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Moving Picture
A book of poems
102 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2005
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August 23, 2014
David Cazden luxuriates in language of the senses. He pushes at the limits of
metaphor. Many of us these days are writing something like a short narrative that we’re calling lyric poetry.Cazden is truly a lyric poet and love is his subject, as it should be.
Lines such as these, from his new collection Moving Picture (Word Press, 2005), are both Cazden’s strength and his weakness:
There is sorrow in Cazden’s poems, a gentle sense of loss for a “you” who is often “not here,” withdrawn or difficult. As James Baker Hall says in his cover blurb, you can come to envy this “you,” this difficult muse so tenderly loved. But there is a subtle humor, too, a playfulness — well, no one should try to write lines like
these without playfulness and humor. It is “The Nature of Charm:”
I envy Cazden this charm, this fearless playfulness that lets him write poems called “Now That You Have a Cat We Can Become Lovers .” I think there are some early poems in Moving Picture, some in which hehasn’t quite found his groove. But reading this collection is like exploring through a box of bonbons. They’re all good but some are scrumptious.
Cazden is also a photographer; he took the photo (called “Rural Mailbox”) and designed the cover for Moving Picture.
metaphor. Many of us these days are writing something like a short narrative that we’re calling lyric poetry.Cazden is truly a lyric poet and love is his subject, as it should be.
Lines such as these, from his new collection Moving Picture (Word Press, 2005), are both Cazden’s strength and his weakness:
…Lisa walks away, hips
moving like the emergency
of a police car passing by
— from “Street Love”
Light was an April thin sweater
on a halter top of trees.
— from “Everything I Need is Near”
There is sorrow in Cazden’s poems, a gentle sense of loss for a “you” who is often “not here,” withdrawn or difficult. As James Baker Hall says in his cover blurb, you can come to envy this “you,” this difficult muse so tenderly loved. But there is a subtle humor, too, a playfulness — well, no one should try to write lines like
these without playfulness and humor. It is “The Nature of Charm:”
Charm still exists for me—
It binds the atoms of my hand,
or determines which way your hair will part,
and if the yolk will break today,
this morning when you are not here.
— from “The Nature of Charm”
I envy Cazden this charm, this fearless playfulness that lets him write poems called “Now That You Have a Cat We Can Become Lovers .” I think there are some early poems in Moving Picture, some in which hehasn’t quite found his groove. But reading this collection is like exploring through a box of bonbons. They’re all good but some are scrumptious.
Cazden is also a photographer; he took the photo (called “Rural Mailbox”) and designed the cover for Moving Picture.
Displaying 1 of 1 review