Bugle

by Tod Marshall

Poetry. "100,000 drones above us, a headline said. / Someone must love us, must be eager to know us," Tod Marshall writes in the title poem of his third collection, BUGLE. Notes of (self) surveillance blast throughout this book, which shakes its readers awake to encounter the slagheap of extraction (mineral and confessional), the dark corners of containment (domestic and poetic), and the possibilities (sometimes hopeful, often grim) of transformation.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2014

Reviews

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was delightfully chaotic -- nice mixture of crass and highbrow throughout; many poems set in Idaho/Washington (and I am a sucker for writing about the PNW); the book's eponymous final poem contains some of the most beautiful lines I have read in some time: the phrase "telling reliquary" is nearly all you should need to know.

"You must pull ribs from that rotting body,
words that matter: love me, love me not."

Those are some great closing lines.

[Devin Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Bugle doesn’t sugarcoat, it strips." My full review up at Coldfront: http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/bugle...

[JB · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Make it suffer / for being and for being beautiful.”

I read this quick, breezy page-turner in an afternoon. Everything comes out very naturally, has a comma-powered run-on, yet at times halting, rhythm. Here, tenderness and the really grotesque, the world’s beauty and the world’s cheapness, play. Listen to it in this line, from one of several poems called “Bugle”: “Embouchure, / fancy French for sounding the names of things, / brassy Latin, ding-dong dead tongue—/bucina canere, sing song.” Sometimes you get this feeling of impending tragedy when you become conscious of the speed you’re going reading it, and sure enough find out that death is at the poem’s end. But there’s a kind of serenity, acceptance, or naturalness to it, like in:

FUCK UP

A drowned deer tumbles down the raging river,
smacking rocks, breaking ribs, antlers dredging
and dragging through gravelly shallows—white foam
around the body floating in a black eddy,
finally, broken neck lolling with the steady drift
and pull of current. If only the day
were done. The Scoutmaster fails to see
a strainer downstream, an inflatable raft
bobbing onward, kids touting happy badges.
Look for why n the black eye of a Stellar Jay.
Shout the verb for a disastrous decision.
Thunk round rocks against wet fur, bloated skin.
Sometimes we leap into water to shiver.
Sometimes we say death when what we mean is home.

[GW · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Professor Marshall speak last night and determined to read the latest collection of his poetry today. I was pleasantly surprised by his fresh take on being human. His little book is filled with sex, politics, and his own version of post modernist environs. I was left with the notion that life is a shit and don't be with out it. What matters is a bizzaro look at living in contemporary America with what is so important about life suppressed by all the bull crap and suicides and heartfelt struggles from the past impeding on a modern thinker, philosopher, poet that is Tod Marshall Phd. The poems are well written and his word play is superior. If I am to go to hell in a handcart I want to put a poem or two of his in my suitcase to enthuse and entertain me along the way.

[Lenora Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you wonder why Tod Marshall was chosen as the Washington State Poet Laureate, read this book and you'll know!

These are not happy poems, well, not all of them, but there is a lot of humor judiciously placed here and there. And the imagery, oh the imagery. His canvas is paper, his paint is ink, his brush is words. Words that make us weep, words that make us shiver, words that make us ponder the meaning of life, the meaning of death, the meaning of living. A veritable feast for the soul.

A small book you will want to read many, many times.

[Qristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. But so, so heavy.

[c]

dude likes dead animals more than joyce carol oates