KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT by MARGO BERDESHEVSKY

KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT by Margo Berdeshevsky

(Sundress Publications, 2023)

 

“If ever I raised a daughter in this now—would I name her time bomb and wait?” That powerful line (reflecting the Zeitgeist from any time period in human history) from her poem “Stand,” emphasizes how Margo Berdeshevsky is a poet whose writings deserve attention. Reading her new book, KNEEL SAID THE NIGHT, made me recall a question I posed shortly after turning 60, “Does everything you write now inevitably become memoir?” Then I mocked myself, “But that’s always been the case, though perhaps you can’t know that without the aging that can’t be short-cutted…”

 

Margo’s book includes a powerful introduction, befitting her powerful poems and prose poems. She presents something I have never forgotten since I first read about them (and yet which I believe didn’t get enough attention from requisite authorities): the “prostitutes in woodlands of the Bois de Boulogne: young young young girls from the Eastern European borders brought when they were just old enough to menstruate, or not even. Now their Johns and their pimps have disappeared for fear of the great illness. Left them in tents hidden in the branches, girls still busy as hell opening their legs for men descending under cover of midnight. Some bring them bottles of whisky, the story says. Under the branches. Under the static of missing wings. And the coughing, infected girls are dying in the thickets one by one.”

 

The girls’ presence both grounds and clarifies the book’s concerns which include women’s lives and aging. As regards the latter, you turn 60 and life is different. Different again: “I was scraping my knees on the edges of my aging…” Okay, but what does 60 tell you? Among other things, it told Margo, “Learning something is the only existential reason I’ve ever found.”

 

The specifics in her poems are specifics from her life. But because she transformed words to poetry, the stranger-reader cares:

 

“At lunchtime women head for good or decent restaurants for different reasons, ways to partition the hours between chill and sun, hunger and wine, loneliness and solitude, art and mission, lassitude and a promise to move the flesh, to ignore the loosened muscles, the mirror of middle-aging with the memory of being a beauty, or not. They refuse to read the news. They—are their only news.”

 

The book contains much wisdom through a variety of examples. E.G. “Everybody wanted a world that would remember, and heal. But first you have to agree to do the soul’s work. An ex-priest told me that. Do your soul’s work. What am I, then, allowed to forget?” 

Margo presents others’ wisdom as well with choice quotes that she makes her own:

 

When she raises her eyelids, it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

—Colette 

 

The streets were dark with something more than night 

—Raymond Chandler 

 

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, 

and I have been circling for a thousand years. 

And I still don’t know if I am a falcon,

or a storm, or a great song.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly 

 

Her writings are also presented with resonant photographs and art that committedly collaborate with her words:

 

All in all, Margo’s poetic technique masters the edge before fraying begins to become unimpeded and disintegration takes over fate—note the “held back” breathlessness of caesuras in the title poem “Kneel Said the Night.” But all this made me glad when I came to read:

 

“I am still eager, I said.

I have questions. I have more than questions.”

 

I can only evoke rather than manifest the mercurial strength and yet radiant beauty of this collection. With this book, Margo Berdeshevsky is a poet who did exactly what was counseled in this chosen quote from another writer who knew how to fly—

 

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall. 

—Ray Bradbury 

 

—which is to say (from her poem “Risk”), this poet “struck a match and kissed the blaze.” 

TWO SAMPLE POEMS

PUBLICATIONS READ IN 2022

In 2022, my reading was affected (adversely in terms of numbers) by devoting much time to writing novels, a pattern that began last year when I focused on this long form: in 2020, I read 403 books, but read 209 in 2021 and for 2022 read only 91 books. As with last year, the effect was caused from reading books relevant to my novels-in-progress versus reading for exploration/discovery/enjoyment. Nonetheless, I managed to insert books from the latter factors, and here are the results below. 

2022 BOOKS READ: 91

13 Fiction, 23 Non-Fiction, 55 Poetry

Fiction-13

Secret Orbit by Ken Edwards (Grand Iota, 2022). Novel. December 2022.

 

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (Simon & Schuster, 2009). Novel. October 2022.

 

Liwanag 3, Editors Jason Bayani, Rachel Lastimosa, Oscar Penaranda, Dara Del Rosario, Joe Ramos, Edwin Lozada, Erina Alejo and Steve Belale (Soma Pilipinas, San Francisco, 2021). First Book read in 2022 (Jan. 1). Literary/Arts Journal. Includes an excerpt of my novel DOVELION and a hay(na)ku poem by OM France. January 2022.

 

Growing Up Filipino 3, Collected and Edited by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard (PALH, 2022). Fiction. December 2022.

 

Sindicato & Co. by Jose Elvin Bueno (Penguin Random House SEA, 2021). Novel. December 2022.

 

PHARONI by Colin Dodds (Dodds Amalgamated, 2022). Fiction. August 2022.

 

Spending by Mary Gordon (Scribner, 1999). Novel. December 2022.

 

Writers & Lovers by Lily King (Grove Press, 2020). Fiction. March 2022.

 

Love and Other Rituals by Monica Macansantos (Grattan Street Press, Australia, 2022). Short stories. December 2022.

 

After Dark by Haruki Murakami (Vintage International, 2007). Novel. December 2022.

 

Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami (Vintage International, 2015). Novel. December 2022.

 

Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami (Vintage International, 2015). Novel. December 2022.

 

The Billiard Green Dress & other stories by Donna Wyszomierski (The Yrtemmys Press, Buffalo, NY., 2021). Fiction. February 2022.

 

 

Non-Fiction-24

CLOSER TO LIBERATION: Pin[a/x]y Activism in Theory and Practice, Editors Amanda Solomon Amorao, DJ Kuttin Kandi, and Jen Soriano (Cognella, San Diego, 2022). Pin[a[x]y Scholarship. March 2022. Read in manuscript

 

Notes on Mother Tongues: Colonialism, Class, and giving away what you don't have by Mirene Arsanios (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020). Essay. July 2022.

 

The Eight Nights of Hanukkah by Suzanne Beilenson and Rabbi Daniel S. Wolk (Peter Pauper Press, White Plains, New York, 1993). Size: 3.25" x 4". Religion. December 2022.

 

SULATAN SA PANAHON NG PANDEMYA, Editors Joi Barrios, Merlinda Bobis, et al (Gantala Press, Philippines, Australia, USA). Read in manuscript form. Correspondence. February 2022.

 

Irma Boom: Book Manifest (published with exhibition “Irma Boom: Book Manifest” at the Allard Pierson of the University of Amsterday, 2022). Size: 2.25” x 2.75”. Art. December 2022.

 

The MicroBibliophile, May-June 2022, edited by James Brogan (The Microbibliophile). Miniature Books Journal. June 2022.

 

Talking of Curtains by Paul Buck (SUNY Buffalo / Among the Neighbors #16, 2021). Literary History. February 2022

 

Seize the Moment by Ruth Cullen (Peter Piper Press, Mamaroneck, N.Y., 2003) Size: 3-3/8" x 4". September 2022.

 

Miniature Book Society Newsletter edited by Tony Firman (Issue 120, September 2022). Miniature Books. September 2022.

 

INADVERTENT by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Yale University Press, 2017). Lecture. June 2022.

 

A Few Collectors by Pierre Le-Tan (New Vessel Press, 2022). Nonfiction. July 2022.

 

We Are Not Okay by Christian Livermore (Indie Blu(e) Publishing, Havertown, PA, 2022). Memoir. September 2022.

 

Etiquette for Booksellers by Chris Bunje Lowenstein (Booksby Press, Parma, OH, 2021). Size: 1-5/8@ x 2-7/8". Essay. February 2022.

 

My Most Surprising Bookselling Story by Larry Malam (Booksby Press, Parma, OH, 2022). Nonfiction. October 2022.

 

American Writers at Home by J.D. McClatchy with photographs by Erica Lennard (The Library of America/Vendome Press, New York, 2014). August 2022.

 

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami, Translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (Knopf, New York, 2022). Essays. November-December, 2022.

 

Currently Classic: Jonathan Rachman Design with text by Dean Rhys Morgan (Flammarion, Paris, 2022). Interior Design. October 2022.

 

Wanna Peek Into My Notebook by Barbara Jane Reyes (Paloma Press, 2022). Poetics Essays and Prose. March & October 2022.

 

Silver in My Mines on Peter Hay by Geoff Sawers (SUNY Buffalo / Among the Neighbors #18, 2021). Literary History. February 2022

 

Grand Entrance: Elliana Joy Sommerfeld by Todd Sommerfeld (Booksby Press, OH, 2021). Birth-Plus Announcement. Size: 1-7/8" x 1-7/8". January 2022.

 

Kapwa's Novels by Eileen R. Tabios (Booksby Press, Parma, OH, 2022). Book-length Essay/Fiction. June & September 2022.

 

Craft: A Memoir by Tony Trigilio (Marsh Hawk Press, 2023. Read in manuscript form for blurbing purposes). Memoir/Poetry. October 2022.

 

“some nights I stay there…” on Donna Wyszoierski by Edric Esmer (SUNY Buffalo / Among the Neighbors #17, 2021). Literary History. February 2022

 

VITA JESU CHRISTI (no publisher but has label of "PRINTED IN GERMANY, nd but circa 1930s). Size: 1.75" x 2.25. Religion. April 2022.

 

 

Poetry-55

DIVINE BLUE LIGHT by Will Alexander (City Lights, San Francisco, 2022).

 

To Hush All The Dead by William Allegrezza (BlazeVOX Books, 2022)

 

Palm-Lined with Patience by Basie Allen (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2022). Poetry. May 2022.

Air Raid by Polina Barskova, Trans. by Valzhyna Mort (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021). Poetry. March 2022.

 

Kneel Said The Night by Margo Berdeshevsky (Sundress Publications, 2022). Poetry. December 2022.

 

Two Bolts by Matt Broaddus (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2021). Poetry. January 2022.

 

The Future Is a Country I Do Not Live In by Cynthia Buiza (Paloma Press, San Mateo, 2022). Poetry. November 2022.

 

An Imaginary Cartography of Constellations & Cloud Forms by "The Neighbors"/ SUNY Buffalo Poetry (SUNY Buffalo Poetry Collection's Among the Neighbors series, 2022). Poetry/Poetics. October 2022.

 

Poet on the Right Side of History: David-Baptiste Chirot, edited by Tom Hibbard, C. Mehrl Bennett and John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte Productions, 2022). January 2022.

 

HYBRIDA by Tina Chang (Norton, 2019). Poetry. August 2022.

 

I HAVE SEEN THE BLUEST BLUE by Natalee Cruz (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022). Poetry. April 2022.

 

No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace by Jean D’Amerique (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022). Poetry. December 2022.

 

Genesis: The Vispo Bible by Amanda Earl (Timglaset, Sweden, 2022). Poetry. August 2022.

 

Report from the Earl Society, writings on Amanda Earl, curated by rob mclennan (above/ground press, Ottawa, nd). Poetry. March 2022.

 

Four Blue Eggs: American Cinquains by Susan F. Glassmeyer (Little Pocket Poetry Press, 2022.) Poetry. November 2022.

 

The Long Way Home by Leonard Gontarek (BlazeVOX Books, New York, 2021). Poetry. January 2022.

Five Stars: Selected Amazon Reviews, Vol. 4 by Kevin Killian, Selected by Ted Rees and David Buuck (Tripwire, 2022). Poetry/Prose/ConPo. June 2022.

 

ABOUT TELEPHONE: Vol. 1 An Introduction & Bibliography, Vol. 2 An Interview with Maureen Owen by M.C. Kinniburgh (SUNY Buffalo Poetry Collection's Among the Neighbors series, 2022). Poetry/Poetics. October 2022.

 

They Rise Like A Wave edited by Christine Kitano & Alycia Pirmohamed (Blue Oak Press, 2022). May 2022.

 

Breeze by Marton Koppany (Red Fox, 2022). Visual Poetry. September 2022.

 

Invitation To See The Leaves Outside by Jacob Laneria (in manuscript form). Poetry. March 2022.

 

Separation Anxiety by Janice Lee (Clash, Troy, N.Y., 2022). Poetry. February 2022.

 

TALES OF DIONYSUS: The Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis edited by William Levitan and Stanley Lombardo (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Poetry. September 2022.

 

AGAINST ORIGINALITY: What is Lost Without Discourse Between Poetry and Philosophy of Science? by Julia Rose Lewis (dissertation in partial fulfillment for degree of Doctor of Philosophy, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, 2020). Dissertation. May 2022.

 

Travels with Aruba by Marianne Lyon (sp, nd). Poetry chap/broadside. January 2022.

 

Tales of the OOTD WAR Translated by Scott MacLeod (Serious Publication 29, Oakland, 2005/2022). Poetry. February 2022.

 

Autobiography by rob mclennan (above/ground press, Ottawa, nd). Poetry. March 2022.

 

Touch the Donkey #32, poetry journal curated by rob mclennan (above/ground press, Ottawa, nd). Poetry. March 2022.

 

Behind the Tree Backs by Imao Mohammed, Trans Jennifer Hayashida (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2022). Poetry. May 2022.

 

Marsh Hawk Review, Spring 2022, editors Daniel Morris and Burt Kimmelman (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022). Poetry/Prose. May 2022.

 

Newsflash, Under Fire, Over the Shoulder by Jed Munson (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2021). Poetry. February 2022.

 

Some Girls Walk Into the Country They Are From by Sawako Nakayasu (Wave Books, 2020). Poetry. February 2022.

 

So We Have Been Given Time Or by Sawako Nakayasu (Verse Press, 2004). Poetry. February 2022.

 

Knit Our Broken Bones by Bruce W. Need (Maverick Duck Press, 2022). Poetry. May 2022.

 

MemeWars by Aldon Lynn Nielsen with E. Ethelbert Miller (BlazeVox Books, 2022). Memoir / Poetry. September 2022.

 

Spider Cone by A.L. Nielsen (selva obscure press, Chicago, 2022). Poetry. September 2022.

 

Sufferhead by A.L. Nielsen (Bottlecap Press, 2022). Poetry. April 2022.

 

O by Tammy Nguyen (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022). Poetry. September 2022.

 

Coming Out of Isolation: Poems on Resilience, Triumph and Hope edited by Christopher Okemwa (Verlag Expeditionen, Germany, 2022). September 2022.

 

Nature Felt But Never Apprehended by Angela Penaredondo (Noemi Press, 2023). Poetry. November 2022.

 

gulp/gasp by Serena Piccoli (Moria, Chicago, 2022). Poetry. October 2022.

 

The Radiance of Things by Mercedes Roffe, Trans. by Judith File and Lucina Schell (Shearsman Books, 2022). Poetry. April 2022.

 

EXACTING CLAM No. 7, Winter 2022, published by Sagging Meniscus. Literary Journal. December 2022.

 

City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia) by Diane Sahms (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). Poetry. December 2022.

 

Memory Cards: Dogen Series by Susan M. Schultz (Vagabond Press, 2014). Poetry. April 2022.

 

Lilith Walks by Susan M. Schultz (BlazeVox Books, 2022). Poetry. December 2022.

 

Feelings Of And by Barry Schwabsky (Black Square Editions, 2022). Poetry. March 2022.

 

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss (Graywolf, 2021). Poetry. April 2022.

 

Nine Poets produced by Peter and Donna Thomas (Naropa’s Harry Smith Print Shop, 1999.  Handmade letter pressed pages). Poetry. Size: 2” x 3” Represented Poets: Michael Gizzi, Elaine Equi, Wang Ping, Erica Hunt, Andrew Schelling, Anne Lauterbach, Bill Berkson, Thalia Field, and Anselm Hollo

 

Second Factory: Issue 3 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022). Poetry journal. May 2022.

 

She, Self-Winding by Lub Dieu Van (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2022). Poetry. December 2022

 

Elixir by Lewis Warsh (Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2022). Poetry. May 2022

 

C.S. Rufinesque: A Field Guide by Joe and Steve Winhusen (Warsw Project Space, 2022). Visual art and poems. August 2022.

 

Your Order is Now Ready for Shipping by Mark Young (Sandy Press, 2022). Poetry. August 2022.

 

The Advantages of Cable by Mark Young (Luna Bisonte, 2022). Poetry read in manuscript. August 2022.

