Olives

by A.E. Stallings

A. E. Stallings has established herself as one of the best American poets of her generation. In addition to a lively dialogue with both the contemporary and ancient culture of her adopted homeland, Greece, this new collection features poems that, in her inimitable voice, address the joys and anxieties of marriage and motherhood. This collection builds on previous accomplishments with some longer poems and sequences of greater philosophical scope, such as “On Visiting a Borrowed Country House in Arcadia.” Stallings possesses the rare ability to craft precise poems that pulsate with deeply felt emotion. Like the olives of the title, the book embraces the bitter but savory fruits of the ancient tree, and the tears and sweetness we harvest in our temporary lives. These poems show Stallings in complete command of her talent, able to suggest the world in a word.

Genres: Poetry, College, American

70 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2012

About the author

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings is an American poet and translator. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.

Stallings was born and raised in Decatur, Georgia and studied classics at the University of Georgia, and the University of Oxford. She is an editor with the Atlanta Review. In 1999, Stallings moved to Athens, Greece and has lived there ever since. She is the Poetry Program Director of the Athens Centre. She is married to John Psaropoulos, who is the editor of the Athens News.

Stallings' poetry uses traditional forms, and she has been associated with the New Formalism.

She is a frequent contributor of poems and essays to Poetry magazine. She has published three books of original verse, Archaic Smile (1999), Hapax (2006), and Olives (2012). In 2007 she published a verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things).

Reviews

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very small cadre/cabal of poets that gets my magnetic respect."Every word tells," that damn dictum, yes. The words are pressed into the page indelibly. Extreme skill in form, and rhyme, sloppiness-banishing. If like woodwork, they are lathed and lacquered to be exquisite. If like music, they have exposition, development, and resolution, fingers fly across necks. Yet these same traits trouble me. Many times the poems are contained in a way that seems conspicuous, almost languidly comfortable. If like wine, I can't tell if I am intoxicated into trading "balance" and "acidity" for the more dangerous and important themes of the modern world: the wicked collusion of technology and capital, say, or the ineradicable inbreeding of sexism and racism, or the baffling and persistent ignorance of the brain and our emotions. The oddity and absurdity of modern life is slightly tempered by the gracefulness of the work. In this poetry, if there is an argument between subjects, it seems to be resolved by is closure. There is not raggedness, nor graffiti. There might be insomnia, but one falls back asleep. There is, frankly, a more than slighly ahistorical insistence on classical Greek themes. There is a dependence on some overused "poetic" words: (fricative, oubliette, mote). Still, I would choose a Stallings poem over many, many others.

[Linda Ledford-miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book of poetry by an American poet who lives in Athens. She is a master of rhyme. Here is the eponymous poem.
Olives


Sometimes a craving comes for salt, not sweet,
For fruits that you can eat
Only if pickled in a vat of tears —
A rich and dark and indehiscent meat
Clinging tightly to the pit — on spears

Of toothpicks, maybe, drowned beneath a tide
Of vodka and vermouth,
Rocking at the bottom of a wide,
Shallow, long-stemmed glass, and gentrified;
Or rustic, on a plate cracked like a tooth —

A miscellany of the humble hues
Eponymously drab —
Brown greens and purple browns, the blacks and blues
That chart the slow chromatics of a bruise —
Washed down with swigs of barrel wine that stab

The palate with pine-sharpness. They recall
The harvest and its toil,
The nets spread under silver trees that foil
The blue glass of the heavens in the fall —
Daylight packed in treasuries of oil,

Paradigmatic summers that decline
Like singular archaic nouns, the troops
Of hours in retreat. These fruits are mine —
Small bitter drupes
Full of the golden past and cured in brine.

[Jenna]

Olives is a pleasing collection by an understated master of formalism, sprinkled with quirkily intelligent puns and tidily epigrammatic turns-of-phrase (death is described as "the rude democracy of bone"; nightfall is described as "The earth [turning] her back/on one yellow middling star/to consider lights more various and far"). The book is elegantly partitioned into four thematically cohesive sections. The first section, "The Argument," deals rather straightforwardly with the subject of marital quarreling. The second section, "The Extinction of Silence," is concerned with music and its complex relationship with the passage of time (and, as a corollary, death). The third section, "Three Poems to Psyche," was my favorite, being the most vividly imaginative (as well as the most formalistically virtuosic) section of a collection that is otherwise firmly anchored in the quiet day-to-day routines of domestic living. As a radiologist, I was especially tickled by the depiction of a Stygian boatman with "ultrasound eyes" (how else would he be able to see in the dark?). With the fourth section, "Fairy-Tale Logic," the book's focus returns to the complexities of married life and childrearing, with at-times-Elizabeth-Bishopesque meditations on the meanings of fairy tales, shadows, mirrors, and the like. Very fine verse.

[Luke]

Olives

Is love so evil?
Is Eve? Lo,
love vies, evolves. I
lose selves,
sylphs of
loose Levi's,
sieve oil
of vile sloe.
Love sighs,
slives. O
veils of
voile, so
sly, so suave.
O lives,
soil sleeves,
I love so
I solve.

[David Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these poems. They seem to me at times like sophisticated play and reading them it is as if coming into a home full of rich antiquity and order inhabited by a family with young children whose matron's eye dances with humor, an eye which catches subtleties that often elude me and perhaps expose me unflatteringly. Some of the poems about marital relationship and some of the poems about children especially resonate with me, though I feel lame for saying so.

Some of the poems my mind returns to are "Listening to Peter and the Wolf with Jason, Age 3,""Hide and Seek" (the thought of the mortality of a child), "Dinosaur Fever" (children's apprehension of deadly presence in reality), "Country Song," "Burned," and "The Argument".

[Charmaine Lim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

Gosh I hated reading this for class

Full review here: https://charmainelimen.wordpress.com/...

[Jeremy Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.E. Stallings has become one of my go to poets in my increased desire to read poetry and understand it a bit more. While I have found others I have enjoyed, she was the first I found that I really enjoyed. Due to this I've been working through her collection by reading a work by her, then another poet, and coming back to her works.

I first really enjoyed her due to her use of Greek mythology in a number of her poems, which does happen here. However, I found that I really enjoyed her images. Whether it is a poem about the generational battle with new pop music, balloons, or about more weighty subjects like burning relational bridges in life. I have just found her poetry enjoyable to read and clever in their insight.

She has easily become one of the top poets I enjoy. While I do know I am fairly early on in my journey into poetry, I've been happy to find one I've enjoyed so much early on.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite poet writing today. Stallings works mostly within the structural framework of meter and rhyme. Each poem has the feel of a carefully constructed miniature house. It matters, I think, when reading a poem to sense innately that care and hard work when into its creation.

[- · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Can children save each other?”

[Tayler Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tulips was probably my favorite from this collection but there are so many gems in here.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. E. Stallings is probably my favorite living poet, and this is a really wonderful collection.

[Colin Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

this back to back with the Monkey Man- the duality of man in it's purest form

[G.m. Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than a collection of great poems, Olives is a book. In Kevin Kelly’s “What Will Books Become,” a book is “a self-contained story, argument, or body of knowledge . . . it contains its own beginning, middle, and end.” Frost declared that from a collection of twenty-four poems the book should become the twenty-fifth. Few books of poetry live up to these ideals. A.E. Stallings’ third book of poetry, Olives, exceeds them, “full of the golden past and steeped in brine.”

read the full review at strongverse.blogspot.com!

I know of no better collection of poetry than Olives. There are books to which it is equal but as a pure a work of poetry, as a gathering of scattered olive-poems into one jar (anecdotal or not), it is unsurpassed. Buy this book and buy it for everyone who loves and reads--not just poetry but words, the “bitter drupes” of meaning A.E. Stallings has here gathered into Olives.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet who recommended this to our book club felt obligated to warn us that Stallings's poems rhyme; she worried that we'd be turned off by the classic style. Even if it's not a popular approach, the poems in Olives are a wonderful collection of well executed forms--that sometimes break the rules--serving their topics and themes in perfect harmony. The collection has some connecting threads but there isn't one uniting theme. It's largely composed of previously published poems, arranged based on some common characteristics and grouped according to overarching genre. My favorite poems are in section three, Three Poems for Psyche. Stallings gives strong voices to characters in Apuleius' classic, which probably sums up her poetry in general: a combination of the classical with forceful, human voice.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't familiar with Stallings until March of this year, but this has quickly become one of my favourite collections. She uses form with such good judgement and clarity, and it makes her imagery feel both fresh and inevitable. The last section in this collection, which deals with children and childhood, is my favourite: I love how she writes about children, her mixture of tenderness, frustration and awe is beautiful.

[Frank Romagosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is such a marvel, its poems and their art are breathtaking .. they all have such incredible meter and rhyme in ways that astound, her writing makes even repetition an event to listen to and hear. This is a book of poetry that one reads from start to finish, no questions asked, it is breathtaking .. and its ending poem, so very beautiful and in some miraculous way, very dear!

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my money, she's simply among the very best poets writing today. I'll buy anything she publishes because she is freaking brilliant, charming, smart, and she makes even the most challenging poetic form look easy...which is a mark of her genius. If you even remotely like poetry but haven't read her there is a gaping hole in your soul and you don't even know it.

[Janni]

Over the past few years A.E. Stallings has become one of my favorite contemporary poets. While I might not love this collection quite as much as Archaic Smile, there were enough poems where the ending managed to land just so to make it still worth the reading.

Here's one lighter (yet not lighter) one that made me smile.

[Christopher Rutenber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic use of sound and rhyme, something altogether lacking in much current poetry. I also very much enjoyed her subject matter.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big Stallings fan here. Read through it once and am set to read through it again, having re-read many of the poems already as I went along. Good sign. Good poet. Good book.

[Starr Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting read. It can be interpreted in so many ways, spiritually, physically, emotionally. I loved this collection of poetry it was very freeing and beautiful.

[Noor]

part of tree olives

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my very favorite book of poetry, ever. Just perfection.

Update: Read it again years later and still love it.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stallings' facility with language and form can't be denied, but the word that kept coming to mind as I read was "dry." Technical competence without energy, not a sense of emotion repressed or held back so much as wrung out before the poem was written. In one poem of the book, "Lines for Turner Cassity," we read:

A wit not merely clever but hard-bitten.
Sometimes I hear you utter overwritten.

And even at this distance, there's no choice
But hear the word in that distinctive voice.

If she was not directly overinfluenced by him, she is certainly a kindred spirit. In any case, those who enjoy poetry, language, and ideas as objects to turn about and examine, curiously without enthusiasm, may enjoy this volume more than I did. The tail end of the anagrammatic poem "Olives" on the back cover of the book, may serve as her ars poetica: I love so/I solve.

I am an emotionally cool person, so I prefer poetry that has more verve or intensity to awaken me from slumber.

I do like Stallings' humor, another trait she shares with Cassity. It often comes out via taking on voices, such as this dark humor arising out of her conception of Persephone in "Persephone to Psyche" [the latter having traveled to the underworld on a task]:

Come sit with me at the bar.
Another Lethe for the bride.
Your pregnant? Well, of course you are!
Make that a Virgin Suicide.

Me and my man, we tried for a spell,
A pharmacopoeia of charms,
And yet . . . When I am lonesome, well,
I rock the stillborns in my arms.

Despite the darkness of these stanzas, I love this honky tonk version of Persephone. Stallings has three poems in a series about Psyche and it helps to refresh one's knowledge of the myth before reading them.

I do intend to keep this book because of various form examples in it. I wouldn't say that all of them make fully successful poems but they're interesting. I found myself making notes about forms in the table of contents.

So try this book when you're wanting a intellectual stimulation or are in a generally curious frame of mind but not when you want to be moved. I would consider reading another of her books with that advice in mind.

[Fredore Praltsa]

I liked her focus on the specific day-to-day (marital arguments! balloons at children's birthday parties! etc.) and her play with form. Sometimes she over-explains, which makes things drag. For example:

Noon, the radiator grill
Groaned, gave off a lesser chill
So that we could take off our coats.
The pipes coughed to clear their throats.

I don't feel like I need to know "why" the radiator gave off less heat (esp. because the whole framework of sentient radiator is a bit unconvincing in this poem) or why the pipes coughed (couldn't you just say "the pipes cleared their throats"?). I'm bad at scanning but it seems like she depends on these phrases for meter (four stresses on each line)? That doesn't really justify their presence, though. Pound said, "If you are using a symmetrical form, don’t put in what you want to say and then fill up the remaining vacuums with slush."

But she has many good lines. About the Wilderness:

This out-of-doors that wins us our release
And temporary peace—
Not because it is pristine or pretty,
But because it has no pity or self-pity.

About visiting a graveyard but also metaphorically about life:

... while I
Wandered between two dates, and earth and sky.

... Life IS basically a wandering between two dates.

[Katie Farris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to choose a favorite poem from the book, though I loved parts three and four the best. Here's one of my favorites-- also check out the chiastic "The Eldest Sister to Psyche," and the wonderful antiblurb on the back of the book.

Sea Girls
for Jason

"Not gulls, girls." You frown, and you insist--
Between two languages, you work at words.
(R's and L's, it's hard to get them right.)
We watch the heaven's flotsam: garbage-white
Above the island dump (just out of sight),
Dirty, common, greedy-- only birds.
OK, I acquiesce, too tired to banter.

Somehow they're not the same, though. See, they rise
As though we glimpsed them through a torn disguise--
Spellbound maidens, wild in flight, forsaken--
Some metamorphosis that Ovid missed,
With their pale breasts, their almost human cries.
So maybe it is I who am mistaken;
But you have changed them. You are the enchanter.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possessing an extraordinary command of rhyme and meter, Stallings explores the inner states of our common emotions in common relationships with a spouse, a child, a muse, a mentor, a graveyard. She renders conflict without apology, sometimes with wry humor and forbearance, and sometimes regret, with help from music (classical), mythology (particularly Greek), fairy tale, and personal incident to illustrate temporal human existence.

[Nicholas Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know what makes Stallings’ poetry good, but I am sure it is. One thing is her refusal to shout. Cool, composed (working with the careful discipline of metred rhyme) even while capturing a quarrel. And there’s enough light between her lines to let them breathe, without the suffocations of high mindedness or self. When you re-read, it’s for the pleasure of it, not to decipher.

[John Reis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection more confusing than her others. And I found fewer memorable lines. There is “We start by straining to be nice” in On Visiting a Borrowed Country House in Arcadia. And in the poem Tulips there is this line “And do not wilt so much as faint.”

I like the poems Jigsaw Puzzle, Burned, Country Song, The Ghost Ship, Tulips, and Another Bedtime Story especially.

[Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection. I liked the funky rhyme schemes in each poem. I really liked the ones about simple subjects like food, nature, and wedding dresses. I thought I’d like the section about Psyche more, but it wound up being my least favorite part. The poems about babies and motherhood were surprisingly funny. Overall an enjoyable afternoon read.