Thunderbird

by Dorothea Lasky

"In lines that remind me of the way William Carlos Williams insisted that only the imagination gives us access to reality, Lasky's poems evoke a practice of living, as bloody and awful and lovely as living can ever be."—Julia Bloch, Bitch

"The beautiful thing about Lasky, in all her work, but particularly here, is her ability to create that same sense of earnestness, the sense that she is telling you a secret."—InDigest Magazine, InDigest Picks

Go, brave and gentle reader, with Dorothea Lasky to the "purple motel / where the bird lives." Go with her, as you have willingly gone down the dark passages before, with her bare-faced poems for guidance. Thunderbird's controlled rage plunges into the black interior armed with nothing but guts and Lasky's own fiery heart to light the way.

Baby of air
You rose into the mystical
Side of things
You could no longer live with us
We put you in a little home
Where they shut and locked the door
And at night
You blew out
And went wandering . . .

Dorothea Lasky is also the author of Black Life and AWE, both from Wave Books. She lives in New York.

Genres: Poetry, Adult

111 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 2, 2012

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book to a priest I met in a hotel in Chicago.

[TinHouseBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthew Dickman (Poetry Editor): After reading this book I felt I understood something about my own inner-life. That something important in the world was made clearer. So I read it again and again. It’s a wonderful book of poems that should be read by anyone who loves poetry as well as anyone who has never picked up a book of poems in their life.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed discovering Lasky's work. Her poems are angular and striking and have a wild sense of humor that threatens to topple your brain over.

[Luis Correa · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are not poems, they are prayers.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is 2 parts darkness, 3 parts light, 15 parts thunderbird.

[Vogisland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, I felt like she was beating music out of rocks in a railroad tunnel.
This book is characterized by a raggedness that is in opposition to the kind of editing that might have made some of the individual poems stronger. The things I didn't like were also often the things that I liked.
Maybe I would have liked a little less of the declaratives and more of the occult specifics.
In any case, this book is a breeze of black metal among the thorny flowery vines.

[J.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Black Life and AWE were good, but this new one is by far my favorite. Built of equal parts sincerity and aggression, Lasky makes poetry exciting and genuine, readable and exhilarating. Disillusioned with poems? Start again here.

[lia 🐩 · Rating 3 out of 5]

como si sylvia plath hubiera llegado a la época de los lip fillers. dorothea es oscura pero moderna, también hay algo de adueñarse de la propia tristeza, una obsesión con la muerte y el demonio. lo que sí es que me habían dicho que dorothea era la cecilia pavón yankee y me costó mucho trabajo ver eso

“long ago i made this poem / and then you read it / and then i ate it”

“why don’t we sit in a sea of violets / i could kiss you a million times / and never be sick of it”

“i don’t want to be beautiful with you / i want to be an ugly, wretched, bleeding thing”

“i only hace you and me / i only have this hand to hold you”

“i am the horse people should bet on”

“i myself / have spent a whole lifetime / never telling anyone to leave me alone / but always / wanting to”

“i am not what this world needs / i will never interact with the world / in the way it needs me to”

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lasky's poetry is idiomatic, a bit too interested in the authentic, honest, and angry. Lasky seems to emerge out of the New York School but is far more direct than her forebearers, and it really shows in this collection. Lasky's lines are direct, and sometimes even veer a bit twee, but then turn into eruptions of real anger or wild passion which Lasky then redirects to the subject of her poems. It's sort of dazzling effect, but it does produce an uneven collection. This is not to say Lasky lacks a sense of form, she does not: she is a master of short, direct lines, and a rhythmic breathlessness that reminds one of Sharon Oles or Plath. Enjoyable, explosive, if not exactly perfect.

[⏺ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really ahead of its time, a sort of alienated but very heartfelt tone (sounds a bit like early language models, before their time), some turns of phrase really stay with you. I also think it would get better on a second read, finding a weird familiarity with it

[Ellie Botoman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Erika Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

QUEEN OF REPETITION

[Sienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I discovered Dorothea Lasky during the difficult second quarter of 2012. Reading one poem in particular felt a bit like that cold, hard pit of dread at the sight of an accident in the distance, only when I approached it was my own body broken, my own blood imprinted on the asphalt. It's called "Poem to an Unnameable Man."

Like that extraordinary, powerful poem, the pieces in Thunderbird shudder and shake with barely contained emotion. But whereas the former left me, too, shaking with recognition — "A graceful lady that is part museum / Of the voices of the universe everyone else forgets" — many of these poems blew past me as I shook my head sadly: not really my thing. Too many split infinitives. Too few complete sentences. Deepish Philosophy 101 thoughts interpreting puddles as pools, and vice versa.

Reading this collection feels a bit like attempting falconry without any training. Suddenly there is a fierce, feral bird piercing your wrist through the leather of the gauntlet, and though you gaze into those piercing eyes with confidence, you will never bend them to your will. This creature refuses to be guided or contained, will barely deign to acknowledge the laws of nature, let alone obey them. Yes, there is power here in these words, sharp cries from a voice that will never confuse truth for beauty.

These are Lasky's laws:

And what I say are feelings
Are also not feelings
And what I say are old hurts
Are new hurts
And what deceit
And what deceit makes a moon go negative
And what black hole
Is the opposite of a rock
I only have you and me
I only have this hand to hold you with

And if I am an empty space
And if I am a truly empty space
Then my open hand is empty too
Then my heart a wide and open plain
Then my brain a dense infinity

A dense infinity of nothing
That holds no power
And if I hold no power
Then what ugliness could I truly hold
To make you so mad at me

To make you so cruel
And to extend that cruelty elsewhere
And if paper and bone make up light
And if animal fur makes up the night
And if light and earth are nothing

Then what is this light that shows my face?
Then, truly
I would rather shroud it in darkness
Then I would rather it always be dark
Then I would rather my open hand be night

For what love is useful
In this cold dark light
And what fire extends in this cold dark light
And what cruelty I will too create
In the cold dark night

The simplicity works for me here; the poem containing this extract, "Ugly Feelings," is rugged, raw, deeply and desperately felt, Lasky maintaining an uneasy balance between her instincts to record or simply fly. I wish there were more moments like this in Thunderbird, but that they appear at all in its pages seems a gift.

[YL · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been scrolling through poetry reviews trying to figure out what 'critics' (academic critics, blog critics, newspaper critics) think about Dorothea Lasky's poetry. To me lasky's self-consciously(essentially?) female subject matter, aggressive heterosexuality, and twee irony seems really weird for American poetry, and also one of the few really weird texts/author that's winning all sorts of acclaim. The criticism seems to fall amongst two types -- those that praise Lasky for her authenticity (and this is something that Lasky seems to emphasize in her interviews), and those that try to find Lasky's predecessors in the New York School( Alice Notley...) and their inheritors (Ariana Reines...). But almost no one seems to have commented on Lasky's work's continuity with other aspects of contemporary culture outside of poetry or poetry's obsession with its relation to honest affect (re: T.S. Eliot's Objective Correlative, Keat's Negative Capacity). Lasky's characteristic formal qualities (seen here for example http://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/...) such as dramatizing the limits of a cliche 'all porn is horrific', confession which makes the self abject ("I've only fucked 7 guys in my life/but I've watched more porn than you ever will"), ironic use of abstraction ("All my friends say I am free"), and cuteness can all be found in part or in whole alt-lit(see this tao lin poem: http://genius.com/Tao-lin-im-going-to...) , Daria, South Park, or Bridget Jones. She might be a force of transgression in contemporary American poetry, but the transgressions she's making are not exactly new. In a sense, I think readers are prepared for them, and really, have been prepared for them for a long time. Literary Critic's tendency to see Lasky as really new or really authentic seem to be missing something about culture. It's hard to believe that they haven't seen the shows that I've mentioned or run into Alt-lit at some point in the last 5-10 years. I think the problem might be criticism's obsession with itself. That is to say, at the very least, this book, and discourse around this book offers a fascinating window into the functioning of American poetry criticism. Poets have been sourcing their muses from other disciplines forever (Tennyson was fascinated by stellar parallax, as henchman's book shows), but critics when asked to explain why a poem is the way it is seem strangely trapped in limited modes of genealogical transmission and psychological uncovering (ringing of Foucault and Nietzsche and Freud).

And then on the flip side, people who criticize her poems for being self-indulgent or immature or not beautiful but who like Daria or Bridget Jones or South Park or Tao Lin should probably ask themselves why a poetry that partakes in the same forms should be judged differently.

[Jesse D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't the kind of poetry [I think] I like, but I was really into this collection. The way that she states and develops concepts just really worked for me, often in ways that I didn't expect. I usually don't like work that seems too internal, but here I felt that the poems managed to make internal states - even when they were quite dark - somehow welcoming. The poems do more to come towards the reader than just about anything else I have read recently.

Here's one short poem that I really liked:

Why Go in Cars
After Bernadette Mayer's translation of Catullus #48

Why go in cars
They can be destroyed
I don't want to be destroyed by you
I love you and your want
We don't need cars
Why don't we sit in a sea of violets
I could kiss you a million times
And never be sick of it
Let's go sit in some flowers
Darling boy
Let's sit in a sea of flames
And I will never put the fire
Out of you

*
There were a couple of poems that I wasn't into, and it was usually because they felt less welcoming or more dependent directly on the writer's self or personal experience, but this didn't happen often. I would recommend this book to just about anybody, since I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 3 out of 5]

