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Far Side of the Earth
Widely considered one of the finest poets of his generation, Tom Sleigh brings to his fifth collection his trademark intensity and craftsmanship, mixing the streetwise edginess of popular culture with Greek and Latin references, myth, and dramatic lyrics. Passionately comprehensive in its understanding of contemporary reality, Far Side of the Earth is unique in its moral gravitas, consolatory power, and strangeness of vision.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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20 people want to read
About the author
Tom Sleigh
22 books14 followersTom Sleigh is the author of seven poetry collections, including Space Walk, which received the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Award. He is also a playwright, translator, and the author of a collection of essays, Interview with a Ghost. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 26, 2016
Scar of lost love so tender to finger and rub
until it bleeds,
he couldn't help himself,
it became a compulsion - he was
Scott in his tent, writing in his journal until his beard froze over, face
covered
by a mask of ice,
the Pole become the axis of his being;
One of my favorite aspects of poetry is its complex and locked nature. A poem can present the reader with a riddle which can be considered, examined, and opened, allowing varying shades of expression to be experienced subjectively through the reader's own history and emotions, allowing the art to become more than what the author intended, and leaving the reader with an impression, as well as a feeling of satisfaction for having managed to uncover the author's intentions. Such poems are usually ambiguous in nature, and offered to the reader without any form of suggestive description, other than the title, and the vague descriptors used by the author within their prose.
One example would be the poem The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver, which reads simply:
"Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift."
It's beautiful in its brevity, and powerful in its message, though nowhere does Mary Oliver specifically state what this short poem is about, but rather leaves the reader with a thoughtful meditation to ponder. Obviously there is the suggestion of sorrow, though the box of darkness could be one of many catalysts. This exemplifies the suggestive nature of poetry and its ability to allow the reader their own reflections without being too ambiguous or vague to the point of practical uselessness. Unfortunately, with Tom Sleigh's Far Side of the Earth, we experience just the opposite: an almost impenetrable wall of obtrusively veiled impressions.
That's not to say that there isn't good in this collection. The opening and closing fragments of ths review are taken from a poem that I found to be very strong, entitled I Came To You. It's elegant, and mournful as it is about the loss of a loved on, but it offers flashes of joy, which is hard to find in this collection. Tom Sleigh has an impressive vocabulary, and can create quite the chaotic whirlwind of colorful visions though they get lost in his overly verbose descriptions. What I liken many of the pieces included here to are poems that had already been written, and were then given a distancing draft in order to create a twice-removed feeling from the message the poet wanted to present. They also often felt very personal, and when mixed with that second level vagueness, created a hollowness that was difficult to overcome, especially when seeing the truth behind the words, which was usually a dark one.
I also think that I'm slowly becoming disenchanted with poetry collections who focus purely on pain and hardship. Some of the most lasting and powerful prose I've read has been poetry born of misery, though what allows it to leave me with that lasting impression is the undercurrent of hope that lies somewhere within it. Poetry, for me is an expression of emotion or experience using language in such a way that it is almost a song splayed out in shape and form. To present poem after poem about the darkness of humanity, the hopelessness of life, and the terrible conditions we constantly find ourselves does nothing more than highlights our depraved natures.
It might also be that I read this too soon after reading The Broken World by Marcus Cafagña, which was also a collection of melancholy and lament.
Regardless, this was a tough book to get through, and I often found myself wanting to put it down after reading even a few of the poems, deterred by their incredibly ambiguous nature, or weary of their overly negative themes and messages. At several points the poems approach nihilism, which I think can be utilized in such a way as to question the legitimacy of our motivations, intentions, and our actions, though without any sort of dulling hammer of hope, the sharp edge of nihilism's inquisition we're faced with simply presents a dark uncaring universe that cares nothing for us, to which I respond "why write poems at all?" Nihilistic ideology is a tool, though not a means to an end within art, as it challenges the very concept of art as an expressive human medium. If there is no reason for expression then how can you find a voice within hopelessness in order to carry any form of message worth sharing?
Far Side of the Earth was ultimately just not that enjoyable of a read, and it didn't leave me with impressions that I appreciated on any level, or wanted to ponder for any length of time. It's a series of painful, thickly presented, wordy, stream-of-conscious, prose pieces that often approach a nihilistic view of a world filled with difficulty that leaves us questioning our motives to love since we will all eventually face loss. I didn't feel any redeeming quality in any of these poems, and the book as a whole left me feeling devoid of any form of hope. I'd recommend reading the author's piece I Came To You, but skipping the rest.
While we watch wing pass into wing at each embrace,
the gods' ichor mingling, vapor into vapor,
we sit reading our separate books, apart,
together, the digital clock's numbers
vanishing into blackness, gravity holding us
as we prefer to be held, you still you, me me...
Was it you, in the end, who left me?
