Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return

by C.A. Conrad

Following their book AMANDA Resurrect Extinct Vibration (winner of the PEN and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry), CAConrad's Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return shifts its attention from the previous book’s focus on communing with animals who are extinct toward communicating and caring for animals still living among us.  Recalling the historical and symbolic significance of the boomerang as an instrument of return, these poems emerged from a (soma)tic poetry ritual in which the author wrote to animals who have found ways to thrive in the Anthropocene, resulting in sculptural poems that are both hopeful and cautionary as they emerge organically from the bottom of each page. Guided by the urge “to/desire/the world/as it is/not as/it was,” CAConrad writes from an ecopoetics that is generous and galvanizing, reminding us of how our present attentions collectively shape a future humanity. 

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2024

About the author

CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He is the author of 9 books of poetry and essays the latest While Standing In Line For Death is forthcoming from Wave Books in September 2017. He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, RADAR, Flying Ojbect and Ucross. For his books, essays, and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2016), please visit http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

Reviews

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

“you can be a bride of poetry too”

if you read only one book of poetry this year, make it CAConrad’s illuminating ‘Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return’. each poem speaks with a voice that carries the joy and horror of existence in equal accord. each poem seems to clarify universal truths of energy like stirred mud settling in a small puddle. truly breathtaking.

[Hetian bias · Rating 5 out of 5]

YOU BITCHES CAN’T EVEN SPELL PRAGUEEEEEEE

[Molly Duplaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

i just really love CAConrad ok!

[Gijs Koorevaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. On how 'to desire the world as it is not as it was'. CAConrad overflows with love in equal accords of elegy and hymn.

Enjoyed their postscript about befriending crows. I am going to let this rest to reread it. Ritual requires repetition.

[All My Friends Are Fictional · Rating 4 out of 5]

„I'm a poet
not a motivational speaker
I keep trying to tell you
press a hand
to the rumbling
wrap yourself in elegy
we kill 3000 silkworms
to make one
pound
of silk“

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

CAConrad says in "a (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual at the end of the collection: "My poems are breathing wild creatures. They stand at the bottom of the page, vibrating in the center of their bodies." And they are and do, beautifully! Pick any of them and move with their flow, or flip through the book and watch them move.
On an aside, as with any Wave Books book, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return begins with the cover and ends with the back cover. And each detail in between, incl front and backmatter, speaks to the book at hand. Here it means that the boomerang "returns" in different shapes and designs throughout the collection. I love that about Wave Books. They present an at once uniform and distinct style, which is yet precisely tailored to each one of them and an integral part of their individual content.

[Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cu trecerea anilor devin tot mai bitter, iar atunci cand vine vorba de spiritualitate, tot mai inchis si cinic. Cartea asta s-a simtit ca o trezire spirituala. Asta am simtit si cand am vazut sezonul 3 din twin peaks. Universul vorbeste cu mine, macar prin aceste 2 voci.
<<"Queers can breastfeed?" I nodded to her, "Yes, I used to breastfeed my stuffed animals as a child, didn't you know?" What a strange thing to dream of my mother seeing me feed a small animal with my body and that you had to intervene on my behalf. Queer needs for queer nerves revealing themselves in new ways.>>
Zilele astea ma urmareste acest motiv, al corpurilor queer care alapteaza si nu cred ca este o intamplare. May I keep brining relief into the world with my queer ample bosom.

[Katharina Sieverding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply moving, poetic, gripping. The words are settling into my skin.

[Natalie Wehrer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. WOW.

[emma]

“learn to accept the / unanticipated / wonder for / your hand / when the / moon / reaches / back”

[Quinn Rennerfeldt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This whole book is wonderful, but what got me the most was the poem mourning my other beloved, Frank O’Hara <3

[Scott Satterwhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Conrad's writing, and them is a human being as well. I found this book to be very beautiful, both in the poetic words but also the poetic forms that are created from the bottom of the page up.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

72 starts! But not 73 stars. IFYKY

[Bob Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sommige gedichten vond ik erg sterk, vooral evocatief. Andere, well, less so.

[F.M Papaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've not read a poetry collection like this before. It has no pages, no titles, no sections. Every poem is a single stanza and no two stanzas in the whole collection have the same form. Reading this book is an exercise in becoming absolute intimate with the present moment, which is what CA Conrad did when creating these poems. There's a life in all of them and a lightness that dominates the punchy moments of resistance scattered throughout that strikes at the evils that humanity imposes on the world. Highly recommend!


Full review to come!

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s interesting how elegy operates in Conrad’s book. Reading the poems, I wasn’t sure how or what or who to direct the elegiac toward. As someone who feels forever dedicated to the longer arc of Conrad’s work, I first considered the book a continuation of “RESURRECT EXTINCT VIBRATION,” which had concluded the previous book, Amanda Paradise. It was a tragic and violent story about their partner, Earth, who was murdered by police, and that grieving felt present in the work of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. But the book also feels like a broader elegy for the United States. And one for everyone who died during the AIDS Crisis. And creatures, in general.

And all of this is a statement to the pervasive elegiac tone Conrad maintains throughout the book. Like if elegy were tied to fate, and fate had only one direction, DOWN! That’s the spirit of tragedy and mourning in this book. Death is inevitable. Seeing death is inevitable. And it’s interesting to read Conrad’s book in parallel to Dante’s Inferno, where that poet couldn’t quit his describing the visions of death and suffering, and making analogies of them. Conrad might not be on a trek through “hell,” but they are experiencing horrible doom, and trying to understand the language the would suitably articulate that feeling.

Which is where my spoiler alert lies. Conrad concludes Listen to the Boomerang Return with the “A (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual,” which explains the poetic activity that led them to these poems. These rituals have been a consistent point of fascination for my reading of Conrad’s work, because they represent this entirely new voice occupy what their poetry is in my reading. Different tonal register. Different magics. Where the poems in Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return have a grave and somber whimsy to them, their (soma)tic ritual further elaborates the nature of imaginative logics. The ritual makes me feel the surprising turns in the poems like dampened explosions.

But here’s the actual spoiler: In the (Soma)tic ritual Conrad’s concedes that the current Anthropocene is a world they should learn to delight in. And suddenly all those tragic tones, all the wonder shaded by circumstances, they have an Inferno-like space. Where doom exists, and still the beauty and startling existence of the moment. It reminds me of Brian Teare’s Doomstead Days, where he marvels at the oil slicks in rain puddles.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an unusual collection (one of the remaining books to read from my sadly over now @the_rumpus poetry subscription). With no names for any poems, sometimes it felt like all one long poem and sometimes individual pages felt very distinct. I never figured out a reason for the shapes—are they meant to be boomerangs? Is each shape actually related to the content of the poem?
.
I would say I liked some really cool images and ideas scattered throughout the collection more than I liked the particular poems.
.
[ignore line breaks for the sake of this quoting, /s are mine for clarity’s sake]

“there is tenderness in the way you think the FBI is spying on you / someone in your imagination cares as you undress in the dark”
.
“yellow is the color of the world’s favorite star / I am a helio whore hunting for the deeper penetration of light”
.
“come sing with me into this dough / what song shall we bake into our supper”
.
“no more miscounting butterflies in our utopia / let’s make poems that can rob a bank”

[Charlie Egon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year, I had the great pleasure to hear & meet CAConrad several times at the poesiefestival Berlin. I held their signature in my booklet dear, and this February, I finally came around to buy this poetry collection and read it fully.

There is a lot that can be said about these poems (in fact, I wrote an university essay about this collection).

Here, I'll keep it short: There is something so deeply warming, heartfelt and grieving about all of CAConrad's work - yet it is full of wondrous joy and quirky sodomy. Climate anxiety, queer desire; their poetry brings it all together in the shape of a firm hug. Broken, yet hopeful.

I'll read it again and again to remind myself how we can go forward together, despite the end of this world.

[Lisa M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection. I did not always understand the decisions about the poetic forms but this did not prohibit me from receiving the poems and benefitting from them. Conrad has developed a distinct style which is consistent throughout as they explore themes of being present, nature/animals, the destruction of the earth, and death/hate crimes. At the end of the collection Conrad shares that these poems are generated through spiritual work and that makes sense. There is a channeled vibe about these poems, something spiritual. Even when they feel inaccessible they are meaningful. I look forward to reading more of their work.

[nethescurial]

hard to consider myself "finished" with something like this, or even possible to rate because this was very high-level for me conceptually as someone who still doesn't have so much poetry experience; however on a soul level it was beautiful, moving (often to the point of tears) and extremely imaginative on a line by line level. and overall feels like a very important work to keep in one's heart during the age of planetary collapse. def something worth continually thumbing through and absorbing many times over

[Saphi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great experience! I will keep my review short on this book as well, but all I can say is it stands as a great piece of poetry and a great piece of work that was released in 2024. Poetry lovers, this one is a catch, and for those who are not following such style, give it a try, it's enjoyable none the less!

[Mina H · Rating 4 out of 5]

purgatory is cruel to poets
a separate holding tank where
every melancholy phrase was invented a lifetime resisting adjusting to violence pity creatures
with the softest fur the more we dance
the better our poems
trying our best
to cinch it to hitch it to the jasmine
ascension

[Timothy Arliss OBrien · Rating 5 out of 5]

This touching collection of poetry creates a somatic experience and carries your soul across the poetry. This brilliant collection comes from a place of deep listening and tells stories that strike the depth of the soul. This is an absolute must-read.

[Orange · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[cypher · Rating 1 out of 5]

first, this is without rhyme, which, in my book, is a significant minus for poetry. second, it was too melodramatic, after about 20 pages i dropped it as DNF.

[arden · Rating 5 out of 5]

love love love it. needs to be reread in the middle of a forest.

[Madisen Gummer · Rating 4 out of 5]

tiny poems, like greeting cards for absolute freaks <3

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chimeric, incantatory poems. CAConrad is a master. This book further enhances their growing body of work.

[Quinn Monette]

Didn't connect w this one

[indigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love caconrad met them the other week and it changed my life. 'the violence of a straight line' period.