
wanted from tree
died in the night.
You could spend
all morning trying
to sweep them.
You could spend
all morning trying
to clean. Splintered
boughs blossom
in disguise, the scars
proof that you must
believe the trees.
You must believe
the last good drop
of honey dripped
from the lips
of a broken deer
hanging dead on
a branch above a creek
drying beneath the sun
only then to drink
its fill from the sky.
Fawn
What could be elegance is all instinct.
I am so tired of the fear around me
but I have no idea whose fear it is.
All I know is another roar and cry
another sweeping light and my legs
frozen fast now and something so
startling it must be good though I
know it cannot be anything but
another night black scurry, another
disaster waiting to seize, on the
dark roads, on the dark dark roads
it is so cold I could crouch down
here on the crackling leaves, and
let the black snow bleed over me.
Hunting the Beast
You're old enough to lie,
to grab the beast by its throat:
cock the rifle, grip the barrel,
jam the butt to your shoulder
so it hurts and loose the bullet
from its cavern of scorn, howling.
To know the beast, to know
the deer, to know an enemy
scuffling in undergrowth:
shudder of capture, now it's over.
Rabbits lie down in their warrens
but you will drive them forth.
Hawks twist in the clouds:
they will hide the sun.
You're old enough to know,
to be the bowstring ripped taut,
to stretch air into shape, to feel
the arrow explode into form and
catch in the haunch of a dark
forest, its flesh your nightmare.
To speak of anger, to speak of failure:
report of weapons, retort of trees,
taunt of wind. You want to trail the beast.
You know the paths of twisting wood
but you cannot track yourself.
The mind is full of sound, like the body.
You're old enough to kill, to drag
corpses in snow. This is how you
learn to see the world: the bird
hauled up with its dun plumage.
It is your hand alone that makes
the wings flutter, that squeezes
dream from the lungs of the dead.
If you can't fly away, no one will.
Kokosing
River gave up no
tokens of certainty.
The husk of its
revelation was
a body beyond
its own death.
All night, the deer
would not speak.
All winter it hung
from a tree over
water the color
of envy. As if it
required witness.
You are no hunter,
you, no purveyor
of dream. You can
do nothing for it.
Here comes spring:
the world blossoms
and blows away.
No one looks up
to see. No one
drags the deer
down from the tree.
Creek
*
I've seen in you that awful
need to tell: the way the water
slicked you back, all surfaces
now beyond resemblance.
*
To say a thing was frozen in
the tree or that it hauled its
dying bulk up the slickened
bark counter to sensible
recourse, for there was
nothing there: no leaf, no star.
*
The way the cold will break
the will. It will scatter. The
thousands pressed, the will
now everywhere dark and
cooling deep in soil. The body
was a test, and you failed it.
*
The condition of the river is
flux. So too the condition of
the beast that cannot sleep.
Imagine it crawled up into a
tree seeking dream. Imagine
ascent a form of prayer. The
end of all animals is stasis.
Birds bed down in bushes,
deer freeze to unfeeling bark.
*
If there is no motion there is
still motion of a body, a body
collapsing into little crevices,
into ever smaller mysteries. If
you listen closely, you can hear
the gradual shattering of the
branches under that weight.
*
Is it a ladder or a broken tree?
*
To stretch forth into, to hang,
entire, over a blighted scrap of
land because there is nowhere
else to run to, and the river
that was flood is now the
barest trickle. The tree is dry.
There's no reason to touch it.
*
How the sky tracks you. How
lines connect your stars.
*
There was a story of how you
came back. Slowly, at first,
stirring deep in the entrails
of the thing and then the dead
no longer dead, crawling forth
from a slickened gray body
first like a slug and then in
flight with such vicious, such
violent joy. You were always
changing. You said nothing
was ever so sweet. I could
hear the riddle bristling like
a miracle.
*
To be the tree broken by its
own heaviness. To be hanging
in a posture of determined
rupture: the lesson in question
was for the hands. They will
not be beside themselves.
Break now, hands. Break now
or reach out and be broken.
*
Were you lying there, were it
your breath escaping, visible,
wouldn't you want to be lifted
into someone's snaking arms?
*
Nothing left to be. The colors
were all cold, even as spring
limped back. There was such
silence in the world and it
would not let go. Why should
you stay, why should you hold
on unless you were waiting all
this time to billow back to life?
Kokosing
Everyone wants to be saved.
The finches just won't do it:
they don't even sing right.
Then, again, neither do you
wheezing along the river as
if you broke something
and waited to be punished.
The river fills with life
to spite you. How it stinks
before you, how it glistens
like dew on leaves, murky
air scented with the taint
of lightning. Look down:
what broke was you.
The only angels here
hang from sodden trees.
Homer, OH
Forty-nine miles from my
doorstep to the terminal in
Columbus. One quarter tank
of gas. Three small roadways,
no tolls, no time to stop.
Inevitable transit, from which
time seemed absent. I could
name my destination, or I
could name my love. There was
always rain, wind whipping ice
across steely roads. As I drove,
I counted the highway lights
because I knew they would
never run out.
*
Nor did most of the suitors
believe Penelope spent all
that time on a single tapestry.
Could she have been so
industrious as to finish each
night, a new one appearing
each bright morning? Might
she have been enjoying the
suitors in turn under cover of
night, each sworn to secrecy?
*
If the heart is made of flesh,
there is no way to say it breaks.
If it is made of blood, perhaps
it can only bleed. King Lear in
King Lear asks his own heart
to break. He asks because it
won't and he is a stubborn man.
What luxury to have a body
that breaks when the mind can
stand no more. The mind is
pure in and of itself. The heart
bleeds in the mind as the color
of the sun crashing into the
hills. I drove with the sky right
behind me, burning itself alive,
but never did I look back.
*
There was a secretary I knew
who lived in Homer but worked
in Ithaca. She spent her time
typing. We were no longer to
call her a secretary. She spent
her time driving as well:
twenty-six miles each way, each
mile a different letter, each trip
a useless expression of want,
each habitual transit another
sentence without end.
*
Ungrateful heart, love is far
away. Even were it near, it
would still be an imprecise
designation. Stop talking.
Someone could be waiting
for me. Stop looking at me:
someone must be holding his
heart out in his hands.
*
Homer never saw Ohio.
Still, he crossed the wooded
passageways from the towns
of New York to the edges of
an elaborately empty garden
only to find himself left alone
with houses sliding into creeks
and cars waiting on the lawn to
be taken for a ride. Of course,
Homer never did see anything.
*
The condition of waiting is the
string pulled so tight it might
bleed. If only the fates can spin
the threads and measure the
lengths woven between us, let
them make them longer, for
though I am not as far from
you as I might be, I feel the tug
of each mile, each numerable,
each vibrating with the hushed
roar of time passing over.
*
Ignominious, the fate of
names. There are nine towns
named Homer in the United
States, eleven if you include
Homerville. Homer was no
match for Arcadia (12), Aurora
(18), Athens (16). Troy (26) wins
hands down. Figures.
*
I try to imagine the settlers,
the makers of place, styling
themselves latter-day Adams,
scattering the names of gods
and poets, cities and heroes.
Did they allow themselves to
imagine Homer could tame the
trees or send game hurtling into
the hungry arms of the pioneers,
ripe for the kill? Why name me
an already forgotten dream?
*
Outside the car we pass several
towns in succession. Each is
named Homer and none of them
is home. Homer has one soda
machine. Now it feels as if a test
is about to begin. If the machine
is filled daily and a different,
desperate traveler passes by
each night with a thirst nothing
can quench, what could possibly
be left by morning?
*
There are no Homers in
America. I knew you anyway:
not by the scar, not by the
writhing trunk of the olive tree
we made our bed. Before I saw
your face I knew you, like a man
in midst of marathon, each mile
before and behind pulling like
a taut string. Like the man who
already knows whether he's
running from or running to.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Natural Selections by Joseph Campana Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Campana. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents Crow Ohio 229 Natural Selections Owl Omen Hare Rural Morning Fawn Hunting the Beast Kokosing Creek Kokosing Homer, OH Eagle Ohio 308 Cardinal Winesburg, OH Crane Finch Sheltering Bough Blue Heron Wright Jay Democracy in Ohio Sparrow Bat Rural Evening Wolf Spring Comes to Ohio Ohio 661 Ladybug Firefly Snake Rural Night Crows March (1939)From the B&N Reads Blog
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