Second Story: Poems

by Denise Duhamel

Overview

When her Florida apartment is damaged by the ferocity of Hurricane Irma, Duhamel turns to Dante and terza rima, reconstructing the form into the long poem “Terza Irma.” Throughout the book she investigates our near-catastrophic ecological and political moment, hyperaware of her own complicity, resistance, and agency. She writes odes to her favorite uncle—who was “green” before it was a hashtag—and Mother Nature via a retro margarine commercial. She writes letters to her failing memory as well as to America’s amnesia. With fear of the water below and a burglar who enters through her second story window, she bravely faces the story under the story, the second story we often neglect to tell.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822966531
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	110
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Denise Duhamel is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami. Her previous books include Scald, Blowout, Ka-Ching!, Two and Two, Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems, The Star-Spangled Banner, and Kinky. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from “Terza Irma”
 
I hoist my suitcase up the stairs, brace
myself as I open the door, slip
on water in the hall, and come face
 
to face with my books, the white shelves drip-
ping. I pull down Dante—the pages
heavy, wavy as potato chips—
 
then pat down the walls, trying to gauge
where the leak’s come from—the apartment
above? My ceiling’s dappled with beige
 
clouds I’m afraid will burst, a descent
of more indoor rain. I make my way
to the condo office, to lament
 
the havoc, ask for some help. My neigh-
bors are in varied states of panic
and shock, agitated castaways.
 

Table of Contents

Folkways 5

Poker Hands 8

From Here To Eternity 10

Questions of Faith 11

Intimacy of Hair 12

A Note from Death 13

Dear American Amnesia 15

Love Poem #6 17

Downsides 18

Ode To My Father 19

Social Media 20

"I Love Sex in All Its Forms" 21

Pornomiseria 23

Damnation Nation 24

Wednesday, April 29, 1992 25

The Unreturning, 2019 26

Forty-Five |Fôrde fiv| Noun 27

Beholden 28

Life (with Apologies To Chekhov) 29

Swedish Death Cleaning 30

The Revolution, 2018 69

Love Poem #11 71

List Previous Addresses Below 73

Climate Crisis, 2019 76

Pandemic Pantoum 78

The Unreturning, 2020 82

Forty-Five |Fôrde fiv | Noun 83

Cinderella's End 84

It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature 85

Facelift 87

Grand Finale 88

Howl 90

A Sestina of Grand Nephews 91

Dear Mortality 93

Mother's Day Pantoum 95

Dear Memory 98

Acknowledgments 101

Editorial Reviews

In these poems, Duhamel looks back at her life and its pivotal moments with aplomb and humor. . . . This book is not exactly a swan song, but in many places it feels that way. What keeps it from being heavy are Duhamel’s word play, breezy free association, and chatty poetic style.” —Library Journal

“The poems in Second Story are sure to stand out among the many of Duhamel’s career.” —Southern Review of Books
 

“Denise Duhamel can be serious and playful in the very same sentence, solemn and satiric in a single stanza. . . . Second Story continues a string of amazing poetry collections, from Queen for a Day to Ka-Ching! to Blowout to Scald. She is funny and illuminating all at once.” —Compulsive Reader
 


“All good poems have a second story and, like [Denise Duhamel’s] work, maybe a third or a fourth. From now on, I’ll be climbing stairs behind Denise Duhamel to wherever she may lead. I’m a convert.” —Highland Park Poetry

Past Praise for Denise Duhamel:

“Funny and satiric, always with an edge of existential sorrow.”  —ALA

“Political and socially critical, yes, but [her poems’] most delicious subversion is in their delivery: frankness and its accompanying joy.”  —The Miami Rail

“Duhamel… presents the miracle of how serious a life embedded in humdrum and commercialized reality can be.” —Booklist

“Duhamel puts language on a taut high wire, gives it a spotlight, and makes it dazzle. . . . Beauty is always risky, and with Duhamel at the wheel, it’s also always where we will be delivered. I’ll follow Duhamel anywhere she leads.”  —Florida Book Review

“Duhamel’s poetry is admirable for so many reasons; she’s playful and wise and funny and heartbreaking all at once. What more do you want from poetry?”—Chamber Four

From the Publisher

07/01/2021

In these poems, Duhamel (Kinky) looks back at her life and its pivotal moments with aplomb and humor. These are busy, mostly free-verse poems, with a few formal ones as terza rima, pantoum, or sonnet variation. They reflect on everything from the political and social issues of the day, including the pandemic; to the possibility of an afterlife (comparing it to pushing a squeaky cart in a trip to Walmart); to Duhamel's deceased father (calling him a man of rosaries and "Benny Hill"); to her own aging ("I've never hated poetry / when I was young or now that I'm old"); to Hurricane Irma, in this reviewer's favorite poem, "Terza Irma." The latter is a 31-page poem written as a terza rima that remembers Duhamel's experience during Hurricane Irma in 2017. It's filled with details like watching the news; leaving her home and staying away for several days; returning to a mess of waterlogged ceilings, furniture, and carpets; and going back to school and grading papers while worrying about a new storm. VERDICT This book is not exactly a swan song, but in many places it feels that way. What keeps it from being heavy are Duhamel's word play, breezy free association, and chatty poetic style. For all libraries.—C. Diane Scharper, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore

Library Journal