 

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A POET (2022)

SIMMERING (A NOVELLA-IN-PROSE-POEMS)

And for my last 2022 book, I'm delighted to release SIMMERING (a novella-in-prose-poems) from Otolilths! More information (including for orders) is available HERE.

Book Description:
Simmering is comprised of 25 prose poems carved out of Eileen R. Tabios’ novel-in-progress, COLLATERAL DAMAGE: A Literature With No Minor Characters. While each poem was written individually and joined randomly, together they create a novella as a narrative surfaces through the rub of language. Each of the prose poems also was written in response to opening lines from some of the greatest English-language novels as written by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Alice Walker, Albert Camus, Zora Neale Hurston, Ray Bradbury, Edith Wharton, Raphael Sabatini, Margaret Atwood, Graham Greene, Anne Tyler, William Gibson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, William Gaddis, Gilbert Sorrentino, Carson McCullers, G.K. Chesterton, and Laurence Sterne.

I hope you have a chance to check out this book!

WILL ALEXANDER'S DIVINE BLUE LIGHT

[Click on images to enlarge.] 

I was rocked again by the sophistication of Will Alexander’s poetics when I read his transcolonial Preface to his newest book, DIVINE BLUE LIGHT (City Lights, 2022), where he mentions “nanogram.” I’d long heard the term surrealist applied to his work; while I see its logic, I empathize more with blurber Jeffrey Yang’s assessment —Alexander’s poems are “not surreal escape but vibrational engagement.” That vibration can redeem even subjects that can drag, e.g. Alexander’s biographical poem for Pessoa, “Condoned to Disappearance” whose first page I show below at end of review. One could be dragged down easily by (banal) biographical elements but his poem insists instead on “poetic infiltration according to the sound of anonymous hives.”

 

(Based on that same Preface, I apply the term “transcolonial” which I use for postcolonial work that transcends the colonial context. The idea of upending what Alexander calls “prior lingual aristocracy” speaks to me as a Filipino writing in English.)

 

Alexander’s language results in diamonds valuable not for the stones but for the manner in which they are cut. Each facet reveals a light able to exist only through Alexander’s diction. The effect shows up well in such shorter poems as “Inner Palpability” and “Oneiric Liminal Memo” (see images below). The latter is clearly a very personal poem made off-putting to the reader not used to this heightened vocabulary but then pulled to join intimately through the (perhaps wry) paradox of the last two words “transactional scintillation,” a phrase that after all concedes the role of anothers.

 

Still, I feel Alexander’s prowess shows most in longer poems that must maintain the paradoxical charisma of his unique vocabulary—words that retain a distance through an unsparingly nonnormative diction. It’s also where the multiplicity and variety of his pre-poem homework shines. 

By being so textually and texturally muscular, I also feel the strength of the line breaks in Will Alexander’s poems. So I was intrigued by a prose poem, “Nervous Incomparable Dictation.” What would be significance of a prose poem form to Alexander? Well, for this poem, the form was required by its ruminative nature: ruminations that require space for uncertainty vis the thinking-out process that require the breadth of the sentence versus the definitiveness of the manner in which a line is cut or broken. The poet here may be nervous (per first word of title) but he’s certainly got nerve. 

Energy, the vibrancy of vibratory currents, might be the ultimate test. That is, read any poem out loud and you’ll feel a sonic transportation that transcends meaning. These poems empathize with body and musically transport. Try it with “Human Presence That Lingers As Distorted Molecule” (see below). I am reminded yet again by how, years ago, I read one of his poems during a City Lights reading. It was the first time I’d read a Will Alexander poem out loud. It was, uh, surreal—by the end of the first line of that poem, I felt my body transformed into a physical instrument for sharing the dynamic energy contained within that poem’s lines.

 

I was so affected by the experience that when I later walked out of City Lights, I did so without paying for the Will Alexander book from which I’d read. Yes, for Will Alexander I stole a book. I did email City Lights afterwards with apologies and promise to pay (they probably laughed as they said, No problem). Someday, I will repay my debt—and not just for the book but for the pleasure the poems provided. Salamat, Will Alexander.