Orient Point: Poems

by Julie Sheehan

“Tender, sassy, quietly observant, deeply cutting ... a collection bursting with verbal and existential exuberance.”—Billy Collins

Julie Sheehan draws from nature guides and self-help books, weaves legal argot and street slang, and fills her work with “muscle, size, shadows, and nuance” (Linda Gregg).

Genres: Poetry

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since Julie's my poetry professor, I thought I'd give this book a try. What I really like about her poetry is that it's so musical. Sometimes sound qualities can take away from poems when the sound shouts over the poems themselves, but Julie's have a nice balance that cater to a natural rhythm. She also is willing to go back to Chaucer and his middle-English cadences (spelling, pronounciation, and all) while employing modern-day characters and situations.

My favorite poem in this collection is "Hate Poem," which I've read before in a sample textbook I'm taking into consideration whenever I get to teach again:


I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Every corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I'm digging from under my third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational debases hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant "good morning": hate.

You know how when I'm sleepy I muzzle my head under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holsters from morning to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I may hate each one individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.


Sometimes a person just needs to let it out, you know? Anyway, it's that ability to let go and say what needs to be said that I admire most about Julie and her work.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of interesting language-play going on here, especially the combination of modern text with faux-historical diction, syntax, and form (note the sonnets and, for example, "Ivory-Billed Woodpecker"). Usually successful, I think, though sometimes comes off as gimmicky.