Or was the ice on my brow too thick
for me to wipe away?
until it bleeds,
he couldn't help himself,
it became a compulsion - he was
Scott in his tent, writing in his journal until his beard froze over, face
covered
by a mask of ice,
the Pole become the axis of his being;
One of my favorite aspects of poetry is its complex and locked nature. A poem can present the reader with a riddle which can be considered, examined, and opened, allowing varying shades of expression to be experienced subjectively through the reader's own history and emotions, allowing the art to become more than what the author intended, and leaving the reader with an impression, as well as a feeling of satisfaction for having managed to uncover the author's intentions. Such poems are usually ambiguous in nature, and offered to the reader without any form of suggestive description, other than the title, and the vague descriptors used by the author within their prose.
One example would be the poem The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver, which reads simply:
"Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift."
It's beautiful in its brevity, and powerful in its message, though nowhere does Mary Oliver specifically state what this short poem is about, but rather leaves the reader with a thoughtful meditation to ponder. Obviously there is the suggestion of sorrow, though the box of darkness could be one of many catalysts. This exemplifies the suggestive nature of poetry and its ability to allow the reader their own reflections without being too ambiguous or vague to the point of practical uselessness. Unfortunately, with Tom Sleigh's Far Side of the Earth, we experience just the opposite: an almost impenetrable wall of obtrusively veiled impressions.
That's not to say that there isn't good in this collection. The opening and closing fragments of ths review are taken from a poem that I found to be very strong, entitled I Came To You. It's elegant, and mournful as it is about the loss of a loved on, but it offers flashes of joy, which is hard to find in this collection. Tom Sleigh has an impressive vocabulary, and can create quite the chaotic whirlwind of colorful visions though they get lost in his overly verbose descriptions. What I liken many of the pieces included here to are poems that had already been written, and were then given a distancing draft in order to create a twice-removed feeling from the message the poet wanted to present. They also often felt very personal, and when mixed with that second level vagueness, created a hollowness that was difficult to overcome, especially when seeing the truth behind the words, which was usually a dark one.
I also think that I'm slowly becoming disenchanted with poetry collections who focus purely on pain and hardship. Some of the most lasting and powerful prose I've read has been poetry born of misery, though what allows it to leave me with that lasting impression is the undercurrent of hope that lies somewhere within it. Poetry, for me is an expression of emotion or experience using language in such a way that it is almost a song splayed out in shape and form. To present poem after poem about the darkness of humanity, the hopelessness of life, and the terrible conditions we constantly find ourselves does nothing more than highlights our depraved natures.
It might also be that I read this too soon after reading The Broken World by Marcus Cafagña, which was also a collection of melancholy and lament.
Regardless, this was a tough book to get through, and I often found myself wanting to put it down after reading even a few of the poems, deterred by their incredibly ambiguous nature, or weary of their overly negative themes and messages. At several points the poems approach nihilism, which I think can be utilized in such a way as to question the legitimacy of our motivations, intentions, and our actions, though without any sort of dulling hammer of hope, the sharp edge of nihilism's inquisition we're faced with simply presents a dark uncaring universe that cares nothing for us, to which I respond "why write poems at all?" Nihilistic ideology is a tool, though not a means to an end within art, as it challenges the very concept of art as an expressive human medium. If there is no reason for expression then how can you find a voice within hopelessness in order to carry any form of message worth sharing?
Far Side of the Earth was ultimately just not that enjoyable of a read, and it didn't leave me with impressions that I appreciated on any level, or wanted to ponder for any length of time. It's a series of painful, thickly presented, wordy, stream-of-conscious, prose pieces that often approach a nihilistic view of a world filled with difficulty that leaves us questioning our motives to love since we will all eventually face loss. I didn't feel any redeeming quality in any of these poems, and the book as a whole left me feeling devoid of any form of hope. I'd recommend reading the author's piece I Came To You, but skipping the rest.
While we watch wing pass into wing at each embrace,
the gods' ichor mingling, vapor into vapor,
we sit reading our separate books, apart,
together, the digital clock's numbers
vanishing into blackness, gravity holding us
as we prefer to be held, you still you, me me...
Was it you, in the end, who left me?
Or was the ice on my brow too thick
for me to wipe away?
January 28, 2009
Not for the first time since I joined Goodreads do I find myself wishing there were two axes for the starring process: one for how much I admired the book, one for how much I liked/enjoyed it. I admired this book at three stars. I enjoyed it at 2 stars, maybe fewer. Wouldn't really recommend it.
May 30, 2019
Some of the most unlikeable poetry I've ever read. A review on the back cover states: "Sleigh writes with...the combination of clarity and enigma that makes poetry memorable." I can't put it better than that, except that I find the poetry to be utterly forgettable. At times Sleigh writes with wonderfully vivid imagery, but the images bleed into one another and meaning is lost. Maybe it's fair to say that I dislike this poetry because it is difficult...but I also find it pretentious and hollow.
I don't know why, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine when poets use the word "bougainvillea." When this flower showed up on page eight, I suppressed a tiny laugh and decided to suspend my judgement until the end of the book. It turns out that I didn't like a single poem in this collection. There are nitpicky things that I disliked: rampant use of ellipsis and dashes, capitalizing the beginning of each line, unusual and unnecessary spacing in the layout of some poems. But my big complaint is that the poems are unrelatable and any meaning is obfuscated. Sleigh's strengths are his interesting and unexpected diction, euphony, and allusion, but it's a shame that they aren't put to use in better poems.
There are some ideas that re-appear throughout the collection. Sleigh seems to have an obsession with Plato's Cave, Greek myths and poets, beliefs of ancient Egypt and Sumer, the "abyss," ice and Scott's polar expedition. Sleigh writes of love and existence, often times beyond our time and place—whether it is angels in Eden, the Ice Age, or somewhere far off in the galaxy. Perhaps the reason why his poetry is so alienating is because it's frequently beyond the reach of mere mortals.
Poems that I liked:
0/39 = 0% (!!!)
I will end with an excerpt from "This Day Only" as an example of his poetry:
Zone innavigable of being, unforeseeable zone,
whether you wear a friend's face or grin back at us
from the mirror or the blankness of a computer screen,
every instant I feel you trying to lure me down:
You crackle with feedback from Hendrix's guitar,
empty snail shells reverberate with your cataracting roar.
Everywhere I look this clairvoyant July, between shafts of sun
you insinuate yourself deep into the day:
A man I know is about to die, today, maybe tomorrow;
his voice on the phone is interrupted by your static
as if he were marooned on a mountaintop
or shouted up from the bottom of a crevasse . . .
The rich stink of carrion that wafts from the garden,
lugs indomitably traversing the wet grass,
the couple strolling, their aura frangible, incalculable,
hint at your vibrations both visible and invisible.
Isn't this all part of your ambiguous shining, a blossoming
and withering so particular it can't be argued over?
I don't know why, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine when poets use the word "bougainvillea." When this flower showed up on page eight, I suppressed a tiny laugh and decided to suspend my judgement until the end of the book. It turns out that I didn't like a single poem in this collection. There are nitpicky things that I disliked: rampant use of ellipsis and dashes, capitalizing the beginning of each line, unusual and unnecessary spacing in the layout of some poems. But my big complaint is that the poems are unrelatable and any meaning is obfuscated. Sleigh's strengths are his interesting and unexpected diction, euphony, and allusion, but it's a shame that they aren't put to use in better poems.
There are some ideas that re-appear throughout the collection. Sleigh seems to have an obsession with Plato's Cave, Greek myths and poets, beliefs of ancient Egypt and Sumer, the "abyss," ice and Scott's polar expedition. Sleigh writes of love and existence, often times beyond our time and place—whether it is angels in Eden, the Ice Age, or somewhere far off in the galaxy. Perhaps the reason why his poetry is so alienating is because it's frequently beyond the reach of mere mortals.
Poems that I liked:
0/39 = 0% (!!!)
I will end with an excerpt from "This Day Only" as an example of his poetry:
Zone innavigable of being, unforeseeable zone,
whether you wear a friend's face or grin back at us
from the mirror or the blankness of a computer screen,
every instant I feel you trying to lure me down:
You crackle with feedback from Hendrix's guitar,
empty snail shells reverberate with your cataracting roar.
Everywhere I look this clairvoyant July, between shafts of sun
you insinuate yourself deep into the day:
A man I know is about to die, today, maybe tomorrow;
his voice on the phone is interrupted by your static
as if he were marooned on a mountaintop
or shouted up from the bottom of a crevasse . . .
The rich stink of carrion that wafts from the garden,
lugs indomitably traversing the wet grass,
the couple strolling, their aura frangible, incalculable,
hint at your vibrations both visible and invisible.
Isn't this all part of your ambiguous shining, a blossoming
and withering so particular it can't be argued over?
June 24, 2010
Poetry that seems to be written for other poets. Difficult to read. Difficult to examine outside of the academic world.
High diction. Well-revised. Technically great poetry that kind of left me empty.
Some amazing wordplay and rhythms, but the "soul" feels missing to me.
Would have received a 2 star rating if it wasn't for the long poem "I Came to You". Melted my heart enough to elevate the collection to 3 stars.
"Good" poetry. Just nothing I feel attached to.
High diction. Well-revised. Technically great poetry that kind of left me empty.
Some amazing wordplay and rhythms, but the "soul" feels missing to me.
Would have received a 2 star rating if it wasn't for the long poem "I Came to You". Melted my heart enough to elevate the collection to 3 stars.
"Good" poetry. Just nothing I feel attached to.
October 27, 2008
Beautiful, erotic, visual and moving. Read each poem aloud and let it rest on your tongue. Its an experience to be savored.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews