The Red Bird

by Joyelle McSweeney

Winner of the 2001 Fence Modern Poets Series Prize, selected by Allen Grossman. With the persistent, dappled vision of an ecstatic pragmatist, Joyelle McSweeney sees things as they are through "the modern knothole." Eventuality, delicately shaded by the fine and fearless intelligence of these kinesthetic arrangements, coincides with imaginative possibility; the resulting poems are as much mind as place.

Genres: Poetry

93 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

Joyelle McSweeney is a poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and professor at the University of Notre Dame. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard before earning an MPhil from Oxford and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

With Johannes Göransson, McSweeney founded and edits Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. The press focuses on modern and contemporary works from Latin America, Asia, the US and Europe, including such major authors as Hiromi Itō, Kim Hyesoon, Aase Berg and Raul Zurita. Action Books seeks to move poetry and poetics from other literary cultures into the center of US poetry discussions and undermine the nationalist rubrics under which literature is marketed and discussed. In addition to the University of Notre Dame, McSweeney has taught in the MFA program at the University of Alabama and as a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Reviews

[Farren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhibit A:

"In dialogue with the resonant fabric,
lettuce, I embrace you, and I admit
that internal suffering is difficult to photograph.
Lost toads, I call for you
in the back yard, I toe over the leaves.
little cha cha"

I'll bet this was a big deal when it was published? But leaves me with absolutely no impression whatsoever? Except a lingering dread that I will soon read the (adorable! diminutive! twee! precious!) word "LITTLE" again?

So alright. Let's read The Commandrine?

[Melina · Rating 2 out of 5]

McSweeney mixes Latin with French, 'Olde English', and made-up compound words. She uses natural and man-made objects as symbols without discrimination. Traditional punctuation rules are toyed with- many of the poems end without periods.

The end result, I think, is supposed to be about sound above all else. Imagery, meaning, and the elegant turn of phrase seem to be sacrificed.

Just not my style.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3

[Rachel burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vivid. Beautiful.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

15/31

I don’t think I am smart enough for this book. McSweeney is associative and dream-like, makes leaps and bounds in associations, and writes some very beautiful images. I just don’t know what any of it means. So I am just enjoying the words.

#SealeyChallenge #JoyelleMcSweeney

From “Premiers”

“We get in, the drummer has cancer.
his palms break open halfway through the set.
He’s up in a cage, bleeding, we jump up and down
in the crowd breaking up. Lunation. Synodic month.
I look up. Pendant of red wolves
hung behind the chapel. Pendant, inset, with Alps.”

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love poetry books with introductions -- and this one has a short page and a half by Allen Grossman. "The best gift a poet can give is truth to the fact of experience." And on we go to poetic realism, and McSweeney's "veridical" seeing and what is absent from it.
There is a clever, conversational, engaging quality to many of the poems -- abrupt endings, enigmatic titles such as "Book of". The poem called "Proverb" provides a first stanza with no verb, a third stanza itemizing infinitives until a time-traveling "we" appears to remind us of choice -- and the proverb? "one house-move equal to three fires."

. I admire her courage to create unusual poems that go beyond the usual repertoire of cleverness. Starting with titles, one can see that these are intellectually and finely-tuned poems. “Still Life w/Influences” which opens the collection looks like notes, written quickly, and plays on the idea of art,
alludes to influences on our perceptions, on speed of movement (as opposed to stillness).
She seems to run with series as in the five different “Toy” poems, the nine different poems sharing the title “The Voyage of the Beagle”. Slant references to the past are supported by the poems which hang on the titles The Round Table” and “The Barque of a Million Years”; the possibility of different points of view are refreshingly confirmed in Roman, Persuasion, Animal Instruction, Interview with a Dog” and she heightens
intrigue with the unfinished title, “Book of”. The collection ends with the poem “Afterlives” which both closes and opens the possibility of further influences.


The opening poem, "Still Life with influences" sets a marvellous tone -- we do indeed try to freeze time into convenient slots of history and then, find past collides into present.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 3 star rating's splitting the difference here. When I first read this several years ago in grad school I would have given it a 4. I recently saw it on the shelf of my library and said, "I wonder if I still like that." I do, I guess, but not as much. It's possible that may be a general "detached Iowa poetry" overload that has to do with me and nothing to do with this book in particular...?

[Russel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more like a 3 (for me). But she looks like a good kisser? So I mean, benefit of the doubt?