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The Explosions
Poetry. This book of poems features Svalina's 60+ page epic, "Above the Fold," about which he notes: The poem is about the process of watching things happen in your name both across the globe & in front of you, & the ingestion of media images that represent the state of the world & its publicities & privacies of pain. People do awful things to one another & then other people say 'aren't those awful things awful' & then there is also kissing.
- GenresPoetry
125 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 11, 2019
"I have lost my hat & I have discovered my hat." Some truly lyrical beauty in this collection, from prose poems to fragmented observations. Great for this particular Sunday, with snow falling so quietly outside.
July 17, 2017
as innovative as anyone writing today
December 9, 2023
Definitely not the greatest poetry I’ve ever read, but certainly not the worst. Prose takes a little bit of getting used to, and the subject matter seems hyper-specific and a little hard to follow
April 22, 2025
kinda nonsense
Read
August 3, 2013//A big book--like John Beer's The Wasteland in reverse: beginning with a long sequence and ending with a section of individual poems that show off Svalina's range. And also apparently an exception to his other books, which are more sequence-y / concept driven. The little chap I have from Cupboar, for instance, is a catalog of children's games intent on revealing how psychotic most children's games are.
//A book of obsessions and returns, sometimes taking romantic form. But also of restlessness, a desire to plunge headlong into different waters.
// My copy used to be one of MS's reading copies. In "No, Desdemona" after "The mucus settles sweetly in the corners of your mouth," he has crossed out "as you sleep on the hotel floor" (74).
// There's an incredible, tense undercurrent in all of Svalina's poems, even those that seem intent on ending on a joke or which scatter their attention. He knows how to invest a diffuse attention / sideways winding poem w/stakes: "The boy does not know what he cannot think. His palms / have grown sticky. To kill a myth one must dissect it into / another myth, but this new myth has your name, Desdemona" (105).
// "Above the Fold"--the very long sequence that nearly begins the book reads as an intriguing exception in Svalina's works in its short lines and sometimes Lorca-esque images that blend the surreal with the archetypical:
the volume of a skull
engulfs the other half.
Underwater eyes
wring from blasphemes.
A million things occupy
your camouflage shirt.
Dominoes hinder
the bombs
that ballet
the symphony.
I will hide your grey
within my grey.
The ear lost
in the mail (5)
// Svalina slips tenderness into strange places: "So, if I were to cup your alibi in my hands, softly as moth dust and to slip its squirming body below my tongue, where would those envelopes end up? Uruguay? Denton? Djibuti?" ("Egress" 93)
From this, am absolutely looking to Svalina's next--Put this on the bookshelf between Janaka Stucky & Wislawa Szymborska. Good company.
//A book of obsessions and returns, sometimes taking romantic form. But also of restlessness, a desire to plunge headlong into different waters.
// My copy used to be one of MS's reading copies. In "No, Desdemona" after "The mucus settles sweetly in the corners of your mouth," he has crossed out "as you sleep on the hotel floor" (74).
// There's an incredible, tense undercurrent in all of Svalina's poems, even those that seem intent on ending on a joke or which scatter their attention. He knows how to invest a diffuse attention / sideways winding poem w/stakes: "The boy does not know what he cannot think. His palms / have grown sticky. To kill a myth one must dissect it into / another myth, but this new myth has your name, Desdemona" (105).
// "Above the Fold"--the very long sequence that nearly begins the book reads as an intriguing exception in Svalina's works in its short lines and sometimes Lorca-esque images that blend the surreal with the archetypical:
the volume of a skull
engulfs the other half.
Underwater eyes
wring from blasphemes.
A million things occupy
your camouflage shirt.
Dominoes hinder
the bombs
that ballet
the symphony.
I will hide your grey
within my grey.
The ear lost
in the mail (5)
// Svalina slips tenderness into strange places: "So, if I were to cup your alibi in my hands, softly as moth dust and to slip its squirming body below my tongue, where would those envelopes end up? Uruguay? Denton? Djibuti?" ("Egress" 93)
From this, am absolutely looking to Svalina's next--Put this on the bookshelf between Janaka Stucky & Wislawa Szymborska. Good company.
November 14, 2014
I truly loved a select few of the poems in this collection: "She Uses Her Pinky Finger When She Types" was great, for instance. Having been a huge fan of Svalina's Creation Myths, I was looking for something a little bit less sprawling and more contained. I'm used to his tight themes and steady tone throughout. Whenever I thought I'd give up on this one, it did give me something to keep going.
December 1, 2013
Svalina has a superb and uncanny ability to line up words in massively unexpected ways, yet those same words topple like dominoes - easily - when he wants and in the direction he has designed. Wonderful.
December 12, 2013
Successfully navigates the tightrope good poetry strings between the harrowing and the delightful aspects of language. A rare feat.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews