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Take This Stallion
Poetry. "I have never before read a book like Anais Duplan's Take This Stallion. Her major talent is recognizing the self in the other, making for poems that flow forward in a tone of oneness is oneness a tone? poems that make evident an ever-expanding world by opening themselves up into that world. This debut does what poets in their fifth or sixth collections are still trying to figure: it balances the intellect, image, music, and emotion in ways so unfamiliar that a blurb couldn't possible characterize the work." —Jericho Brown
76 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 14, 2019
I’ve never anything like this. I don’t quite know what to make of it. But I can tell you it’s brilliant.
February 9, 2017
She's in her mid-twenties. I'm out.
April 30, 2019
I did not think that I would enjoy this book at all, and it is probably not something that I would have picked out on my own. However, I did really enjoy reading this because of how many real world connections it had both in the past and today. I personally feel as though some of the compositional risks did not work out in all of the poems, however, for the most part, this was a very interesting book. I would recommend this book to young adults or older. Even if you may not think that this book is for you, give it a chance and you may really relate to some of these poems.
May 6, 2021
One of the best single author poetry collection of the last decade. Actually, one of the best ever on post war American poetry. The first poem is maybe not the best, or at least it seems initially off putting in its pop culture references, but it all pays off and then everything after is gold. Kind of like a more politically engaged version of the kind of imagery that Patricia Lockwood does so well.
August 5, 2016
One last thing: Do you like my tight
sweater. Doesn't it fit me doesn't it fit me
that I am unsure of the meaning of balloons,
of party hats, of family. And what are friends
but deadweights, o god deadweights.
sweater. Doesn't it fit me doesn't it fit me
that I am unsure of the meaning of balloons,
of party hats, of family. And what are friends
but deadweights, o god deadweights.
October 27, 2020
3.5?
"On A Scale of 1-10, How 'Loving' Do You Feel" sets a rambunctious, campy, sensitized tone that the collection as a whole swings in and out of a bit wildly. It makes for a jarring experience. It's not that the poems themselves are bad though, but that I've finished Take This Stallion but have no idea where I took it to. Arguably this is a symptom of its humanist ambition that ends on "do not waste your time trying to find/beauty in all things. Reserve your awe/for mammals in flight." This in the same collection where the poet buries God in the ocean ("For My Undead Father") and makes god a dog ("Tat Tvam Asi"), where beings are buried within beings (as parasites, as unbirthed deer, as reflections, as "the animal's mouth in your mouth," as "kid-killers" in the "wild furrows of my vulva") or are filled with an urge to consume either their "fill/of heroes" or "until hunger" re-orients the poet in "Try Not To Smile (When You're Not Getting Your Picture Taken)" or in the aptly named "Hunger (Motivational State)."
This is all to say the poems are...well, throughout the collection there are recurring characters whose names are the geometric symbols for square, triangle, diamond, star, and circle. They interact throughout in epistolary formatted poems and in poems titled as dialogue but structured as a poem, but to understand them as characters is (imo) to misunderstand what they are. They're characters, maybe, in the word-counting sense. Much like the famous names that splatter across "On A Scale of 1-10..." (with meaningful emphasis on Kim & Yeezus), these are manufactured identities which carry weight by fitting into a nexus of other symbols. The tension of these shapes is exactly in how pervasive their identities are throughout the collection, absent of real faces despite having recognizable shapes, and in how they're the ones who push the reader on. As the collection begins:
△ said to □, "Did I hit an animal back there?"
□ said, "No, don't look back."
And in the end, this is where the tension lies. The title of the poem is taken from the opening lines of the part 8 of "A Fledgling Is A Young Bird That Has Its Feathers And Is Learning To Fly." It goes, "You are in control. Take this stallion and ride it/to your demise. (Read: the sunset, behind the stars,/the green green garden.) Compare my flesh to yours." It's an exasperated landscape tired of idols and longing for nature, the violence of nature, the absence of characters and the return of the flesh. It would be a wonderful study for the intersection of speculative realism and the revival of existentialism, I imagine. It's a bit harder to love as poetry, despite being good poetry.
"On A Scale of 1-10, How 'Loving' Do You Feel" sets a rambunctious, campy, sensitized tone that the collection as a whole swings in and out of a bit wildly. It makes for a jarring experience. It's not that the poems themselves are bad though, but that I've finished Take This Stallion but have no idea where I took it to. Arguably this is a symptom of its humanist ambition that ends on "do not waste your time trying to find/beauty in all things. Reserve your awe/for mammals in flight." This in the same collection where the poet buries God in the ocean ("For My Undead Father") and makes god a dog ("Tat Tvam Asi"), where beings are buried within beings (as parasites, as unbirthed deer, as reflections, as "the animal's mouth in your mouth," as "kid-killers" in the "wild furrows of my vulva") or are filled with an urge to consume either their "fill/of heroes" or "until hunger" re-orients the poet in "Try Not To Smile (When You're Not Getting Your Picture Taken)" or in the aptly named "Hunger (Motivational State)."
This is all to say the poems are...well, throughout the collection there are recurring characters whose names are the geometric symbols for square, triangle, diamond, star, and circle. They interact throughout in epistolary formatted poems and in poems titled as dialogue but structured as a poem, but to understand them as characters is (imo) to misunderstand what they are. They're characters, maybe, in the word-counting sense. Much like the famous names that splatter across "On A Scale of 1-10..." (with meaningful emphasis on Kim & Yeezus), these are manufactured identities which carry weight by fitting into a nexus of other symbols. The tension of these shapes is exactly in how pervasive their identities are throughout the collection, absent of real faces despite having recognizable shapes, and in how they're the ones who push the reader on. As the collection begins:
△ said to □, "Did I hit an animal back there?"
□ said, "No, don't look back."
And in the end, this is where the tension lies. The title of the poem is taken from the opening lines of the part 8 of "A Fledgling Is A Young Bird That Has Its Feathers And Is Learning To Fly." It goes, "You are in control. Take this stallion and ride it/to your demise. (Read: the sunset, behind the stars,/the green green garden.) Compare my flesh to yours." It's an exasperated landscape tired of idols and longing for nature, the violence of nature, the absence of characters and the return of the flesh. It would be a wonderful study for the intersection of speculative realism and the revival of existentialism, I imagine. It's a bit harder to love as poetry, despite being good poetry.
December 10, 2018
I'm finding it difficult to rate this small book of poems. This is primarily due to the fact that her poems fell into one of two categories: I liked it or I strongly disliked it/couldn't understand it. My thoughts and feelings towards poetry have evolved greatly since high school (a couple decades ago), but there are definitely poems that leave me perplexed. Duplan grew up in Haiti before moving to the US, at some later time. Her styles vary greatly as does her subject matter. I would consider her a modern poet writing about modern things with numerous references that are current (music, dance moves, and tv). There were several that I did like including: "The War of Parasites", "The Foyer Forever", and "On How To Win With or Without Trying". Aside from the second poem, I could find no correlation between the title and the subject which left me worried I had somehow missed something greater than was alluded to or inferred. This however didn't affect my attachment to them. I think there is something here in these pages for everyone.
May 16, 2020
bought this as an ebook off amazon after reading "black 'N' relaxed II", which jenny zhang recommended and which i wish this collection were more like. cryptic & eclectic, with cameo appearances by martha stewart, kim kardashian, and yes, many, many equine beings.
May 7, 2018
I had high hopes for this collection because I had read "The Room Is Not Cold & It Is Not Dark" and loved it, but unfortunately this just never really did it for me.
June 8, 2020
Not right for me, but poetry is so very specific to the reader.
August 15, 2020
“as soon as you walked into the room / all the flowers said O hell yes”
March 15, 2021
Got me through some shit before I even knew who Megan was
November 23, 2023
not what i expected, in a good way! reviewing/writing abt poetry is hard, but duplan is simply just Good At Poetry ™️. so many surprising moments & lines, lots of risk.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews