Dazzling Wobble

by Judyth Hill

Rebecca Seiferle describes DAZZLING WOBBLE as "a whirling dervish—a love poem" written "with the ecstasy of a postmodern Rumi." Veronica Golos calls the work "a lush and lavish glossolalia." Hill has been described as "shamelessly ecstatic and exclamatory, proclaiming her unfettered joy in being alive" (Sam Hamill); "a poetic transformer whose work lights up the reader’s whole body/mind power grid" (Joseph Hutchison); and a "Doorway Woman" (Gary Lawless).

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 26, 2013

Reviews

[FutureCycle Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:


100 VIEWS OF THE FLOATING WORLD

Grant me the spiral staircase of kiss,
the real skin-to-skin ascent.
Grant me the bluebird of such crazy happiness,
feathers to match the horizon of outrageous loving;
I promise famous embraces and incendiary politics.

I long
to be the dusting of snow on the Mt. Fuji of you,
your cherry-lipped geisha avec jasmine tea and cloud cover,
a strummed shamisen, pure futon.

You are the manners brought to my grandmother’s table,
salt cellars, cloth napkins,
set silver, and please.

I, a horseshoe of desire, your bauble of lucky,
I’ll ring and ring, make you such music
as does measure what tilts us on the scale of golden,
turns you iron.

Milky Way thrown ’cross the bed sky of night,
Orion in flagrante, o my delicto,
October is a wind we cannot ride,
a blur; take the leaves, then take them,
I have others fashioned in your honor.
You are magnetic north; I’ll spin there.

A miracle: Fahrenheit of pleasure, you and me,
what is utterly spoken sinuous, both shedding and enrapt.
Written language aside, everything spells original temperature.
All commas point home.
Where was I ever going,
but to you?

Lay me down, then, in the lap of the divine, candles kindled,
wine poured and new bread:
whole loaves, baked for the constancy of snow geese.

You are apple trees in full flush, doors of the temple open,
the polish of marble.
It’s the rub of love—tectonics of dream—
how, ardent, we can constellate into ancient shine.

I sign my name on your lips
for practice, I sew on your buttons,
make cream soups daily, simmer and stir.

I am a student of indoors and learning quickly.
I know your place, almost.

Sweetheart, this poem needs you! Come quick!

This page is incessantly made white by your absence:
you are this ink, this flowing away and towards,
these joyous words, these.


WOVEN SO ENTIRE

I’ll never fall out of this loving;
from where to where could I fall?

When held in canyon, by riverbank,
in blaze of starfire or inky pitch of night,

what could I be but desert varnish wept onto rockface?
Turned by wind into purely music, desire’s fabric,

homespun for the Beloved, girdle for his waist.
O most beautiful one,

I have nothing to say anymore.
Love has woven me a coat of quiet.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recieved Dazzling Wobble as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

I'll admit, I'm a prose girl. Poetry just isn't my thing. Still, it's hard not to be moved by Hill's poems, which reverberate with feeling and imagery. The places she dicusses, from the American South to Sri Lanka, come to life in her stanzas that explore love, mythology, and art, and how they all contribute to the complex, multifaceted journey that is life. For people like me, who aren't really "poetry people," I'd highly recommend Dazzling Wobble and presumably Hill's other work.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hill's poetry dances with wonderment, though ill and through happiness, and all that bittersweet in between. Beautiful, and many would be beautiful too as part of contemporary liturgy.