Rude Girl

by John Sakkis

In Rude Girl, light "scrime[s]," a girl secretly "places a button under her tongue," and a tide is a "pseudonym" both for not speaking (right then) and for what comes the start of seeing "the things [in front of]" (my brackets), which in fact "were always [in front of]." There's an attention too, in John Sakkis's beautiful book, to the "frequency and occurence" with which these things happened. Are happening. Like "years or color." Loved these poems. Hope you will too.

-- Bhanu Kapil

A three-part song for the unaccompanied and at times accompanied voice(s): "a word of it / set to walk." Like a sailor with sharp knives for ears and a psaltery made maybe of skateboards in his head, Sakkis travels across time, space, meaning, rule, principle, mode, listening acutely and carving away all "Whenever particles spoken / into my nerves / I hear outer voices/ and Love" --He brings us to hear it "peeling away hunger." Rather than write about it, all I want to do is quote this whole exquisite book whose "fatty sheets of rainbow" speak for themselves.

--Susan Gevirtz

I read Rude Girl as a Herodotean geography in that it reports the ecological and psychosocial terrains of an “other country.” The “country” in Rude Girl, however, is a landscape of broken burned houses, the 1990’s, worn out coins, the shadowy “M.” (money itself? a Langian villain? whatever—an “ox by no means”). The lyricism of this book is suspended on a threshold of surplus and excess--terms which cue the melancholy of its unique version of human loss and the fragility of whoever’s left to report. This book disturbs me—it disturbs my participation in the dissipating, breakable ecologies I participate the woods, tunnels, streets; the “reified house” with its “barking economy.”

--Brandon Brown

Sensual but sensible, the thoughtful lyrics of Rude Girl maintain, explore and suspend meaning. They don't describe but combine -- well, okay, sometimes they describe. "the house is like business/and doesn't sing/ the air is women." Everyday life and the sublime appear “walking hand in hand.” These poems are surreal, cerebral and celebratory. They sing and swoon. Read them and weep!

--Laura Moriarty

Genres: Poetry

31 pages, e-chapbook

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

John Sakkis is a poet. His books include Mirror Magic (Roof Books), Nike+ (BOTH BOTH Books), Psychopomp (BOTH BOTH Books), RAVE ON! (BOTH BOTH Books), The Islands (Nightboat Books), and Rude Girl (BlazeVOX Books), as well as numerous chapbooks and ephemera. From 2005-2015 he edited BOTH BOTH, a little magazine of poetry. With Angelos Sakkis, he has translated five books by Athenian poet Demosthenes Agrafiotis: Y’es and Diaeresis (Dusie Press), “now, 1/3” and thepoem (BlazeVOX Books), Writing Dimensions (Green Integer), Chinese Notebook (Ugly Duckling Presse), and Maribor (The Post-Apollo Press), which was awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation. He was born and raised and lives in the East Bay Area.

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a strange and beautiful book. If this is Ophelia of Hamlet's Ophelia, she has new songs, new life. She rises out of her drowning. The voices, especially of Ophelia and Ophelio are sometimes different genders of the same body, but maybe that's me seeing what's not there. What's marvelous is that Sakkis's sublime, sensual minimalism gives the reader a lot of room to be in the poem, which is why I shouldn't say much more than that. Say less, is what I should do. But I like the play off of RUDE BOY, the edgy delinquents, feeling their way in the world THEIR WAY!

This book is FREE (note that it's a PDF) so there's no reason to not read it NOW! It would be GREAT to see this performed! But if I were directing it Ophelio would be a drag queen dressed in patent leather from head to toe. And a strawberry wig, not curly. Here's a favorite passage of mine from the voice of Ophelio:

I could Love
only a quarantine
of dialects
to the station
thin and cold surface
have their way
as if a wire
above the water
glancing back

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rude Girl is filled with very strong lines, not very strong poems. I like what I think it is that Sakkis is trying to do. Trying being the operative word. This chap has sparked my interest enough to want to give a "full-length" work of his a go.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing once you read through a couple of times and realize you are entering a landscape that is rural and distant yet very present and changeable as the evolutionary process is.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This shit is whack/wack(y)- I kept reading the blurbs over and over but I don't think I understand. The secret, I suspect, is you must find the lavender bedroom, and maybe go into the closet where the unicorn is (like narnia,) and then everything will be revealed. Where is the lavender bedroom and who is this rude girl?

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some lines I absolutely loved - but as someone else here said, the lines themselves were better than the poems. Not a bad chap, but it does seem as though the sum is less than its parts. It's definitely worth a read and I have a strong hunch that others are going to like it quite a lot.

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing minimalist poems, where the words feel like real objects with real weight.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book would make Jack Spicer, Michael Palmer, and Norma Cole all smile. And I spied quite a few things I intend to steal.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've admired John's writing ever since our playful days at Naropa.

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very compelling read, so compelling in fact, that I made copies of a few of the poems to teach to my high school lit students.

[Derek Fenner · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic collection! This volume illuminates the palace's dark places with liberating swaths of triumphant ethos. Looking forward to many more from Sakkis.