What if I lost all those things

What if I lost all those things
Humor, wit, beauty
What if I lost it all
And there was nothing left of me
And what if I were just a corpse
And what if I were less than that
Would you still love me
Would you tunnel into the ground
Until the sun came out
So that you could have my body to hold
What if the sun were gone
Would you hold my body in the dead of night
Once he did
Once he did hold my body in the dead of night
If I forgot him then, will I forget him still
If I always loved him, will I love again
Dark night that is always calling
My body is thin paper to the air
We call conversation
Dark language
My body is dark red paper tonguing
The sun of the grave that I am in
Will you go tunneling through my grave
To find the setting sun
Will you go through my grave to get to another sun
One that is deep and blue
And fiery

Why go in cars

after Bernadette Mayer’s
translation of Catullus #48

Why go in cars
They can be destroyed
I don’t want to be destroyed by you
I love you and your want
We don’t need cars
Why don’t we sit in a sea of violets
I could kiss you a million times
And never be sick of it
Let’s go sit in some flowers
Darling boy
Let’s sit in a sea of flames
And I will never put the fire
Out of you

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to steal this book from the library, but I won't because of fear. The hopelessness of these poems in the face of language and love is comforting. The voice is haunting and the poems make me want to get very real with people I don't like, people I like, etc. Really stare them down and tell them how I feel about being here. Lol

"I don't have a thesis
I don't have a structure"
-from "Death and Sylvia Plath" a fav of mine

[Jamie Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this slowly -- mostly one poem at a time (one poem per sitting) -- spaced out throughout my days. I'm going to miss it.

There's a lot of great in these pages. Go see her read. Read this book if you've ever thought you liked poetry. Then read it some more.

I think it'll occupy a "flip to a random page and read one" role in my life, bedside, for some time to come.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly terrifying and sublime book, that also cracks me up constantly. It's like Pee Wee Herman entering a trance and channeling a furious and violent Sylvia Plath. Jambie the Genie is fleeing and weeping. The cowboy is on fire. The entire Play House is destroying itself and becoming something strange and novel. Or something like that.

[Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love poetry or just kind of like poetry or don't actively hate poetry you should read this.

[Erin Evenchick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Won as a Goodreads giveaway

Beautiful poetry.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

wildly natural speak & think

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is our universal law to speak"

[Leslie]

A beautiful book to read while investigating the lives of the saints.

[Janel D. Brubaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second or third book I’ve read by Dorothea Lasky. I first read her poetry while in grad school; one of my faculty mentors suggested her collection Milk as a study in poetry. I enjoyed that book as I enjoyed this one.

Lasky’s way with words is unlike anything I’ve seen from other poets. She uses simple language, and yet her poems reverberate with meaning and depth. “People cannot keep air in,” she says on page 1. A keen observation of the human body and what it means to live, to choose to keep living. There’s an honest reverie in her reflections, something that beats with the heart of nature and of people. “Things are wild here / Everything around the green” (51).

But inside the honesty is also deception, a low growl of what exists within all of us that holds fast to mystery. “My body is dark red paper tonguing / the Sun of the grave that I am in” (56). And it is this blend of honesty and mystery that builds tension in the reader’s soul. It points to why we need poetry at all.

I gave this book 3 stars because the imagery in these poems was very basic. I think they were supposed to be, but I still found myself wanting something surprising, something unexpected to jump off the page, and it didn’t. Still, I do recommend this book.

[Robert G. Elekes · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most surprising and striking poetry volumes i have read in a while. Lasky’s poetry is wild and unapologetic, abrasive and intrusive but also inherently vulnerable and smart in its expressive choices. Reading Thunderbird also gave me some extraordinary verses that will haunt my brain for some time:

Writers make workshops
Artists make hell
To live in
I make hell to live in
I make hell

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be re-reading this soon enough, and then perhaps eisegesize, depending on how I'm feeling, though how many reviews have you see here from years ago which vainly promise some addition? (Maybe it's merely my friends who are unreliable, maybe I'm drawn to such, flitting ardor). CAConrad implies she's of a sunny disposition in person. Am I? What might that mean? Think about it, or something. I like stuff that makes me curl up contiguously with Selbstmord, but it's for life, in various ways. This thing is sort of an energetically metaphysical Ariel, with more apparent deliberation and consistency, working with a lesser death drive toward a cohesive vision. If you want to feel sad in a sort-of nice way, this is the one book of poetry I now feel ready to recommend. It digs deep.

P.S.: I'm hesistant to read her other stuff on account of how much I loved this - feel free to convince me - I'll imaginarily airmail you an actual cookie

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some truly amazing individual poems: “I had a man,” “Death and Sylvia Plath,” “You are beautiful,” “What poets should do,” “Dog,” “Gender,” “Two assholes,” “Genius,” and “The changing of the seasons is life and death seen gently.”

[Pie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If only the water were my only home
I would swim so quietly
I would not say hello to you
I would no longer be sad

I would still be me though
And I would not let you catch me
For your dinner

And when you wanted to eat me for your dinner
I would disappear”

[Lola Anaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've never heard an audiobook before in its entirety so that was pretty exciting for me. i really liked these poems and took lots of notes on lines i enjoyed. i get why people like lasky so much! this is probably more accurately a 4.5