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Days of Summer Gone
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 1, 2020
How can someone from half way across the world and growing up in a completely different culture assemble imagery in such a way that you understand completely what is being said? You have felt the same way and marvel at how they move you with their melancholy. Yet others from closer to home merely string together confusing and contrary words on a page. You know there is some point somewhere in the lines you are reading but you can’t understand what is being said. The poem for you is either unintelligible or has no meaning to your own life. (It goes without saying that I am not referring to any of the poets I have reviewed at GR but others whose work I have dipped into, a poem at a time).
But isn’t that the magic of poetry, to find a single voice that speaks for you? Joe Bolton in Days of Summer Gone is that poet for me. Sadly he died from suicide thirty years ago but I find every single poem in this collection moving. He makes me feel that I understand what he is writing about and his descriptions of landscape are so evocative that I can only wonder what he could have gone on to write had he lived.
The first poem in the collection is such a story in a poem that you are dragged into, wondering what other stories he is going to tell. In “Party” one of the many women who feature in his poetry, is there with him, whilst our narrator contemplates the party in the bottom flat of his apartment building.
One of my favourite poems is poem III “The Woman With the Blue Bandana” in “American Variations” which won the 1987 Guy Owen Prize. Here it is in its entirety:
“Just across the river from Indiana
Are a farm and a woman I once loved.
I wanted to go West, and the woman waved
Goodbye to me, from a field, with a blue bandana.
I made it as far as Texarkana,
Where, lonely every night, I remembered
How gold the fields of the farm got in September,
And how the woman let her hair loose from the blue bandana.
Just across the river from Indiana,
That farm’s fields have gone fallow since,
And the woman lies unmoving, unmoved, who once
Wiped clean the white bed of our love with her blue bandana.
Here also is V “At Equinox”
Far from the sea, a field
Of flowers makes a sort of sea;
And here in the city, far from fields,
The sky makes a field as blue as sea.
And, too, from time to time, a man
And a woman, agreeing, lie curled
To make what little love they can
In this, their one and only world.”
In virtually every single poem their are lines to fall in love with:
..................................................“Desire:
That sweet song the body sings to itself,
Or under the best of circumstances
The song two bodies sing to each other.”
“And the bickering cries of the gathering starlings
Rise in praise of the falling dark.”
In many of the poems it is hard not to miss the underlying sadness that was Joe Bolton’s life. The past seems to have had such a hold on him. It was a much better place to be; the present was just disappointment. That of course the inevitable happened is no real surprise to the reader of these poems. Sometime in early 1990 he handed in his last collection of poetry, completing his Master of Fine Arts degree and soon after shot himself.
His nostalgia for the past is palpable in “Speaking of the South: 1961” and I am in total agreement that we really have lost something in the name of progress.
Here are the opening lines:
“John F. Kennedy is alive and loved, and the moon remains
Somewhat of a mystery, and suburbs and shopping malls
Are mainly somebody’s bad ideas.....
Here is another opening line that draws the reader in:
“And the dead-
What time are they due back?”
And the prophetic:
“The clock I can never think to wind
Ticks down like a bomb.”
So many of these poems are elegies and beautifully written - a recurring dream of his father’s, memories of Cadiz, Kentucky, a mediation (perhaps a family story) Symsonia, Kentucky 1914. Another favourite poem is “Study” of a woman remembering someone she loved. In the poem Bolton encapsulates what she has lost with the landscape surrounding her.
“She’d go there now, but the day is late.
It’s too far, that one block down to the river,
Where it must still be summer, even now.”
A wonderful, heartbreaking collection. Highly recommended.
But isn’t that the magic of poetry, to find a single voice that speaks for you? Joe Bolton in Days of Summer Gone is that poet for me. Sadly he died from suicide thirty years ago but I find every single poem in this collection moving. He makes me feel that I understand what he is writing about and his descriptions of landscape are so evocative that I can only wonder what he could have gone on to write had he lived.
The first poem in the collection is such a story in a poem that you are dragged into, wondering what other stories he is going to tell. In “Party” one of the many women who feature in his poetry, is there with him, whilst our narrator contemplates the party in the bottom flat of his apartment building.
One of my favourite poems is poem III “The Woman With the Blue Bandana” in “American Variations” which won the 1987 Guy Owen Prize. Here it is in its entirety:
“Just across the river from Indiana
Are a farm and a woman I once loved.
I wanted to go West, and the woman waved
Goodbye to me, from a field, with a blue bandana.
I made it as far as Texarkana,
Where, lonely every night, I remembered
How gold the fields of the farm got in September,
And how the woman let her hair loose from the blue bandana.
Just across the river from Indiana,
That farm’s fields have gone fallow since,
And the woman lies unmoving, unmoved, who once
Wiped clean the white bed of our love with her blue bandana.
Here also is V “At Equinox”
Far from the sea, a field
Of flowers makes a sort of sea;
And here in the city, far from fields,
The sky makes a field as blue as sea.
And, too, from time to time, a man
And a woman, agreeing, lie curled
To make what little love they can
In this, their one and only world.”
In virtually every single poem their are lines to fall in love with:
..................................................“Desire:
That sweet song the body sings to itself,
Or under the best of circumstances
The song two bodies sing to each other.”
“And the bickering cries of the gathering starlings
Rise in praise of the falling dark.”
In many of the poems it is hard not to miss the underlying sadness that was Joe Bolton’s life. The past seems to have had such a hold on him. It was a much better place to be; the present was just disappointment. That of course the inevitable happened is no real surprise to the reader of these poems. Sometime in early 1990 he handed in his last collection of poetry, completing his Master of Fine Arts degree and soon after shot himself.
His nostalgia for the past is palpable in “Speaking of the South: 1961” and I am in total agreement that we really have lost something in the name of progress.
Here are the opening lines:
“John F. Kennedy is alive and loved, and the moon remains
Somewhat of a mystery, and suburbs and shopping malls
Are mainly somebody’s bad ideas.....
Here is another opening line that draws the reader in:
“And the dead-
What time are they due back?”
And the prophetic:
“The clock I can never think to wind
Ticks down like a bomb.”
So many of these poems are elegies and beautifully written - a recurring dream of his father’s, memories of Cadiz, Kentucky, a mediation (perhaps a family story) Symsonia, Kentucky 1914. Another favourite poem is “Study” of a woman remembering someone she loved. In the poem Bolton encapsulates what she has lost with the landscape surrounding her.
“She’d go there now, but the day is late.
It’s too far, that one block down to the river,
Where it must still be summer, even now.”
A wonderful, heartbreaking collection. Highly recommended.
October 7, 2007
This is the single best book of poems by a young author I have ever read. Here, I'll let the work speak for itself:
II. Song to Be Spoken, Not Sung
Say snow drifting through some small town at dusk,
And listen to the syllables die in your bare room
Like snow drifting through some small town at dusk.
Say Fall, rain as the rain falls down on you
And know it would have fallen anyway.
Say this world and let it be enough, for once.
Say the drunk dancing in the middle of the intersection
At three in the morning did not have to go one
Turning green, then yellow, then red, then green again.
Say you didn't have to feel the one you love
Grow distant in the parentheses of your arms.
Say this life and let it be enough, for once.
_______
That's a section of Bolton's longer poem, "American Variations" which won numerous national awards.
I was given this book as part of a Master's Thesis--it was in manuscript from the first time I read it. It had a deep impact on me. Sadly, I also learned that just after Joe Bolton turned in his master's thesis, he fatally shot himself. It's a great loss. There's no telling exactly how great this poet would have become. His attention to meter and to the line were so evolved even when he was 28. As much as I wonder what could have been, what was, with this author, is, to me, some of the very best.
II. Song to Be Spoken, Not Sung
Say snow drifting through some small town at dusk,
And listen to the syllables die in your bare room
Like snow drifting through some small town at dusk.
Say Fall, rain as the rain falls down on you
And know it would have fallen anyway.
Say this world and let it be enough, for once.
Say the drunk dancing in the middle of the intersection
At three in the morning did not have to go one
Turning green, then yellow, then red, then green again.
Say you didn't have to feel the one you love
Grow distant in the parentheses of your arms.
Say this life and let it be enough, for once.
_______
That's a section of Bolton's longer poem, "American Variations" which won numerous national awards.
I was given this book as part of a Master's Thesis--it was in manuscript from the first time I read it. It had a deep impact on me. Sadly, I also learned that just after Joe Bolton turned in his master's thesis, he fatally shot himself. It's a great loss. There's no telling exactly how great this poet would have become. His attention to meter and to the line were so evolved even when he was 28. As much as I wonder what could have been, what was, with this author, is, to me, some of the very best.
June 13, 2021
It took me a long time to actually finishing this but I will blame school for that. I enjoyed the poems and this was my first poetry book that I read. I intend to read more since I enjoyed reading this one. I realized I like to take my time with poetry and read it off and on. The sad poems were my favorites because I felt that had more emotion than his other ones. This book just made me realize that I want to read more poetry and find my favorite poets to read more from.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews