Patter

by Douglas Kearney

For a couple struggling with infertility, conception is a war against their bodies. Blood and death attend. But when the war is won, and life stares, hungry, in the parents’ faces, where does that violence, anxiety, and shame go? The poems in Patter re-imagine miscarriages as minstrel shows, magic tricks, and comic strips; set Darth Vader against Oedipus’s dad in competition for “Father of the Year;” and interrogate the poet’s family’s stint on reality TV. In this, his third collection, award-winning poet Douglas Kearney doggedly worries the line between love and hate, showing how it bleeds itself into “fatherhood.”

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Douglas Kearney is an American poet and librettist. Kearney grew up in Altadena, California.

Kearney attended Howard University as an undergraduate. He also graduated from California Institute of the Arts, with an MFA. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Nocturnes, Jubilat, Gulf Coast.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Carolyn Hembree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kearney is a brilliant satirist; through turns of phrase and allusions pop cultural, biblical, mythological, he gets at our pedophiliac culture's demand for young couples to MAKE MORE BABIES. Sure, the book chronicles his wife's miscarriages, but it offers a larger critique of gender roles, race, and identity. The poet-speaker most brutally critiques his own actions. Although Kearney's unlike anyone, I see Wanda Coleman and Charles Olson as literary forebears. I love the formal restlessness of the collection -- the concrete and visual poems. Virtuoso.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Patter' by Douglas Kearney holds an obvious fetish of miscarriage, fatherhood, and the grief of body's failures. The obsessiveness and anxiety "to be daddy's to ascend, steady, into cruelty" - as the pregnancies fail, the narrator's relationship with his own body and his partner's body becomes a battleground and confusion: "I love your body / I hate it."

These pieces are often just as visual as they are text-based, ("woman/bed" "woman/blood") and it seems to mimic a type of children's book, full of word hunt games, self-nomination forms, reality tv, with loud HEE-HEE's. Darker forms such as The Miscarriage: A Minstrel Show appear, as a story "done red" means a story of lost life. Blood soaks the sheets, the baby clothes, the abjectness of miscarriage becomes honestly portrayed. The color red swims in and out of these poems, describing tongues and asses and genitals, while also describing death.

I think the word play and interchangeability of humor and sorrow could have come across too tongue-and-cheek or clever, but Kearney's display of this is masterful. Sexy foreplay and anxious yearning for fertility combine in 'It's Okay To Feel Overwhelmed' - "oh, baby" "it won't stop" "calm down" "stop." And then again in 'Gooo or Goooo or Gooo', - "the ooooo / baby is prayer wish." The phrase "oh baby" becomes a mating call of complicated desire.

The phrase "goo goo" hilariously references baby speech and also the collection of semen at the doctor's office. The scenes at the doctor morph into sexuality, as the doctor's lab coat is "panty-white", and "my dick a needle needle." The word play again, the word "pussy" points to the word "coward." Multiple definitions are screaming at once - "her body bled itself a body."

I am so curious about the motif of the bugs, and there are so many bug poems in this book - 'The Ants', 'The Fly', 'The Bees', 'The Ladybugs' ~ I'm not sure if I have a full interpretation of the insects quite yet, but there is definitely something so scurrying and frantic and itchy about these poems. Like something you want to keep swatting on your body, but you can never quite catch it.

[Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are not your high school English teacher's poems.

A difficult to collection to rate....some of the poems are absolutely brilliant 5 stars that changed my understanding of what poetry could be. Who knew that poetry could be so visual? Other poems in the collection were a mish-mash of words that I'm suspicious were sourced from a random word generator, albeit intentionally turned on the improper grammar setting. The variability was frustrating.

The power of this collection is from the visual aspects of the poetry. Fill-in-the-blank forms, word clouds, find-a-words, flowcharts, and word comics. Reminded me of (ee cummings)2. If time is short, simply skip any traditional-looking poems in the collection. Instead, go to the ones that are visually appealing.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Douglas Kearney experiments visually & linguistically with obsession triggered by trauma. With poems as crossword searches, application forms, as well as magic tricks, Kearney explores different avenues of telling, retelling, & avoiding the story. In some poems, there are many ways to read certain lines, giving the reader agency over the narrative outcome.

[Rebecca Tabb · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Patter” is conscious in its isolating form. As a genre of its own, visual poetry collections like Patter can be avant- guard. Unlike much of avant- guard art, however, Patter teaches you how to read it. I was annoyed at first, and then all of a sudden I was convinced in Kearney’s impecable genius. Read, re-read, re-re-read. Do it.

[Deviant Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite hybrid / poetic works.
Raw, wrenching, and unflinching. This creative masterpiece results from the process of grief and commitment. A must-read if you want to branch into poetic forms.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like a 3.5, truthfully.

[Haley Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

powerful. no one is doing it like this

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kearney's life experiences are very different from mine and so perhaps I found less solace than interrogation in his pieces. Many of the pieces are shaped, incorporating musical notation, repetition, variations and wordplay, which is conceptually intriguing but less interesting to me as a reader.

But there are some very notable poems that worked really well for me, especially a sequence of poems surrounding his family's experiences with a reality TV show about giving birth. I appreciate his wit and playfulness even when the subject matter is dark, but I don't think the book holds together: it's an odd combination of Hopkinsian turns of phrase and verbal tricks, Herbert's shape poems, and hip-hop slang.

It's not my thing and wasn't what I was hoping to find, but it's well worth a reader's time. Who knows, maybe Patter's patois will be perfect for you.

[Carmelo Valone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly honest and personal poetry. Almost too personal-an utter joy and heartbreak to be inside the author's head for some of these poems. A great collection for anyone who loves poetry written for poets. True challenges to form and style.

[Kima Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming.

[Soleil · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was said in one of my classes that the last line of a poem should completely destroy you. Every line of every poem in this book destroys you.

[Stefanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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