| The Flagrant Dead |
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| Tuesday, 10 June 2008 | |
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The Flagrant Dead
Stephen Bluestone  Mercer University Press, 2007 $16.00, 83 pg Winner of the 2008 Tara Family Memorial Award The Flagrant Dead is a stunning demonstration of Stephen Bluestone’s command of our culture and his ability to turn this knowledge into passionate, articulate poems as he gives new life to the dead, both the obscure and the famous. In one poem, an anonymous woman, a rug weaver, describes a life behind a loom, beginning with her tattooed hands unfurling designs, moving to palace carpets, and concluding with the delicate lines, “ . . . and the world is alive as the fingers that knot it/as the voice of its weaver chattering and singing/as the look in the eye of a young girl listening.” In others, he pays tribute to such immortals as Robert Hayden, Richard Wagner, and Diogenes. When Bluestone gives Diogenes voice, he has him speaking on lies: “’Truth,’ he cried, or might have, ‘is the face on a coin/ a dazzling eye, the accomplishments of a god.’” The title poem brings us not to an individual, but to the mid-nineteenth century and a new erotica with the development of photography. This poem lends a fascinating glimpse into an age of strict morality, when a woman's naked form sent men into frenzy. It ends by bringing the reader back to the present: “ . . . our glasses fill with spirited champagne:/we please ourselves to praise the flagrant dead/to celebrate the vintage of their spending.” His wide range of subjects takes the reader from Torquemada, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, to David Niven and Loretta Young at an airport, and to such sports greats as Red Barber, Jackie Robinson, and Sal “The Barber” Maglie. He also includes a few poems from a more personal perspective, such as a moment in Paris, as described in “A Red Silk Scarf,” with the lines “ . . . a red silk scarf a quick blur clouds/clearing all the way the Tuilleries the sky.” Bluestone’s skill in executing these poems, along with their fascinating characters and rich detail, makes them works of passion as well as of the intellect. They are poems that one can read and enjoy again and again. To purchase this book:http://www.mupress.org/webpages/books/H714.html.
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Anne Webster, author of A History of Nursing, a collection of poems forthcoming from Kennesaw State University Press, had a twenty-five year career as a hospital nurse in positions ranging from ICU to Administration before concentrating on writing. Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, The | < Prev |
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