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Open the Window and Drown
Art is dangerous. Life is dangerous. Kathleen Tyler's marvelous, truth-telling Open the Window and Drown records the dangers -- and also the revelations that come when those dangers are embraced. Tyler unwraps the puzzles of Kandinsky's art with more enticing "sleepless I mull/ over this painting that calls the crow's bluff." She defines her own life with, "...it is my job to face always/ the wind the flat bay// my heart that nothing gets past." The poetry constantly surprises us, thrills us. As the poet and her vision are transformed, so are we, her readers. Dangerous, yes -- exhilarating, of course. Kathleen Tyler's Open the Window and Drown is masterful, a highly welcome addition to the poetry of our time. Holly Prado
Kathleen Tyler’s remarkable new book, Open the Window and Drown, is inspired by the work of Wassily Kandinsky, beginning with Composition VI, the Deluge, which she encountered one day at LACMA. In her introduction, Tyler says she was “dazzled by his ability to fuse color and form, to create a new language for emotion.” The poems accomplish this fusion in verse. The poems come together as abstract mosaics of language, gorgeous and dense. These are paintings in words, informed by a dazzling linguistic intelligence. If there is a mercy here beyond drowning, beyond the “elegant death camas,” it is in the work of language, in the poet’s job “to face always/ the wind.” There is a salvation in the “receptive eye/scanning the apocalyptic surface/ for survivors.” This extraordinary collection shows us a “heart that nothing gets past,” and a vocabulary of language that is redemptive in its brilliance.
Phoebe MacAdams
Kathleen Tyler’s poems inspired from a Kandinsky painting sets us in front of the Creative in its myriad be it in visual art, poetry, the great myths, or everyday life. Tyler has, as one of the titles to her poems indicates, Hauled From a Great Depth a body of work that takes us on a journey like no other.
In this world, death has a sense of humor and …a murky vermillion/ force presses down blue… Her son asks, what do shadows eat? and the number 7 dangles/ a charm on the bracelet of God. Tyler’s poems like Kandinsky’s paintings are bold. And where Kandinsky was a master of color and form to bring forth the inner world, here Tyler is a master of language and imagery. These poems written in what many call a pre-apocalyptic age are the poet’s last wild cry of love, and we are the richer for having read them.
Margaret Walsh
Kathleen Tyler’s remarkable new book, Open the Window and Drown, is inspired by the work of Wassily Kandinsky, beginning with Composition VI, the Deluge, which she encountered one day at LACMA. In her introduction, Tyler says she was “dazzled by his ability to fuse color and form, to create a new language for emotion.” The poems accomplish this fusion in verse. The poems come together as abstract mosaics of language, gorgeous and dense. These are paintings in words, informed by a dazzling linguistic intelligence. If there is a mercy here beyond drowning, beyond the “elegant death camas,” it is in the work of language, in the poet’s job “to face always/ the wind.” There is a salvation in the “receptive eye/scanning the apocalyptic surface/ for survivors.” This extraordinary collection shows us a “heart that nothing gets past,” and a vocabulary of language that is redemptive in its brilliance.
Phoebe MacAdams
Kathleen Tyler’s poems inspired from a Kandinsky painting sets us in front of the Creative in its myriad be it in visual art, poetry, the great myths, or everyday life. Tyler has, as one of the titles to her poems indicates, Hauled From a Great Depth a body of work that takes us on a journey like no other.
In this world, death has a sense of humor and …a murky vermillion/ force presses down blue… Her son asks, what do shadows eat? and the number 7 dangles/ a charm on the bracelet of God. Tyler’s poems like Kandinsky’s paintings are bold. And where Kandinsky was a master of color and form to bring forth the inner world, here Tyler is a master of language and imagery. These poems written in what many call a pre-apocalyptic age are the poet’s last wild cry of love, and we are the richer for having read them.
Margaret Walsh
76 pages, Paperback
Published December 8, 2017
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