eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Both chronicle and confrontation, the poems of Jacob Scheier’s debut work out and through notions of loss. As the death of a young man’s mother instigates and informs these investigations, the realities of romantic failures become inextricably connected, and in the process More to Keep Us Warm maps the limitations, and breaking points, of the human heart. Questioning how and why we fall in and out of love becomes the collection’s haunting refrain.
At the same time, Scheier’s poems mourn the absence of both religious and cultural identity. Facing the painful and confusing losses of his life, the support of the only “tradition” the writer knows — an atheist, socialist upbringing — proves unsatisfying. In response, More to Keep Us Warm explores the formation of a new, complex sense of self as inherited belief systems fail. With humour, sardonic wit, and conversational charm, this search engages and struggles with Judeo–Christian tradition to become an intimate meditation on the nature of God in a secular world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781554903047 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 79 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
More to Keep us Warm
By Jacob Scheier, Michael Holmes
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2007 Jacob ScheierAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55490-304-7
CHAPTER 1
quickly approaching the beginning
THE VOICES
It's alright for the rich and the healthy to keep still;
no one wants to know about them anyway.
But those in need have to step forward,
have to say: I am blind,
or, I am about to go blind,
or, nothing is going well with me,
or, I have a child who is sick,
or, right here I'm sort of glued together.
And probably that isn't enough.
They have to sing; if they didn't sing, everyone
would walk past, as if they were fences or trees.
That's where you hear the good singing.
People are strange: they prefer
to hear castratos in choirs.
But God himself comes and stays awhile
when the world of torn and cut people starts to humble him.
"The Voices" is a collaborative translation, with Di Brandt, of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Title Poem for The Voices"
GENESIS
"The perceptual disturbances may include ... trailing images (images left suspended in the path of a moving object as seen in stroboscopic photography), perceptions of entire objects, afterimages (a same-colored or complementary-colored 'shadow' of an object remaining after the removal of the object), halos around objects ..."
— Description of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, DSM IV
1. First there was the word
and I only had sounds.
First there was the word:
mother
taught me the names
of the fowl of the air
and every beast in the field,
and father
was no word for the absence
of mother,
my name,
lost somewhere inside her,
before it reached
her mouth, still (and) open.
2. In the beginning
of without
the word, I named again
the air and field
sounds clumped together
and lit the open mouth
in the face of the deep.
3. And it was good
enough.
4. But He said unto me:
it can always be better
and He had many letters after his name,
blessing him
with authority.
He cured,
not with touch or speech,
but something small and round
to swallow.
When I doubted,
when I said I can slither through it,
He spoke unto me: you do not know
what I know,
and held out the thin branch of his arm
and I followed,
I obeyed.
5. And on the seventh day
the earth collapsed.
On the seventh day
I lost part of my sight.
6. First there was the word
and it was blurred.
The shadow of each letter
ate into the next.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
7. The names (again) turned to absence.
I could not call this smeared yellow thing
a flower.
I could not name this thing,
encircled in a ghostly halo
and spraying light in a hundred directions,
the moon.
Without names,
I was not master of the animals,
but lost amongst monsters.
BIG BAND MUSIC
It is music which could only be written before the second war,
before the soundtrack of Europe was composed by mice
running along piano keys.
It is music meant for how our bodies used to be,
before the dance steps we learned
became a talent for avoiding the land mines beneath our feet.
There is something in the pace of the rhythm,
how it doesn't slow to take in a landscape,
how it assumes the world will still be there
when the music stops.
The song is replaced by the hourly news,
the wars which are now commercials between melodies.
I turn off the radio and lie still
taking in all the sounds my body makes
when all else is quiet.
How fragile and clumsy this machinery seems.
I am lying here waiting for an assassin
with the wrong address
or something heavy
like love or a piano
to fall on me.
I am surprised that just once
my heart hasn't forgotten (to beat)
like when I confuse the days of the week
or which people are still alive.
How my heart still remembers
to pump blood through my body
when I forget so easily
all the little things that need to be done
to remain alive:
to look both ways before crossing the street
and forgive people
before tumors fill their ears
and they can only hear decay.
I have been lying here so long
I can recognize the chorus of my breath.
And I think I have just been shot
when the phone rings.
This could be The Call.
The million dollar call,
the Jesus call,
Virginia Woolf explaining the day
she chose the heaviness of stones
and anonymity of rivers
over the weight and light of the world.
I have been lying here too long
to distinguish war from suicide.
HOW TO WRESTLE AN ANGEL
1. Wrestle him all night, till the breaking of dawn.
Fight dirty if necessary. Bite and pull his wings,
do not let him go until he blesses you.
2. Stand perfectly still.
Let his wings slap against your flesh all night.
Do not move or make a sound. Try to blink as little as possible,
even when a feather smacks hard into your balls,
even then do not scream.
Do not ask to be blessed.
Receive him in silence,
even if it kills you.
3. Make sarcastic, derogatory remarks about angels
each time he hits you.
Then say to him how much Angels in America pales
to Doctor Faustus.
Tell him "Even if you were God himself
I would not let you bless me"
and mean it.
