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Shameless: Poems
Roberts, Suzanne
92 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2007
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9 people want to read
About the author
Suzanne Roberts
7 books54 followersSuzanne Roberts is the author of Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (March 2022), the award-winning travel essay collection Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award), as well as four books of poems. Named "The Next Great Travel Writer" by National Geographic's Traveler, Suzanne's work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and included in The Best Women's Travel Writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, The Normal School, River Teeth, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno, teaches in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University, and lives in South Lake Tahoe, California
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February 6, 2013
This is the second collection by Roberts that I've read. I reviewed her book, Nothing to You, here last year. Of that book, I said:: "Her travels furnish exotic locations and vivid imagery for her poetry, too. Roberts is also a photographer and it shows. She seems to miss nothing. Most of these poems are colorful and packed with concrete details." And I would say the same of Shameless, which was published a year earlier (2007) than Nothing to You (2008).
Roberts's narrators are hip, brash, sometimes defiant -- but also, literate, articulate, and passionate. If there are regrets, the way forward is to acknowledge them and keep going. Living fully and honestly. There's no shame in that.
The pervasive voice is that of a woman who throws caution to the wind as easily as she tosses a lover's phone number out the window, but who, beneath the risk and bravado, knows the power of words. She observes keenly, alert to detail and nuance.
What Wings Know
Carson Pass, South Lake Tahoe
We cut trail up Red Lake Peak
into the dome of blue sky.
New snow crystals flash
like silver fish. Climbing
skins slide and slap
like the nylon rip of a kite
in wind. We weave
through red fir, craggy
white bark pine, pass an old
juniper snag, limbs twisted,
remembering years of storm.
We carry full packs—avalanche
shovels, probes, other things—
she has just left her husband.
I want to leave mine.
At the top, she says, I want to burn
this moment into memory—triangles
of white unfolding to blue, the smell
of wet sage and scattered pine.
I ski over the steep edge,
kneel to the arc of the turn,
heed gravity's call—a body
understanding flight.
Why You Stay
Your friend tells you
you're the balloon.
Your husband has the string
tied to his wrist, so you won't
float away. Her hands whirl
like fans, show you
exactly what happens
to a balloon without anchor.
And there’s considerable variety in form here: Some nonce sonnets, some prose poems, some unconventional structures. Many of the poems are written in (unrhymed) stanzas or couplets. Even the free verse pieces are informed by structure, rhythm, attention to sound and visual appeal.
Here’s another one that I liked. And now, in retrospect it strikes me that this one seems to sum up the project of the entire collection.
Poem
Characters:
You, him, and all the other him.
The past.
Setting:
The metallic taste of traffic,
hot cracked concrete,
a crowded neon beach.
The white smell of hibiscus.
Diamond Head on the sunlit horizon.
The present tense.
Dialog:
He asks, “Were you a slug?”
Point of view:
You tell him the truth, but tell it slant.
The metaphor:
The past is a shadow. In that dream,
you bought invisible pants. Now
you wear them under everything.
The plot:
You are always the one who leaves.
I’m now reading her next collection, Three Hours to Burn a Body: Poems on Travel, published in 2011. And she has yet another, Plotting Temporality, published in 2012, that I’m sure I’ll read, too. By the way, Roberts won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award. for her memoir, Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail.
Roberts's narrators are hip, brash, sometimes defiant -- but also, literate, articulate, and passionate. If there are regrets, the way forward is to acknowledge them and keep going. Living fully and honestly. There's no shame in that.
The pervasive voice is that of a woman who throws caution to the wind as easily as she tosses a lover's phone number out the window, but who, beneath the risk and bravado, knows the power of words. She observes keenly, alert to detail and nuance.
What Wings Know
Carson Pass, South Lake Tahoe
We cut trail up Red Lake Peak
into the dome of blue sky.
New snow crystals flash
like silver fish. Climbing
skins slide and slap
like the nylon rip of a kite
in wind. We weave
through red fir, craggy
white bark pine, pass an old
juniper snag, limbs twisted,
remembering years of storm.
We carry full packs—avalanche
shovels, probes, other things—
she has just left her husband.
I want to leave mine.
At the top, she says, I want to burn
this moment into memory—triangles
of white unfolding to blue, the smell
of wet sage and scattered pine.
I ski over the steep edge,
kneel to the arc of the turn,
heed gravity's call—a body
understanding flight.
Why You Stay
Your friend tells you
you're the balloon.
Your husband has the string
tied to his wrist, so you won't
float away. Her hands whirl
like fans, show you
exactly what happens
to a balloon without anchor.
And there’s considerable variety in form here: Some nonce sonnets, some prose poems, some unconventional structures. Many of the poems are written in (unrhymed) stanzas or couplets. Even the free verse pieces are informed by structure, rhythm, attention to sound and visual appeal.
Here’s another one that I liked. And now, in retrospect it strikes me that this one seems to sum up the project of the entire collection.
Poem
Characters:
You, him, and all the other him.
The past.
Setting:
The metallic taste of traffic,
hot cracked concrete,
a crowded neon beach.
The white smell of hibiscus.
Diamond Head on the sunlit horizon.
The present tense.
Dialog:
He asks, “Were you a slug?”
Point of view:
You tell him the truth, but tell it slant.
The metaphor:
The past is a shadow. In that dream,
you bought invisible pants. Now
you wear them under everything.
The plot:
You are always the one who leaves.
I’m now reading her next collection, Three Hours to Burn a Body: Poems on Travel, published in 2011. And she has yet another, Plotting Temporality, published in 2012, that I’m sure I’ll read, too. By the way, Roberts won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award. for her memoir, Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail.
Displaying 1 of 1 review