Take It, Joshua Beckman

I read this book after it was recommended to me by Geoffrey Nutter during his office hours. He described Beckman as a force to be reckoned with. My ex-professor, Matthew Rohrer, has also done a few collaborative projects with him. All the poems are untitled and written in a mix of biblical and everyday language ("No list or illusive movement into being again or later - that beautiful fitness of man - I know, I'm sorry, but today it feels right - their rings their shoulders, how they await their lovers patiently." — that sort of thing). The last poem in the book really struck me. It's the one about Roger that he reads here:



I'm at a loss for what to say, so I'm going to read the book again before I continue typing.

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I decided that Take It is written from a place of painful solitude where details get flattened out into larger categories like "people," "friends," or "animals" as in, "Sometimes I read or remember how people were to me" or "A snow fell on the mountains this week as if it were, as if what it was doing was, anyhow, it's hard to speak clearly on natural phenomenon." I also think that the way the speaker deals with "the story of the girl obsessed with the finishing of a miniature wooden boat" in "Wild mysteries..." is Beckman offering us a way to take the collection: "I took from the story numerous visions of solitary life, the awkward range of emotions sheltered in the heart," and, later, the speaker's apology is Beckman's own, straightforward apology to the reader, "I am sorry to write you such dreadful things about myself. How dumb."

The book is about advice sometimes, but the justification for the advice is stark and unarguable and that makes up for the bossiness of it. It's also satisfying when the advice/moral is displaced into the words of someone other than the speaker, like the box of bullets in "Roger called for another long beach of grasses..." Here's another poem that might show what I mean:

The last bit of light made its way on
through the kind, through the caffeinated silence,
through the boot and voice. So you wish you had been
treated better, so I wish I had been treated better,
so we all wish we had been treated better,
but you are not the lovely feather
you make yourself out to be, stuffed
with white pills and the attention of others,
you're a lazy incompetent soul with a
beautiful way about you - which may, in fact
be just like a feather - so I'm sorry for saying
what I said, it's okay to want to be loved,
and it's okay to want to be okay, but the next time
you call you better have something to say.
For in my house we are very tired, and being
tired makes us divisive, and you can do nothing with
a house divided, so don't even try, give up on trying.
A tap on the window, a rhythm of rain. We await
a better time and we believe a better time will come.
Judge, for I judge. Judge, for my household judges.
Weigh, judge, and discard while still these things have meaning,
for soon they will not, and then where will you be.

Reading these poems reminds me of a time in sixth grade where I had four friends over for the night and we had a really good time looking at Victoria Secret catalogues and trying to find porn on the Canadian t.v. channel and then talked about God until 3 or 4 in the morning only to play tricks, afterward, on whoever was the first to fall asleep. Except that part of it only informs the feeling. The feeling is actually of the morning after, 11:00 a.m., the sun intense on my face from the sky lights, and the house very quiet and empty because everyone was already gone.