Lampblack & Ash: Poems

by Simone Muench

There is something utterly in thrall here, honey-slow and fixated. Driven by obsession—in particular, obsession with the legendary French poet, Robert Desnos—Muench’s identification with a true self beyond the self’s known truth is startling.
—from the introduction by Carol Muske-Dukes

“Simone’s poems have a confidence and sophistication of what I like to call intentionality. Also wit, grace, poise, and a relationship to writing beyond self-referential feeling.”
—Anne Waldman

“Lush, sprouting, sensuous images line-by-line, adopting myth freely, Muench’s poems are volatile explosives, circling beauty.”—James Tate

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Simone Muench was raised in Benson, Louisiana and Combs, Arkansas. She is the author of five full-length collections including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, August, 2014). Her most recent chapbook Trace received the Black River Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Some of her honors include an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council fellowships, Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry, Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry, PSA’s Bright Lights/Big Verse Contest, and residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, and VSC. She received her Ph.D from UIC, and is Professor of English at Lewis University where she serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Collaborative sonnets, written with Dean Rader, are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Zyzzyva, Blackbird, and others.

Reviews

[Hundeschlitten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost put this back on the library shelf when I read in the introduction that the poems in this thin volume were composed at least in part in honor of a French surrealist poet (writing about art to me is one of those lame literary conceits, the kind of stuff you are forced to read in college, like Keats waxing on about a Grecian urn or W.C. Williams ruminating about Picasso). However, the power of Muench's language quickly won me over. Her language oftens borders on the sublime, with a narrative intensity, whether she's talking about a Louisiana evening or a sexy boy. And while I can do without some of the inside literary references and her occasional drift into becoming a show-off, that is leavened by Muench's sense of humor. For instance, take this passage from "There are Wolves that Sit at the Feet of Men":

you're less lovely in the light
but lovelier than last night when you
heaved over the side of a yacht
into your own moon-mad reflection

I laughed out loud when I read that.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in part as homage to the surrealist French poet Robert Desnos, Muensch focuses on the world as it is perceived through her eyes: as Medusa; a glass swallow; wisteria; curious victim. Muench desires self-interrogation yet is insightful (and witty) enough to make meaning of expression bound by the restraint of time: “Residue of sleet / on a trampoline, a silver screw undoing / what we thought we knew of tomorrow”. The future is what it becomes, regardless of the poet’s will.

Muench possesses a heightened awareness of language and provides graceful intonation and delightful lyrical range: “listen to the fricative sigh / of fingers through tresses, / over peaches that glow / like low-watt bulbs”. The lush lines are a true delight and add to the richness of the poems’ intention. There are a few moments that miss the mark, most notably when control of the piece gets muddled somewhere within the dense details and multiple layers of sensory or theme. Regardless, this remains an enthralling and thoughtful collection. Standouts include “I’m Like You, My Dear,” “Residue,” and “In Medias Res”.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these lines are extremely vivid. Pretty sexy, girly, playful, and French.

"In second-story windows,
girls in fine coal dresses undress, scrim of their slips
lemon-light: thin as a bone button that unfastens
the sky. Blue door on a black house, your body
like glass"

With a high vocabulary.

[Drusilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her poems are gorgeous & well-crafted. This newest is no exception.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came so close to giving this a five.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

reminds me of being seventeen on livejournal, reading poems by girls/women who wrote like this, with words you had to note down and look up, who spoke french and wore their hair long and such

[Nicole Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this one twice, I enjoyed it so much. Simone Muench's poetry is elusive, it makes the reader form images in the mind that the words only hint at. There is the promise of magic, of sensuality, and grief. This isn't what may be considered "traditional" poetry (what exactly is that?): there are no rhyming couplets, there is no rhythm to the writing style, and that is where it's evocative power lies. Read this.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Currently reading. Current impression: the words are beautifully arranged but strangely feel empty at the same time. Will need to determine if that's the content of the poetry or simply lack of understanding.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourites: There are Wolves that Sit at the Feet of Men, The Laws or Sawdust and Stars, Sketches of Dresses in Mean Reds, By Your Mouth, In Media’s Res, Window, and Spectacle: Possession

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm like you, my dear. Just a little
too near the Scylla. Sea-
level and singing
a cappella."

[Lex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poem about you would tell a story about a girl who one night while steeping tea, spilled honey on a book and discovered you.

you're less lovely in the light but lovelier than last night when you heaved over the side of a yacht into your own moon-mad reflection

The laws of sawdust and stars say: close your eyes till you hear rain, follow its moss and metal smell, as it turns evening's debris into silverroot, and peaches light the path to a city built on a sea of mercury.

If you're still, quiet as spite, Pain purses her lips and blows you a goodbye kiss; places a pistol in your hand and singsongs in your ear: Here. Hold this. Feel this.

You conspire against my pleasure, your sadness is ferocious, taller than Kilimanjaro. You live in my ribs, a ruby boutonnière; you are plum and pendulum; a car salesman in white tie and tails. You're bizarre as innards, buzzards as you stumble dream to dream you reside in margins, in the blurry vision of virgins; in my eyes, you are aniline dye, the deep south of your contagious mouth.

Your loot is my watch, twenty bucks, a rhinestone choker, and my death which has yet to be decided.

You are reticulation in my skin, Euclidian. A warning, apiarian, you are the keeper of bees. I covered my flesh with pollen & straw, with kohl-rimmed lids I came to you in the coppice where you hid your ductility, gold-green winged & veined. Leaf spill, yellow odor on your collar. I pull you closer to smell the centuries. You are archaic & I am archival.

A song, an urn, the ashcan of imagine.

Your words are seaspray, agave. You are wafer weight in my lightning mouth. I burn you to strawberry. Leaf-lake. Glass bird don't break.

lover, let me listen in to the blood meridian

We know the rules. My song that has gone so long unheard will taunt you in your sleep even as you sweep your sword across my neck like a finger tracing its own silence.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was OK. Lots of imagery and words kept coming up again and again and, rather than feeling considered and deliberate (as it certainly was intended), it felt as though the poet could do with using a thesaurus.