Some Mountains Removed

by Daniel Bouchard

In his new collection of poetry, Daniel Bouchard responds to our contemporary dystopia with exacting description and incisive criticism. "The cognitive dissonance between what we are in daily life and what we know about the history we inhabit in this is the matter of this book. It is laid out in such a way that we can see what our minds are made of, and study the problem. Here the rhetoric of new poetry ("Hades faces environmental crises") is at ease with both beauty and corruption"--Fanny Howe. Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I love 'Knives of the Poets,' a tribute to Juvenal that wrestles invective away from the cretins and assholes, but I was surprised when I first heard it: Bouchard's humaneness and also his perspective on how partial a view of the world 'human' gives make him the last poet I'd've expected to yield give to the pleasures of moral correction (satire's purpose in the time of Juvenal). Blame it on the continuing ugliness of human history ('White Death This Exit'). Of course, nature can be ugly too, or maybe it's just that nature is a mirror from which the silver has to be scraped before we can see clear ('Fenestra Vestibuli'). Anyway, ugly or not, history is where we live, and it's good to be alive ('XXXI'). A worthy sequel to Diminutive Revolutions.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The gritty ambiance of these poems recalls and advances the concerns of Bouchard’s Diminutive Revolutions: a deliquescent New England of mildewed “sills and moldings”; the past exerting its flinty pressure on the present; rubble put to use as a primer of local history. Thought moves more often here in shorter, denser lines (“The last/French Louis under lockdown longed/for a life of English first Charles.”), the observations more compressed, the politics maybe more hardbitten (Juvenal over Thoreau) as befits a republic pushed up against the wall while “Night turns/obscure,” with the poets darkly wondering “if poetry will outlive celluloid.” Or mountains. Or anything else.