4. Invite him into your home,
serve him wine and cheesecake
or beer and pork rinds, whatever is handy.
Play chess or Monopoly, Truth or Dare.
After a few glasses, talk of former lovers and parents.
After a few more, compliment his voice,
express admiration for his wing span,
then caress his spirit.
Let him fall asleep in your arms
and while he dreams
write evil on his forehead.
GENESIS OF FALLING OUT
How little is described in those pages.
We do not know which flowers grew
between the first man and woman,
which ones blossomed
like the offering of an open hand
or kept their petals closed tightly
as mouths exhausted of language.
The author knew that to name flowers
would give us pictures of the ones we know.
The ones that have been stepped on or torn away.
And so they become the idea of flowers,
aligned in straight rows,
colours bright as television garb.
The man and woman photogenic,
no lines in their faces.
We do not see their hair when they awaken,
have no awkward images of their first time.
Without parents or movies,
would they know how the parts fit?
It has become an old favourite,
the story that ends without bickering or boredom,
forced apart by fate,
an act of God.
How often we use the term now: falling out
of something we have made
in the absence of description.
If only our story ended the same:
with a bang not a whimper.
If only we followed their example
and did not stay long enough
to see the seasons change.
THAT NIGHT
We decorate the past with gin martinis,
that night, now, heavy as an olive pit
sinking in your coffee mug.
If we drink and talk long and fast
enough, the past will bend like a pine branch
beneath cotton snow, and
I won't go home with her, after all.
We are past that now,
quickly approaching the beginning,
the invisible rip in your summer dress
and smile, that night,
now, clear as vermouth.
HAROLD AND MAUDE
There's you with a crown of dandelions,
legs crossed, our knees touching.
I watch your eyes move in small circles
to imitate the seasons as you play guitar.
There's me singing along
as you play Cat Stevens.
There's you laughing at me,
because I don't know the words.
Each time I want to give up
you call me Harold
and start the song again.
You are too young to be Maude,
but just as kind.
There's us in a movie
about two people falling in love,
soundtrack written and performed by Cat Stevens.
This is my favourite memory of us.
Even though you would never wear flowers in your hair,
can't play guitar
and hate Cat Stevens,
the rest is more or less true.
I'M NOT HERE FOR SUSHI
Monday, 10 p.m. I hang up the phone, hard.
Put on the nearest pair of pants: the ones on the floor.
I do not check them for stains or cat hair,
which I know must be there. The T-shirt I find draped over the TV
has the name of a band on it I haven't listened to in five years.
I walk to the sushi restaurant on the next block:
the closest place to get a drink.
On the patio I watch the dead sun of a streetlamp
break apart in the harbour.
At the tables across: two couples,
large ceramic plates spread before them,
their sushi set out in symmetrical rows
and, I suspect, colour coordinated.
A compliment or flirtation, something resembling a promise
wafts over from the tables.
I try and fail to collect their words into a story:
an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of raw fish.
I no longer know what it is a man and woman speak about
over dinner, only that there is a law
about loving or hating fully;
there is the rule about having a pleasant evening.
My beer arrives and I focus my attention
on more important things
like watching ash break away from my cigarette.
The couples are watching, I think. Wish that I would drink alone
on a bar stool in some place with muted televisions
and half price chicken wings.
They went out to be "out"
and talk of nothing in particular,
not to see this.
But I'm here, I think,
just like the coffee stain on my pants.
The party cruise boats dock along the harbour,
neon lights along their sides, people with Hawaiian shirts,
red and blue drinks in their hands,
slices of fruit on the glass rims.
And the piña colada song.
I can deal with
the cancers and betrayals, the wars and suicides,
even the way everything has its fine point,
where the next movement, even a breath,
will snap it in half.
How love is no different, perhaps, faith too.
But that fucking piña colada song is the last straw.
I get the bill, put the little green mint in my mouth
and suck on it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from More to Keep us Warm by Jacob Scheier, Michael Holmes. Copyright © 2007 Jacob Scheier. Excerpted by permission of ECW 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
I quickly approaching the beginning,The Voices,
Genesis,
Big Band Music,
How to Wrestle an Angel,
Genesis of Falling Out,
That Night,
Harold and Maude,
I'm Not Here for Sushi,
A Joke,
Last Throes,
Winter (an apology),
Apollo,
Stuff,
My Religious Upbringing,
The Language of Our People,
When the Revolution Comes,
Footage from Haifa,
Red Diaspora,
II here, poetry can't hurt you,
Kaddish for 1956,
Breakfast Poem,
Alexandria,
North America,
Dear Office of Homeland Security,
Blazon for a Stranger,
Method Suicide,
Women,
Fear and Trembling (Regine Olsen's Lament),
Your Haunted House,
Twenty Minutes Away in Another Continent,
Istanbul,
Love Poem,
Realism and Anti-Realism,
Kaddish for Ariel Sharon,
What Keeps Me Up at Night,
III can it ever be cancelled?,
November Elegy,
Tricking into Suicide,
Collecting,
Ghosts,
God,
Christmas,
Di,
Pachelbel's Canon,
Ghost Story,
Untitled,
In Her Voice,
Choice,