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Spinning the Vast Fantastic
In a news cycle where horrors have become the mundane, it’s easy to forget the fantastic things: an incident where meat falls from the sky, or a chicken who lives months past its own beheading. So Spinning the Vast Fantastic zeroes in on specific wonders. From the rolling hills of Kentucky, Britton Shurley sends a love letter to the small things—a stroll through the pasture, a night at the whiskey bar—and invites us back to our own bizarre imaginations.
- GenresPoetry
42 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 15, 2021
This is a good one
April 4, 2021
Britton Shurley’s new collection, Spinning the Vast Fantastic, is a beautiful guide for spiritual sustainment in a complicated and down-heartening world. The first poem in the collection, “When I Think I’m Through with Beauty,” refers to the world as one that “gnaws us to gristle, if we / don’t work free from its teeth.”
Many of Shurley’s other poems make similar references. Shurley is not speaking specifically the restrictions and hardships suffered under a pandemic. He’s talking mostly about how hard life can be in general, and yet, these poems feel especially appropriate for our time. This isn’t because of the way Shurley sees how life can beat us down. It’s more so because of the ways Shurley finds solace. In so many of the poems, that solace is found by taking a breath and paying attention to our surroundings.
In “When I Think I’m Through with Beauty,” the beauty that surprises and pleases is a “boy who’s built / like a thick brick shit-house / spinning a whip of forsythia // just bursting with bright / yellow blossoms, while his // boom box floods the street / with velvet organ chords / of old-time Baptist gospel.” As evidenced in this passage, one of the other ways Shurley finds delight and gives delight to the reader is through sound. The language here and in every poem in the collection is stunning, filled with assonance and internal rhyme, all of which help bring alive these amazing images like this boy with his forsythia.
A recurring theme in these poems is the joy that children bring, as well as the promise for their ability to better the future, as seen in “The Red-Winged Blackbird.”
THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
Its name is a strut for the tongue.
A song that can crack the heart
like mine did when that bird lit down
on a purpled redbud’s branch
in Ron and Kelli’s field. This handful
of acres saved from an inland flood
of McMansions drowning half of Indiana.
This field where chickens roam—
Orpingtons, Wynadottes, and Rhode
Island Reds—all hunting for bugs at dusk
by a garden of onions and melons.
And as if that’s not enough, a child’s
on his way in fall. Now I know
I know nothing for certain, but this boy
will be born amidst magic, in a home
where cabbage, apple, and ginger
turn to jars of kraut so crisp
my mouth wants to shout and dance.
I hope his name holds such a tune,
that it sings like the sound of the red-
winged blackbird and can bare
a hyphen’s weight. Maybe Banjo-
Nectarine or Cannonball-Daffodil Abdon.
Either way, his life will be music;
he’ll make this cold world swoon.
One of the immense strengths of these poems is in Shurley’s ability to juxtapose the bucolic and familial against the material and trivial. With similar hope and promise, he references his own daughters, notably in “To the Harvey Weinsteins et al.” Shurley begins the poem, “Know my daughters believe in their power.” He then describes the girls performing a “spell” to bring snow and a snow day from school. “And damn, if it didn’t work,” he writes, “so that we could wake in a world / slowed and stilled for a day.” Shurley brings the end of the poem back to Weinstein—not only Weinstein but all the men he represents—warning such abusers to be careful, and to see what powers these young women have.
Spinning the Vast Fantastic is overwhelmingly an optimistic view of life. We see this in the view of young women like his daughters but also in the hope for young men like the aforementioned Banjo-Nectarine. But Shurley’s optimism is seen also by the wonders found in the world. One example is in the poem “Headless Wonder” that examines a 1945 report of a chicken who lived for 18 months without its head. Another example in the book’s title poem re-imagines an 1876 report of fresh meat falling from the sky. In “Parthenogenesis” Shurley writes, “If the ankle of the horse is holy, then so is the cow’s / cracked hoof, the sheep’s bleating tongue…” What I take away from these poems is that the world is always miraculous, even during dangerous and frightening times.
