Utopia Minus

by Susan Briante

From the Confederacy to Ground Zero to the ruins of urban sprawl, this book is a monument to collapse—itself a terrible art: “Gen. Sherman painted landscapes.” Sometimes, in the breakage of the human, nature returns: a loving catalog of trees and birds as well as shuttered franchise restaurants. Sometimes, when human relations break down, they create terrible yearning. Each type of war, in public space and private interaction, is given a new, evidentiary lament: “O Sunglass Hut, we hardly knew you!”

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2011

About the author

Susan Briante was born in Newark, NJ, after the riots. The author of the book, Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press, 2007), Briante now lives in Dallas with the poet Farid Matuk.

Reviews

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty good at writing poems, really good at quoting them, and even better at reading them... seem to have lost my knack for writing about them, though.

some lines that struck me, stuck with me:



"How does a tree move when it is angry
I want to be angry like that."
-Yellow Finches Drop from a Plane Tree
--

"In the luminous day by day, the book was just interruption,/ a record of presence, attention. Music / rises from the deep lobes of lung."

"Self-reflective, palms open. I never want/ to bother anyone with my presence,/my, my, my, my, my/ not even the goats."
-Specimen Box
--

"Madam, do you ever get the feeling there's something wrong with how things are run? Rwandans bury their children by the dozen. Tropical depressions spiral through the afternoon. And when a cardinal spits out his high, hard song, are we responsible to him as well?"
-Dear Madam Secretary of Homeland Security
--

"In the hard soil of childhood, God was everywhere: in pitted sycamores, a vibrating clothes line, in fireflies hung still as lanterns from a Japanese maple.

One day I carved a whole landscape in the windowsill. Sun, willow, car, lady. Perhaps there were rabbits. My mother grabbed my wrist; rains broke; livewires writhed like eels through our streets.

How much loneliness must we inherit?"
- Dear Mr. Chairman of Ethics, Leadership and Personnel Policy in the U.S. Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel
--


I'd quote more, but I can't get the spacing right, so ... just borrow this from me, or go buy it: http://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Minus-Th... or go to the library, or something.

[Joe Milazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simultaneously urban and pastoral, essay-like and lyrical, theoretical and deeply felt (that is, buoyed by both ardor and skepticism), the poems in this book might best be described as Gaudi-like. Their architecture is pliant, original, somewhat secret, sturdy enough to withstand not only their own self-regard, and accommodating of high traffic: visitors who would be readers, and vice versa.

[Cindy John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review here:
http://issuu.com/gently_read_literatu...

[Sara Sams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of these poems read like philosophical inquiries, many on the nature of emptiness in a contemporary American city. From I-35, "Show me the asterisk, clause at the end of my lease, something in/ between the butterfly garden and the Arlington Cemetery, between cattle/ drives and I-35, wagon trails and Walt Disney, enough of the anecdote/ for everyone I love."

Almost "antidote." But not.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How does a tree move when it’s angry? / I want to be angry like that.”