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Pavilion
The poems in Stephanie Bolster’s new collection create longings, reveries, and meditations that, though powerfully presented to us, evade the reduction of named emotion. It takes a special subtlety of writing, a delicate handling of image and judgement of details to make what is offstage resonate with such eloquence. This collection reveals Stephanie Bolster writing at the extreme of her craft to bring us a poetry of extraordinary refinement.
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 9, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 27, 2022
Not really there yet. Peel back
latex to find the wild rose paper
underneath. Pin-ups appear there, men whose lips
urge my lips toward their sheen. Their faces
fail away. Posters of kittens come and go.
Unchosen, each glued sheet loosens, leaves
a stretch of pink. Print small hands
across it, trying out edges. That colour
the world entire. A brush retracts it.
Yellow walls, ungendered. Someone
else's objects gather. Now
the walls are boards with gaps,
now gaps, and now a forest
encloses. Who knows where it goes.
* * *
I dreamed our backyard under a plastic roof.
When it rained, we could go out
and listen. It was more
ours like that.
Says a Sanrio company rep: "Without the month,
it is easier for the person to project
their feelings onto the character.
The person can be happy or sad
together with Hello Kitty."
This time of year, it closes early.
Two hours shut, the gate
lets squirrel under it on the round stones.
The latch is on the other side. Leaves
flame up over the wall.
* * *
Of course I made up
most of these initials.
See how carefully I choose
what to see? Arrange mosses into a garden
or leave them and call it a wild one.
In Vancouver, under the viaduct
where the pavilion was, some pavement.
In Montreal, a pond, a pathway.
Osaka? I have never been.
What we call Indiana summer
they call ko haru, "little spring,"
because the blue air and sparks of colour
make one believe the end
is a beginning.
* * *
We wear down bars of soap
with our palms, stone
steps with our feet. Light
will rub that drawing,
imperceptibly at first, till
the girl's face vanishes.
Will a field, crossed often
enough, sink? Your clavicle,
where my head rests?
There is a room where light
tracks the day along the wall,
simply, without tenderness.
It leaves no deep impression,
nor do our thrown shadows.
But the earth. It shifts, in time.
* * *
Her gaze, turning
near or averted; her hair obscured
or of dun mouse's hide.
Lemon silk down her back.
Time passes through an hourglass.
A hairdresser lifts a bevelled mirror
to show the back: my best
secret, free for others. What I want
is the gaze I'll have
when I spin around to meet myself.
Any moment, a wing
will fan shut to show her face, or unfold.
* * *
The rainbow simply peters out.
A woman milk a cow, intent
on her hands squeezing each teat.
Milk shudders in a tin pail. And when she turns?
She has no mirror. She is anyone. She has her life.
latex to find the wild rose paper
underneath. Pin-ups appear there, men whose lips
urge my lips toward their sheen. Their faces
fail away. Posters of kittens come and go.
Unchosen, each glued sheet loosens, leaves
a stretch of pink. Print small hands
across it, trying out edges. That colour
the world entire. A brush retracts it.
Yellow walls, ungendered. Someone
else's objects gather. Now
the walls are boards with gaps,
now gaps, and now a forest
encloses. Who knows where it goes.
- Room, pg. 5
* * *
I dreamed our backyard under a plastic roof.
When it rained, we could go out
and listen. It was more
ours like that.
Says a Sanrio company rep: "Without the month,
it is easier for the person to project
their feelings onto the character.
The person can be happy or sad
together with Hello Kitty."
This time of year, it closes early.
Two hours shut, the gate
lets squirrel under it on the round stones.
The latch is on the other side. Leaves
flame up over the wall.
- pg. 23
* * *
Of course I made up
most of these initials.
See how carefully I choose
what to see? Arrange mosses into a garden
or leave them and call it a wild one.
In Vancouver, under the viaduct
where the pavilion was, some pavement.
In Montreal, a pond, a pathway.
Osaka? I have never been.
What we call Indiana summer
they call ko haru, "little spring,"
because the blue air and sparks of colour
make one believe the end
is a beginning.
- pg. 35
* * *
We wear down bars of soap
with our palms, stone
steps with our feet. Light
will rub that drawing,
imperceptibly at first, till
the girl's face vanishes.
Will a field, crossed often
enough, sink? Your clavicle,
where my head rests?
There is a room where light
tracks the day along the wall,
simply, without tenderness.
It leaves no deep impression,
nor do our thrown shadows.
But the earth. It shifts, in time.
- What Price, pg. 48
* * *
Her gaze, turning
near or averted; her hair obscured
or of dun mouse's hide.
Lemon silk down her back.
Time passes through an hourglass.
A hairdresser lifts a bevelled mirror
to show the back: my best
secret, free for others. What I want
is the gaze I'll have
when I spin around to meet myself.
Any moment, a wing
will fan shut to show her face, or unfold.
- pg. 55
* * *
The rainbow simply peters out.
A woman milk a cow, intent
on her hands squeezing each teat.
Milk shudders in a tin pail. And when she turns?
She has no mirror. She is anyone. She has her life.
- pg. 67
September 25, 2021
Window
This is the window I grew up inside.
This is the Japanese maple that grew beyond it
and still does, obscuring the view. It is
the view. These are the leaves of the Japanese
split-leafed maple, red except
when autumn puckers them to rust.
This is the glass: between branches the small
patch of lawn we owned, and the sidewalk,
and the house across the street, and farther
houses. Fogged in winter, it made ethereal
the place I didn't call suburb until after
it took three hours
for the boat to circle Manhattan.
The frame of the retina
cracked. When I returned,
the view had flattened to a stamp.
This is the stamp I kept when I left,
the stamp to which I sent my letters.
Stuck every night under eyelids.
These are the roots that extend
from the tree outside the window I grew up
inside. When I left, they kept on growing
into the foundations.
This is the window I grew up inside.
This is the Japanese maple that grew beyond it
and still does, obscuring the view. It is
the view. These are the leaves of the Japanese
split-leafed maple, red except
when autumn puckers them to rust.
This is the glass: between branches the small
patch of lawn we owned, and the sidewalk,
and the house across the street, and farther
houses. Fogged in winter, it made ethereal
the place I didn't call suburb until after
it took three hours
for the boat to circle Manhattan.
The frame of the retina
cracked. When I returned,
the view had flattened to a stamp.
This is the stamp I kept when I left,
the stamp to which I sent my letters.
Stuck every night under eyelids.
These are the roots that extend
from the tree outside the window I grew up
inside. When I left, they kept on growing
into the foundations.
October 11, 2010
Like most books I have to read for literature classes... it leaves me intrigued, yet clueless.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews