THE FUTURE ONLY RATTLES WHEN YOU PICK IT UP by DAVID GIANNINI

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

The Future Only Rattles When You Pick It Up by David Giannini

(Dos Madres Press, Loveland, OH, 2018)

I come relatively late to David Giannini’s poetry, but I’m glad I arrived to it. His forthcoming The Future Only Rattles When You Pick It Up affirms how he’s one of my favorite discoveries from attempted wide reading in contemporary poetry. This collection contains a wide variety of forms and concerns, but its opening poem … Well now, THAT, is what an opening poem should be with its special role of inviting (or not) the new book reader. Let me share it in its entirety (click on all images to enlarge):

WORKERS 

Who would condemn

small children?  What

if, with Sisyphus,

toddlers were forced to roll

small stones beside him

on the long push uphill

before the terrible trek

back, all of them compelled

to repeat their acts forever?

Perhaps loneliness

would lessen for a while

and love increase; but could

any of us in this century

bear to look even at pebbles

without sensing those kids

forced to stone? Sisyphus kept

and keeps on. . . the children

grow jagged, sometimes

round. We look at their faces

in the rock of mountains,

and at times they are visible

inside geodes—tips of

noses sticking out, shiny,

purple from exposure.

Another type of stone rears up in “THAT COUNTRY,” which unfortunately and sadly is a poem for these times:

THAT COUNTRY

They were warnable, the people of that country,                     

and not warned.  

                               Their flesh 

burns in the newscasts       

coloring in the fact

           

of assault.  

                   

                   High in the trees

every nest’s empty. There’s silence across wheat 

of the full fields the elders

and the children

hacked.    

          

              How it is that

wind rushes ahead of its own core, which is still

air; that there are human bodies fleeing 

until they halt

and wait for the characters inside them

to catch up, the static ones 

who would crackle and hiss

against betrayals; 

                                 that they will

move beyond trees 

          over the rough roads 

                    into the cities 

where the eyes of their countrymen turn

into burning stones.

Beside offering news as can be found in poems, the collection presents poems that attest to the poet’s keen eye as regards the human condition. There are poems that seem timeless—like this erasure poem:

PETRARCH: SONNET 164

(erasure from a translation by A.Z. Foreman)

               the hush of                                    sky,

                                            holds      birds,

Night drives

        waveless,                                only I

Still see                                     and rave

                     of sweet pain

             and tears,

        thoughts of Her are all

  

Thus               sweet and bitter draughts

          from a              living fountain

                             both heal    and deal

              my                                      sea

             a thousand births and deaths a day

So far

—to poems that uplift image, like

BONELAST

Blue heron, even as you tilt

          over the reflecting lake

                    you can never know

           

your face won’t last

          as long as your skull. So it is

                    with a sad, full 

understanding that   

          we admire this: 

                    your unknowing. 

Lest you need more persuasion to check out this collection, here’s a personal favorite that speaks, I believe, to the subtlety and depth of his meditations. Plus, it provides much pleasure:

FIELD NOTES / PAINTER’S EYE

red

1.

           

A lipsticked girl on the path—

mouth red

                   against pale skin,

going with her mother

                                     for a swim.

2.

A blip in the swell-bent 

blackberry canes—

                               only the flick

of its tail in thicket,

                                male

cardinal

               full on.

3.

Not to let land-and-lake be decoy 

for this essence I want to hold

as shape, size, scale, and process:

                                                      red

as that painted dot

found in the Neanderthals’ cave  

in Gibraltar, or as Miro’s 

                                        The Red Spot, 

as event

                beyond its occurrence

in the living frames                                 

of bird and child          (mother standing by.)

For reading a poet with a clearly high degree of not just awareness but self-awareness, RECOMMENDED.

*****

Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects. Her 2017 poetry releases include five books, two booklets and eight poetry chaps. Most recently, she released MANHATTAN: An Archaeology (Paloma Press, U.S.A.), Love in a Time of Belligerence (Editions du Cygne/SWAN World, France), and THE OPPOSITE OF CLAUSTROPHOBIA: Prime's Anti-Autobiography (The Knives Forks Spoons Press, U.K.). Her books have been released in nine countries and cyberspace. Her writing and editing works have received recognition through awards, grants and residencies. Her first 2018 book will be an edited anthology about the CDC Word "Ban" entitled EVIDENCE OF FETUS DIVERSITY (Moria Books/Locofo Chaps). More info about her work at http://eileenrtabios.com