Many of Shurley’s other poems make similar references. Shurley is not speaking specifically the restrictions and hardships suffered under a pandemic. He’s talking mostly about how hard life can be in general, and yet, these poems feel especially appropriate for our time. This isn’t because of the way Shurley sees how life can beat us down. It’s more so because of the ways Shurley finds solace. In so many of the poems, that solace is found by taking a breath and paying attention to our surroundings.
In “When I Think I’m Through with Beauty,” the beauty that surprises and pleases is a “boy who’s built / like a thick brick shit-house / spinning a whip of forsythia // just bursting with bright / yellow blossoms, while his // boom box floods the street / with velvet organ chords / of old-time Baptist gospel.” As evidenced in this passage, one of the other ways Shurley finds delight and gives delight to the reader is through sound. The language here and in every poem in the collection is stunning, filled with assonance and internal rhyme, all of which help bring alive these amazing images like this boy with his forsythia.
A recurring theme in these poems is the joy that children bring, as well as the promise for their ability to better the future, as seen in “The Red-Winged Blackbird.”
THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD
Its name is a strut for the tongue.
A song that can crack the heart
like mine did when that bird lit down
on a purpled redbud’s branch
in Ron and Kelli’s field. This handful
of acres saved from an inland flood
of McMansions drowning half of Indiana.
This field where chickens roam—
Orpingtons, Wynadottes, and Rhode
Island Reds—all hunting for bugs at dusk
by a garden of onions and melons.
And as if that’s not enough, a child’s
on his way in fall. Now I know
I know nothing for certain, but this boy
will be born amidst magic, in a home
where cabbage, apple, and ginger
turn to jars of kraut so crisp
my mouth wants to shout and dance.
I hope his name holds such a tune,
that it sings like the sound of the red-
winged blackbird and can bare
a hyphen’s weight. Maybe Banjo-
Nectarine or Cannonball-Daffodil Abdon.
Either way, his life will be music;
he’ll make this cold world swoon.
One of the immense strengths of these poems is in Shurley’s ability to juxtapose the bucolic and familial against the material and trivial. With similar hope and promise, he references his own daughters, notably in “To the Harvey Weinsteins et al.” Shurley begins the poem, “Know my daughters believe in their power.” He then describes the girls performing a “spell” to bring snow and a snow day from school. “And damn, if it didn’t work,” he writes, “so that we could wake in a world / slowed and stilled for a day.” Shurley brings the end of the poem back to Weinstein—not only Weinstein but all the men he represents—warning such abusers to be careful, and to see what powers these young women have.
Spinning the Vast Fantastic is overwhelmingly an optimistic view of life. We see this in the view of young women like his daughters but also in the hope for young men like the aforementioned Banjo-Nectarine. But Shurley’s optimism is seen also by the wonders found in the world. One example is in the poem “Headless Wonder” that examines a 1945 report of a chicken who lived for 18 months without its head. Another example in the book’s title poem re-imagines an 1876 report of fresh meat falling from the sky. In “Parthenogenesis” Shurley writes, “If the ankle of the horse is holy, then so is the cow’s / cracked hoof, the sheep’s bleating tongue…” What I take away from these poems is that the world is always miraculous, even during dangerous and frightening times.
August 23, 2022
When I was a fellow at a writing conference in the summer of 2021, I came home with a list of books to read. Some of them were craft-related, some of them obliquely craft-related, and some of them were written by authors who read out at the conference and who I wanted to both read more of and support. I have finally gotten around to one of the books: Spinning the Vast Fantastic by Britton Shurley. (I actually acquired Open Page by Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and Universal Love by Alexander Weinstein first, but they are in queue.) When Spinning came in the mail, however, I was like yeah, let’s just knock this one out. Even though it’s a book of poetry (technically a “chapbook,” but who’s paying attention to that?), I was surprised at how darn thin the thing is. But how can you hate it when it gives you such a sense of accomplishment in just 38 pages? Read book—check!
Also hard to be mad at a book published at a local press (even though Shurley is not local (though he is regional) to me). Bull City Press (sort of like half-nonprofit, actually) published it and I live in the Bull City. That’s Durham, NC, to all you lost people. Shurley himself lives in Peducah, Kentucky (where my Grandma June and Aunt Sharon are from) and is a professor. He also must be a farmer or at least an amateur farmer, but we’ll get to that in a second.
I already knew that I like Shurley’s poetry so I was not surprised when I liked Spinning the Vast Fantastic. I starred (meaning highest marks for me) about a third of the poems and dotted (still good marks) another third. Not that the last third are bad, they’re just not so much my jam. The whole chapbook is beautifully done, well written, special. It also speaks to me. I like the way it is curated, as well. There is a slow ebbing out and then back in, from the weary world to a rural home life. There are lots of mentions of girls and boys despite occasional startling adultness (mostly in poignant contrasting between what we might normally see as crass or private and the actual way of nature and the world, even beauty). It ends up telling a story (with no plot; that’s not what I mean) about a father and husband who’s internal life is rich as it ruminates on the minutiae and context of exactly what presents itself to him: rural life, gardening, raising children, the news, nature at large, family, death, modern life down a long tunnel, and, maybe most importantly for the message, Coke can sweat and hose spray in the sun.
The poetry itself is clear, concise, beautiful, full of imagery, rhythm, and of a contemporary style. It doesn’t take a lot of work to understand what Shurley is saying and his poetry mostly lacks that poetic snobbery and tight-fisted poeticizing. It is poetry for all of us, but it should be ruminated on. For me, I wanted to hang out with Shurley and be one of the friends that pop up in his poems, standing over a grill and thinking they’re just chatting when they’re actually listening to a gentle sage. It all felt special to me, like this chapbook is a departure from that narrow, sing-song nonsense we often hear at poetry readings, but it did remind me of the short stories and essays of a friend-writer, Theresa Dowell Blackinton, who writes tilting from a desk in her small-city home about her daughter’s Barbie dolls and—like Shurley himself—distressing news from far shores she and he can do nothing about but feel they must somehow frame for the next generation. Heck, he even reminds me of me: daring to write from a not completely jaded position. So maybe the innovation is in the rural setting, with the age-old obsession with moons, fruit, and dirt. It is the juxtaposition of awe and tenderness with a world gone mad that I really loved.
If you read poetry at all, I think you will like this book. It has all the thrills of a great, little amalgamation of poetry: gasping, breath-intaking, sighing, from surprises, beauty, and meaning.
My favorite poems from the collection (some of them available online from journals in which they were published) are:
“When I Think I’m Through with Beauty”
“Blessing”
“To The Harvey Weinsteins et al.”
“Spinning the Vast Fantastic”
“To Francisco Starks, Who Stole My Car from My Driveway, Late One Saturday Night”
“Against the Pawning of Steel Guitars”
“Sharing a Fifth of Bourbon with a Friend Who Fears What Follows”
QUOTES
“…our lives to be burned with abandon” (p10).
“So we stared at that ripe / peach moon. Watched it hide / behind the hills, shine through stands of pine, / then rest in the palm of the sky” (p23).
“Learning there’s one taste to iron, / little difference in soil and blood” (p31).
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
Also hard to be mad at a book published at a local press (even though Shurley is not local (though he is regional) to me). Bull City Press (sort of like half-nonprofit, actually) published it and I live in the Bull City. That’s Durham, NC, to all you lost people. Shurley himself lives in Peducah, Kentucky (where my Grandma June and Aunt Sharon are from) and is a professor. He also must be a farmer or at least an amateur farmer, but we’ll get to that in a second.
I already knew that I like Shurley’s poetry so I was not surprised when I liked Spinning the Vast Fantastic. I starred (meaning highest marks for me) about a third of the poems and dotted (still good marks) another third. Not that the last third are bad, they’re just not so much my jam. The whole chapbook is beautifully done, well written, special. It also speaks to me. I like the way it is curated, as well. There is a slow ebbing out and then back in, from the weary world to a rural home life. There are lots of mentions of girls and boys despite occasional startling adultness (mostly in poignant contrasting between what we might normally see as crass or private and the actual way of nature and the world, even beauty). It ends up telling a story (with no plot; that’s not what I mean) about a father and husband who’s internal life is rich as it ruminates on the minutiae and context of exactly what presents itself to him: rural life, gardening, raising children, the news, nature at large, family, death, modern life down a long tunnel, and, maybe most importantly for the message, Coke can sweat and hose spray in the sun.
