Another City: Poems

by David Keplinger

How does it feel to experience another city? To stand beneath tall buildings, among the countless faces of a crowd? To attempt to be heard above the din?

The poems of Another City travel inward and outward at once: into moments of self-reproach and grace, and to those of disassociation and belonging. From experiences defined by an urban landscape--a thwarted customer at the door of a shuttered bookstore in Crete, a chance encounter with a might-have-been lover in Copenhagen--to the streets themselves, where "an alley was a comma in the agony's grammar," in David Keplinger's hands startling images collide and mingle like bodies on a busy thoroughfare.

Yet Another City deftly spans not only the physical space of global cities, but more intangible and intimate distances: between birth and death, father and son, past and present, metaphor and reality. In these poems, our entry into the world is when "the wound, called loneliness, / opens," and our voyage out of it is through a foreign but not entirely unfamiliar constellations of cities: Cherbourg, Manila, Port-au-Prince.

A moving, haunting atlas to worlds both interior and exterior.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2018

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just returned home from AWP in Tampa. While there, I attended a reading of Milkweed poets, including David Keplinger. I returned to my hotel room and discovered that one of the galleys of poetry I had for books coming out this next week was the same guy! Cool.

My main impression of Keplinger's poems is best described as dealing with artifacts. He seems to use objects to discuss relationships, between people, between a person and their life, between people those who leave and those who stay. They are quiet but some pack a punch, especially those that seem to be talking about loss.

My favorites include:

"The Sibilant," about the different paths a relationship can go

"A Poetry Shop in Heraklion"

"Magic"

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I really hate giving a numeric (star) score to a book. Sometimes there isn't anything at all wrong with the book, sometimes the timing just isn't right...

I think that is why this book didn't bowl me over to be honest. I am not in a great place personally right now (let's just say that I am grumpy as %&$# and leave it at that) and I think that has a lot to do with why. The poetry here is well-written and I had no specific problems with the book. I particularly loved the poems "Lazarus" and "Hymn." I feel, honestly, that it is a book that I would probably like a whole lot more if I were to have read it under different circumstances and so I hate giving the book a rating... But I liked it, felt like it was worth the read so I am giving it a 3-star rating ("liked it") with apologies to a poet who is obviously talented.

I think that I need to reread this one at a better time. I think I owe Keplinger that.

[Irina Ciurlică-Crețu · Rating 5 out of 5]

David has a mastered the law of the letter, and builds “another city” in his own, solitude-infused, symbol language.

“Her Sums


Our teacher draws a giant O, a cipher.
“What’s the distance from zero to one?”
The quiet girl, June Anne, won’t answer
when she’s summoned to the board.


Her father, this winter, fell looped
to his horse: was dragged by the force
of its physics. But it is spring and June
Anne is back at the board,


back at her terrible penmanship,
her timid voice, and she does not know
the answer, which I know is infinite.
It is infinite! I scream it in my thinking voice.


The question is hard, but it’s easy.
It does what everything here does.
It makes you shut your eyes. It dizzies
by its science—drags you upside down.”

[Tom Romig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assuming my memory isn't letting me down (perhaps a rash assumption), this fine collection is measurably more personal than the other three I've read. David Keplinger's hand is sure, his compassion is strong, his ability to delight and challenge is sharp.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5 Stars)

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and visceral

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about place, body, and families.

from The City of Birth: "But death is not the subject of our portrait. / It is the knowing you are seen, / it is the lighting of one's light, it is to take / a body, knowing you are not the body. / That's loneliness."

from Glad to Be Unhappy: "The song / is over. We are glad to be unhappy, the singer / exhorts. We are unhappy, and so glad."

[Andrew Bertaina]

Some great poems in here: Sibiliant, My Town, any poem involving the father. Congrats to David on recently winning the Rilke Prize for this collection.

I'll just plug a line from one of his poems:

Also, you must stay here, obsession being
what scorches but does not burn out.