Fjords Vol.1

by Zachary Schomburg

Poetry. As one of the most exciting new voices in American poetry, Zachary Schomburg's previous books have enthralled thousands of readers with surreal landscapes populated by gorillas in people clothes, jaguars, plagues of hummingbirds, and even Abraham Lincoln. His poems have inspired art installations, shadow puppetry, rock albums, and string quartets. In FJORDS, Schomburg inhabits the icy landscape, walking among all his little deaths as he explores the narrow inlets between the transcendent and the mundane. These are poems to be read by torchlight or with no light at all. As Schomburg explains, There is so much blood in the trees. It will be easy to fall in love like this.

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2012

Reviews

[Darren Angle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I yelled this book into a locked peanut shell and diamonds replaced the peanuts.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, god, what is there to say about this book? I lost track of how many times my eyes frantically scanned the page after reading the poem, muttering, "Oh my god," and how often does anyone get to read poetry books like that? This book is crazy and weird and sad and mature and amazing.

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lingered in a mans apartment looking at a stack of books while my pal is taking his cat while his mom is helping him pack while he is... well not doing well. And I picked this book up since I hate the idea of paying more than 10 dollars for poetry ever since I took a poetry class with mister Schomburg and realized I mostly hate poetry, all those that bind their few words to such tender and confessional ideas that I don't want to hear, if its going to be short and punchy obfuscate the world, create a new world, shoutout to you James Tate who taught me (by reading never met the man) that a short story is a poem or you can blur the line and shoutout to Fresnan who in the invented part speaks of a biji and laments the current writers who lazily write biji because their pens cannot commit to a flushed out story from the mind and must pull everything together from such disparate sources in order to have something to say. But back to lingering, he looked at me and said "Do you want the book? Have it?" and I said thank and moved around the room and while I wasn't looking the books got pushed farther into the closet with a cloth on them. Who knows maybe more gems could have been had, but not by me, shoutout to you for the book, i'm thankful.

I Digress, I'll throw that in a zine or something for later, write an article for myself onto Fjords

A quite good (to be expected), lean book, that felt fresh reading it right now as it probably would have had a read it when it came out. The sort of surreal and irreverent words we might expect from Zachary Schomburg that left me wanting more, in the bad way vol 1 implies more but I hate waiting and give me the glory and the beauty of the fjords all at once, give me more words now.

So I would suggest, I mean fuck it its probably more a 4.5, but I don't believe in rounding up to five, just gotta go with the gut on that one.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary collection in that Zachary Schomburg (a local boy, I hear) has managed to create dreams, with all the surrealism, and logic of the dream world, as little prose poems. There are 57 of them with enough recurring themes that an index is provided, and that little bit of clervrness is part of the charm of the volume.

Dreams aren't easy. Most novelists get them wrong, trying to advance a plot, or laden them with meaning. I know we can find dream reasons and connections to our every day lives, but to me they're mostly vaudeville. Schomburg gets the vaudeville.

I have a suspicion that all kinds of people are going to work through all kinds of analysis in order to find all kinds of meaning in these pieces. The back cover has a line about, "the narrow inlets between the transcendent and the mundane." I don't know what that means. And I don't know what the title has to do with anything (I wouldn't be surprised if i were obtuse, or just missed something in the text,) I do know that Vol. 1 indicates there will be a volume 2, and I look forward to it.

Here's a short example of what you'll find, I think it's a great piece, and though most are twice as long they all hold up for me:

WHAT I DID WITH THE ROCK

I was alone on the beach when I picked up a rock.
I gave it a name and then I stood at the water with
the rock in my hand. I gave it your name. It felt
right - warm and cold at the same time - but I threw it
as far as I could and never saw it splash. What
have I done? I asked. I stood there waiting for the
rock to wash up. About 14,000 days later I died.

[Alisha Bruton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just got it and it's all I want to read. Everyone else's poems seem so confessional, fatty. His are so crisp. No meandering and nothing is wasted. His stories are one-size-fits-all, allegories for anything, like a coded version of everyone's entire life. A roulette of heartbreak after heartbreak til you can't tell what's the bullet, what's dying or not dying.

[Bob Comparda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal poetry mostly about death or other macabre topics. Not standard poetry, more like little paragraphs or individual ideas. Well written and entertaining, however nothing really impacted me or made me stop to think about my existence. Still I really liked some of these poems.

[Joshua Bohnsack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book for more than a year and while reading it was mad at myself for not reading it sooner.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

mixed bag, mixed feelings. I think I expected this to be stranger for whatever reason. also there was a bit too much cuteness than I can handle, so it felt unbalanced (not enough darkness).

seven poems really stood out, however (their successes may have cast too great a shadow over their peers)

"The Wild Meaninglessness"
"Because It Comes Right at You Does Not Mean It Comes to Save You"
"Meat Counter"
"The One About the Robbers"
"Costa Rica"
"Building of Unseen Cats"
"Neighborhood Plague"

One major plus is that the book looks and feels great to hold.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There seems to be a little less melancholy and more weirdness in this newest batch of Z-Schom magic. Some of it reminds me of the dreamlike flash fiction of Barry Yourgrau, especially "I Had a Baby With a Woman the Other Day" and "Fishing For Stingrays." Also awesome is the short beauty, "What I Did With the Rock."
But hey--I have a question: Why is a 60-page poetry book $15? I know that's only 25 cents a page, but still.

[Robert Mountainhomereading · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I wasn’t so sure about this poetry. It was outside my usual preferences. The more I read the more it grew on me! The mood was dark and the imagery extremely impactful. I felt like I was picked up and dropped off a building reading these words. The brutality of his poetry was deeply rousing! By the end of most poems I was shaken stirred and poured into a glass! The experience was quite satisfying.

[Trey Harris]

I thought that I would like this book and I did

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I constantly return to. Full of tender curveballs and surreal beauty.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 rounded up

After reading and hating Brautigan’s, Trout Fishing in America, last year, I thought I might have been drawing my surrealism phase to a close, or at least, my reading of surreal poetry phase. After all, I did outgrow Shane Jones, someone who I had greatly admired.

Master surrealists; filmmaker, David Lynch and author, Haruki Murakami, I will never outgrow. It’s true, I may be evolving as a reader and as a person, but I still want to finish some Brautigan (for the completionist in me) and give another chance to the surrealists or surreal-leaning authors that I have enjoyed over the years like Schomburg here and others like (surprisingly, in a strange turn of events they are all women with K- names) Karin Tidbek, Kelly Link, Kij Johnson and Karen Russel.

Really glad I read this. I was taking it in thinking it was just okay, somewhat mid, whenever I read this one and it really made me laugh:

MOVIE THEATER

I am working the ticket booth of the movie
theater when you come in and take off my pants.
You are very turned on. You start to take off your
pants too until we are both standing there in the
darkness of the ticket booth, our pants at our
ankles. Neither of us is wearing any underwear. The
people in the line outside the ticket booth keep asking
for tickets because the movie is about to start. I can’t
do this I tell you. Because the movie is going to start?
you ask. No I say because I just got done having sex with
someone named Barbara. When you walk away, you
walk away into a lake so salty it looks like milk. You
become a boat with mint candy for skin.

I will definitely be reading Fjords 2 and other Schomburg works, soon.

[Norb Aikin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was...definitely not great. Short little paragraphs of random weirdnesses and odd fixations. Most felt like they could've passed for bad 12:55am Saturday Night Live sketches from the 80's that no one seemed to even want to try to understand.

I really wanted to like this; after reading The Man Suit I had some solid expectations. I'm sure many people enjoyed this, and maybe I'm the one who's not in on why this might be a popular choice, but I'm ok with that. It just did not resonate with me at all. Two stars choked outta me for some creative lines sprinkled throughout and that's about it.

[Alissa Hattman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful combination of surrealism and sincerity, this book is full of blood, death, doors, mouths, water, sleep, trees, swans, and babies. Fjords vol. I has so many startling, surprising lines, such as, “when you walk way, you walk into a lake so salty it looks like milk. You become a boat with mint candy for skin” (21) and “We were silent on the flat water for a few minutes, the sun dangling like a broken arm” (46). I walked away from the book feeling like we all live scary, strange, and haunted lives.

[Brad Wojak · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best poetry collections I’ve read in a while.

[Kylie Wyodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s fun surrealism. It thinks itself a bit important at times but doesn’t linger so much as to make it a problem.

[Jason Kron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this twice and will probably read it again. One of my favorites.

[Ty Oden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably a matter of taste, but all the works in here feel like a stranger trapping me in a conversation about their banal dreams at a party. A few that really resonated with me, but not enough.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darkly surreal prose poems, strange and captivating.

[Nicholas Trandahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each of these prose poems is like a surreal dream. A very interesting collection.

[Neil Kirkpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who doesn't want to watch their death rush toward them as it cascades from the fjords?

[Annabelle Landrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading this felt like revisiting a part of myself i hadn't felt in awhile, gifted to me by emotions i thought were gone. it quickly found a special place in my heart.

schomburg's poems are so fundamentally weird and dreamlike, and they're hard to describe without you reading them yourself. they're so simple and yet so exhaustive, and are genuinely enjoyable to read, coming from someone who isn't huge about poetry.

[sealegs420 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, I am the alien

[Sarah Clapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guy sure talks a lot about swans and blood! Idk I usually like surrealist stuff but I don't know if this was quite my cup of tea. There were some good, humorous moments. But over all, just a lot of swans and blood!

[Joshua Novalis]

"Real trust is to do so in the clear face of doubt, and to trust is to love. This is my failure, and for this I cannot be forgiven."

This beautiful, evocative line comes just a few moments after a man receives an unreliable pony as a birthday gift and tries to jump it over a river. And that is surrealism at its finest.

I was introduced to Schomburg in grad school when I was assigned his first collection, "The Man Suit," and while it wasn't love at first sight, it slowly grew into one of my favorite books of the year—and one I still return to ("Underneath William Mckinley" is simultaneously hilarious and painful, and depending on the day, it's my poetic epistemology).

Now, a couple years after reading "The Man Suit," it's been nothing short of a pleasure to dive into "Fjords Vol. 1." In this collection, Schomburg's found a novel way to explore icy, heartbreaking visions of death without falling into pretentious angst or flippant nihilism. His subject matter is wholly absurd, and his dry delivery is often hilarious, but within those odd visions, there is an earnest desire to wrestle with notions of truth and love, as well as the unpredictability and inevitability of death.

You won't connect with every piece in this collection, and if you're too concerned with analysis, you'll quickly frustrate yourself. But I loved my time with "Fjords Vol. 1," and I think it's well worth your time. Be sure to check out a few of my favorites below:

"Magazine Stand"
"New Dress Shirt"
"New Job Serving Fried Pies"
"Testy Pony"
"Tiny Castle"
"Costa Rica"

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schomburg's poems are great little interconnected prosetries. I mostly remember the FUN of reading them but there are quite a few glimmers of intellectual stimulation, too.

Wouldn't it be awesome if every reader of every book wrote a really thorough review? Nevertheless, i'm wimping out now. I gave it back to Anne Marie a week or so ago and my memory's not good enough to do it justice.

One thing is certain, though: i loved that it had an index. Because i like to imagine ...
A) a low-level editor convinced the publisher of its need because "This is a non-fiction book."
B) they wanted to treat it like The Bible, complete with a concordance, but backed off after calculating the cost of the extra pages so they settled for the index.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third collection I read of Schomburg's work. His surreal landscapes are pure enjoyment. He drops the reader right in the mix of the current time, then delivers a blow that sweeps 'em off their feet.

Another powerful collection from the author of "The Man Suit". This time with a neighborhood filled with; fake sleeping scares, Unkind swans, squirrel problems, and an index in the back of book from A (to) Z. Schomburg deals a great deal of imagination, and gives the reader something to wonder about. If want some interesting flash fiction pieces or slipstream poetry, then this book is for you.

My Overall Favorites;

-Beautiful Island
-Terrible Deer
-Lake
-Meat Counter
-The Feelings
-Refrigerator General
-Costa Rica
-I am The Dead Person inside me

[Joe]

I don't know why I haven't reviewed any bookd lately here. I guess I am becoming review-aphobic. Listen, this is good in the way Zach's other books are but, at 50 some pages and dispensing with any lineated poems, a purer distillation. Oops scratch word pure. I know that's not cool. It read like a good friend. Like it rewarded me for looking forward to it. The real question is what's next, because this is at the terminal point of what was becoming in his first two books I think.

"Donut Hawk" as favorite poem.

[Andrei Mocuţa · Rating 4 out of 5]

”You tell me a joke about two robbers who hide from the police. One robber hides as a sack of cats and the other robber hides as a sack of potatoes. That is the punch line somehow, the sack of potatoes, but all I can think about is how my dad used to throw me over his shoulder when I was very small and call me his sack of potatoes. I've got a sack of potatoes he would yell, spinning around in a circle, the arm not holding me reaching out for a sale. Does anyone want to buy my sack of potatoes? No one ever wanted to buy me. We were always the only two people in the room.”