The poetry itself is clear, concise, beautiful, full of imagery, rhythm, and of a contemporary style. It doesn’t take a lot of work to understand what Shurley is saying and his poetry mostly lacks that poetic snobbery and tight-fisted poeticizing. It is poetry for all of us, but it should be ruminated on. For me, I wanted to hang out with Shurley and be one of the friends that pop up in his poems, standing over a grill and thinking they’re just chatting when they’re actually listening to a gentle sage. It all felt special to me, like this chapbook is a departure from that narrow, sing-song nonsense we often hear at poetry readings, but it did remind me of the short stories and essays of a friend-writer, Theresa Dowell Blackinton, who writes tilting from a desk in her small-city home about her daughter’s Barbie dolls and—like Shurley himself—distressing news from far shores she and he can do nothing about but feel they must somehow frame for the next generation. Heck, he even reminds me of me: daring to write from a not completely jaded position. So maybe the innovation is in the rural setting, with the age-old obsession with moons, fruit, and dirt. It is the juxtaposition of awe and tenderness with a world gone mad that I really loved.
If you read poetry at all, I think you will like this book. It has all the thrills of a great, little amalgamation of poetry: gasping, breath-intaking, sighing, from surprises, beauty, and meaning.
My favorite poems from the collection (some of them available online from journals in which they were published) are:
“When I Think I’m Through with Beauty”
“Blessing”
“To The Harvey Weinsteins et al.”
“Spinning the Vast Fantastic”
“To Francisco Starks, Who Stole My Car from My Driveway, Late One Saturday Night”
“Against the Pawning of Steel Guitars”
“Sharing a Fifth of Bourbon with a Friend Who Fears What Follows”
QUOTES
“…our lives to be burned with abandon” (p10).
“So we stared at that ripe / peach moon. Watched it hide / behind the hills, shine through stands of pine, / then rest in the palm of the sky” (p23).
“Learning there’s one taste to iron, / little difference in soil and blood” (p31).
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
October 30, 2023
Britton Shurley’s Spinning the Vast Fantastic (Bull City Press, 2021) is a celebration of the world’s generosity in spite of its sorrows. Whether the joy be that of “a West Kentucky field/ busting with dusky blueberries”, a “feast of homegrown tubers” or an astounding rain of fresh venison from a clear blue sky (as in the collection’s titular poem), Shurley argues that the best way to move through a world full of war, death, and loss is to recognize this hurt alongside the world’s myriad gifts. This sentiment is captured in the collection’s opening poem, “When I Think I’m Through With Beauty”, which establishes the importance of not being beholden to the world’s hardness through showing a boy “Floating free from concrete/ and asphalt, from this world/ that gnaws us to gristle, if we/ don’t work free from its teeth.”
Although Shurley asserts the importance of freeing oneself from the world’s teeth, he revels in the natural world, singing praise to the landscape of his home: Western Kentucky. And sing he does! In “Hymn to 6th and Whatever”, “Hymn to the Bounty”, “Hymn to the Moon and Peaches”, and “Hallelujah” Shurley highlights small joys in all their grandeur: the music of spoons “like an old-time/ tent revival”, a field laden with irresistible blueberries in midsummer, eating a peach as “its juice drips sweet down your chin, and a drive on the Bluegrass Parkway, “This trick of sunlight and water,/ from fog or low -clouds/ that slink these mountains’ ribs/ turning green to shades of blue.”
Shurley introduces readers not only to his home, his garden, the land, but to a cast of characters including his daughters, wife, uncle, friends, and the man who stole his car. Through these relationships, Shurley furthers the theme of generosity and gratitude. “Sanding” ruminates on the imperfections of the world, and the importance of moving through an imperfect world with intention: “Though I know that nothing’s perfect/ … I also/ I’m here- on the front porch/ in August at dusk, sanding seven/ kitchen cabinets …” Similarly, “To Francisco Starks, Who Stole My Car from My Driveway, Late One Saturday Night” approaches what might be a negative experience, car theft, with the intention of peace and generosity that is so abundant in this collection. The speaker wishes the thief well: “I like to think you desperately needed it”, “I hope the smell of hay and compost,/ … for the garden my family was planting,/ somehow called through the night like a song.”
The collection moves through different places, seasons and times, but starts and ends in a similar place, illustrating life’s cyclical nature. The opening poem “When I Think I’m Through With Beauty”, illustrates a character transforming into a bird and becoming free of the world, while the final poem “Note to My Wife in Case I Should Die before Her”, the speaker returns to the earth: “Fold my ashes, by hand, in the garden/ so our girls can see each autumn/ as proof this world spins on.” And sure, the world spins on, full of danger and hurt and sorrow, but full also of joy, backyards, gardens, family and friendship! And isn’t it so wonderful? In “Sharing a Fifth of Bourbon With a Friend Who Fears What Follows”, Shurley writes:
… But brother, look hard at this banquet:
our table filled with love and plenty.
We’ve got wives and daughters and chickens ,
turnips and kale from the garden.
We’ve got booze and backyards
and water. Who are we to beg for more?
Although Shurley asserts the importance of freeing oneself from the world’s teeth, he revels in the natural world, singing praise to the landscape of his home: Western Kentucky. And sing he does! In “Hymn to 6th and Whatever”, “Hymn to the Bounty”, “Hymn to the Moon and Peaches”, and “Hallelujah” Shurley highlights small joys in all their grandeur: the music of spoons “like an old-time/ tent revival”, a field laden with irresistible blueberries in midsummer, eating a peach as “its juice drips sweet down your chin, and a drive on the Bluegrass Parkway, “This trick of sunlight and water,/ from fog or low -clouds/ that slink these mountains’ ribs/ turning green to shades of blue.”
Shurley introduces readers not only to his home, his garden, the land, but to a cast of characters including his daughters, wife, uncle, friends, and the man who stole his car. Through these relationships, Shurley furthers the theme of generosity and gratitude. “Sanding” ruminates on the imperfections of the world, and the importance of moving through an imperfect world with intention: “Though I know that nothing’s perfect/ … I also/ I’m here- on the front porch/ in August at dusk, sanding seven/ kitchen cabinets …” Similarly, “To Francisco Starks, Who Stole My Car from My Driveway, Late One Saturday Night” approaches what might be a negative experience, car theft, with the intention of peace and generosity that is so abundant in this collection. The speaker wishes the thief well: “I like to think you desperately needed it”, “I hope the smell of hay and compost,/ … for the garden my family was planting,/ somehow called through the night like a song.”
The collection moves through different places, seasons and times, but starts and ends in a similar place, illustrating life’s cyclical nature. The opening poem “When I Think I’m Through With Beauty”, illustrates a character transforming into a bird and becoming free of the world, while the final poem “Note to My Wife in Case I Should Die before Her”, the speaker returns to the earth: “Fold my ashes, by hand, in the garden/ so our girls can see each autumn/ as proof this world spins on.” And sure, the world spins on, full of danger and hurt and sorrow, but full also of joy, backyards, gardens, family and friendship! And isn’t it so wonderful? In “Sharing a Fifth of Bourbon With a Friend Who Fears What Follows”, Shurley writes:
… But brother, look hard at this banquet:
our table filled with love and plenty.
We’ve got wives and daughters and chickens ,
turnips and kale from the garden.
We’ve got booze and backyards
and water. Who are we to beg for more?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 5, 2021
Britton Shurley's Spinning the Vast Fantastic is a wildly charming, soul-nourishing collection. The poems are accessible and smart, loving and insightful. These poems recognize the privilege and blessing of a loving family, of a life centered in love and good food and porch-sits, while also realizing that that such a life isn't accessible to everyone. There's a great big heart at the center of each poem, a hammock of a heart, and you can swing in it if you want.
March 31, 2021
Fave poem: the one about his daughters having magic powers and calling down lightning to fuck up abusers
Lots of great gardening and wildlife imagery.
Lots of great gardening and wildlife imagery.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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