Lethal Frequencies

by James Galvin

A winner of the National Poetry Series and author of the prose classic, The Meadow (Holt, 1992), James Galvin writes poetry that is inspired by the often harsh sub-rural landscape of southwestern Wyoming where Galvin has spent most of the past decade building a log home.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poem "Listen Hard" includes these lines:

It's always day, it's always night.
No such thing as tomorrow.

This of course is not true. It is not always day or always night, at least not for those of us on earth, and there is such a thing as tomorrow. So since these statements aren't true, they must be metaphor, and in order for them to be significant I want to know one of two things: 1) how did you arrive at this metaphor or 2) what follows from it?

But Galvin doesn't provide either of those things. The poem is just this set of assertions with a couple of imperatives thrown in. I did "think of a drop of water/flung from the grindstone," as he directs; but it doesn't lead me to understand how it's always day or night and that there's no tomorrow--unless I do all sorts of work and bring to bear personal knowledge that is outside the scope of the poem. It's not my job to do more work to make the poem cohere than Galvin has done.

"Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white men" is encouragement given to women and people of color; I thought of it when I read a couple of poems near the end of this collection:

Woman Walking a One-Kick Dog Along an Asymptotic Curve

for Bert Honea

Nothing is nothing
Nothing is not nothing
Nothing is next to nothing

and

Woman Walking a One-Kick Dog Along an Asymptotic Curve II

I am no one.
I am no one else.

That's it! That's the entirety of both poems. Seriously. I can scarcely imagine being sufficiently pleased with myself after having written those precious, self-important little snippets that I would give them a pretentious title and put them in a book. Wtf?

I did like one poem a lot, "Real Wonder," which reminded me of The Meadow, Galvin's memoir about Wyoming, which I really enjoyed. And for that I'm giving my rating a second star.

But overall the book is quite forgettable.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

An acute sense of observation and surprisingly inventive language--surprising to me only because the blurbage focused heavily on the landscape, and it's been so long since I've read any of Galvin's poems that I'd forgotten how razor-sharp his utterances can be. I'm reminded of some of my favorite poems by Mark Strand, but Galvin's voice is his own: sometimes formal, always imaginative. Yes, the landscape is a figure--a looming presence--in many of the poems, but it's Galvin's manner of *seeing* and *thinking* and bringing that vision to the page that is, at times, astonishing.

Here's one of the quieter poems in its entirety:

EXPECTING COMPANY

Death is when the outside world
Wants to get away from itself
By going inside of someone.

Till the walls cave in.
Till the roof is gone.

I'm floating face up
On a sea of adrenaline.
A broken window hangs around my neck.

I have to make more room in here.
I have to get rid of the furniture.
* * *
And here, in contrast, is a passage from "You Know What People Say":

They make a mockery of irony.
They hold Special Olympics in wit.
What was Shakespeare's blood pressure?
Verical river, cloister of thunder,
Bleeds the ship's fell sail.
God comes in for a landing. He lowers God's landing gear.
He raises the holy spoilers, lowers the sacred ailerons. He imagines
Reality.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Galvin wrote as he was writing The Meadow took the pressure off that aphoristic characterization and allowed several different kinds of poem -- for example, the densely brambled syntax of "Indirective," that tropes Frost, and the quixotic "The Sacral Dreams of Ramon Fernandez," that imagines Wallace Stevens' leftist compadre as a holdover on the Sangre de Christo. "Rintrah Roars," with its mind on Blake, woolies the aphorism characteristic of earlier volumes into a prose-like 'spliced reflection': "So I say, 'O Jim [McPherson], you'd make a good bumblebee,' but I was thinking, That ought to be enough for anybody's God." I love this poem that I think will not be many's favorite, because it will be said to be "just an elegy:" "The Other Reason It Rains, Etc.":

Time was there was more room

For things to exist:
Price tags, eyebrows, nuns, dungarees,
surf, weeds, eclipses, radios,

Squirrels, sod, junk, siestas.
Yes there was aspirin. Yes there were cellos.
Yes there was brooding tenderness.

I think a lot about this list -- in this, feeling very Ramon Fernandez myself.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Art Class" / "Resurrection Update" / "Expecting Company"

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Galvin's poetry is a treasure.