Ovid at Fifteen

by Christopher Bursk

Christopher Bursk’s latest collection is not just profoundly honest; it is profoundly brave. These astonishing poems explore the space between sensuality, sexuality, and love―a landscape in which flawed human beings give birth to the flawed human beings who will one day take care of them, each generation screwing up even as it adds to the universal fund of beauty and compassion. Above all,Ovid at Fifteen reminds us what it means to feel the wonder of life too keenly―to “want to throw yourself / off the cliff, plunge / into the very heart of color.” If Bursk’s ordinary yet mythic heroes hold back, they do so not out of cowardice but because they remember what happened to Icarus. And so they watch, and dream, and feel, and thus “make a living / out of aching . . .” The greatness of this book lies in its immortalizing that ache, that delicious pain.

Genres: Poetry, Queer

83 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2003

Reviews

[mar ♡]

Ganymede? Hyacinth?
how does a boy explain
to his teammates
he longs to be so dazzling
a god couldn't resist him?
how does he tell his coach
he'd like to be ethereal,
a gold-fringed bird
with no obligations
except to wake the world?

[l]

some really strong poems in part 1.

[H]

i’ve started reading books of poetry twice through every time i read them. the first time, to understand the broad scope of the thing; the second, to focus on details and how they fit within that scope.

the third section, for me, does not quite fit with the rest of the book. it feels like a stark change, and though it does return to some of the concerns laid out in the first two parts, feels very much like it has its own engine. a bit distracting. the fourth section marks a fuller return, but even still has a few poems at whose inclusion i wondered.

however. the poems that work really work. there’s a largeness and wrongness to desire that i find infinitely compelling, and the handing of myth is so deft. the myth girlies and siken girlies should pick this one up. hoping to get my hands on a copy of my own soon, for copious underlining.

[Laren]

beautiful myth poems