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Obscure Signs of Progress
Howie Good a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Dark Specks in a Blue Sky from Another New Calligraphy (#ANC030 Summer/Fall 2015).
He is also the author of numerous chapbooks, including Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing, The Devil’s Fuzzy Slippers from Flutter Press and Personal Myths from Writing Knights Press. He has two other chapbooks available: Fog Area from Dog on a Chain Press and The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press.
"How to be happy" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Origami Poems Project, December 2013
He is also the author of numerous chapbooks, including Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing, The Devil’s Fuzzy Slippers from Flutter Press and Personal Myths from Writing Knights Press. He has two other chapbooks available: Fog Area from Dog on a Chain Press and The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press.
"How to be happy" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Origami Poems Project, December 2013
6 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 1, 2022
“…the sky erupting in abrupt reds and purples like God’s own fiery flesh…”
I found my way to this promising collection of Origami chapbooks through greatly enjoying two other collections Good had released as free eBooks through Red Ceilings Press, "Inspired Remnants" and "Pink Fire”, both of which I enjoyed immensely, hence was thrilled to discover this poet had some microchaps available through this consistently excellent poetry project.
If you are unfamiliar with Origami, they release six-piece one page collections of micro poems which can be folded into a distinctive shape in the beloved Western tradition. Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, Martin Burke and many other talented voices have ambitiously explored this deceptively challenging medium, found great success in the brevity and focus it affords poets, leaving no room for superfluity and requiring selections and the grouping as a whole be boiled down to the barest minimalist essentials.
‘Come Evening’ is Good’s fourth of five Origami micro chapbooks he would eventually release, beginning after he’d delivered the second Red Ceilings collection Pink Fire and extending over the next five years. This collection comes on the heels, is the first following the Pushcart Prize nomination of a poem from ‘Obscure Signs of Progress’ in 2013 excitingly; so if you enjoy Howie’s writing here you will want to be sure to snag that too!
Good is a journalism prof at SUNY university, and like many other of the best writers of very short, economical poetry with a formal reporting background (Ernest Hemingway, Charlotte Digregorio) his intuitive grasp of eliminating all excess and superfluidity to craft the most punchy, hard-boiled prose is as striking and appreciable here as in earlier collections.
With an unusually mixed media and lo-fi cover for Origami, this collection begins with a hand drawn image of a man and women over smeared handwritten pages of a notebook, split down the middle by a spiral ring. Their images are ink-washed, faded, have a watercolor quality o them. The content of the poems appears to capture these characters’ travails, if obliquely. Their narrative is framed against a fantastic, science fiction, apocalyptic landscape to gripping effect. A love story in dystopia makes for a rare treat, one is reminded of classic flights such as Brazil or Dark City. Quite exciting to see Howie’s choice of subject and form evolving, where he choices to join his narrative lens towards. This makes for some of the most hard-hitting and pointed micro poems of his yet. There is a bit of Baudelaire in Good’s icons and embodiments, which never fail to startle or provoke intense reflection. This collection also at times represents the poet at both his grimmest and most technologically focused. The piece titled “Mirror in the Mirror” perhaps best telegraphs that structural interest, turn toward postmodern interests and questions about his medium itself, its purpose and inner workings. Also the usual healthy portions of lunacy and confusion. Occasionally suggestive of Inger Christensen at her best. Reminiscent of the book of revelations, more so than usual even. A jolly good micro chapbook once again!
“An angel descended uninvited via a system of ropes and pulleys…”
I found my way to this promising collection of Origami chapbooks through greatly enjoying two other collections Good had released as free eBooks through Red Ceilings Press, "Inspired Remnants" and "Pink Fire”, both of which I enjoyed immensely, hence was thrilled to discover this poet had some microchaps available through this consistently excellent poetry project.
If you are unfamiliar with Origami, they release six-piece one page collections of micro poems which can be folded into a distinctive shape in the beloved Western tradition. Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, Martin Burke and many other talented voices have ambitiously explored this deceptively challenging medium, found great success in the brevity and focus it affords poets, leaving no room for superfluity and requiring selections and the grouping as a whole be boiled down to the barest minimalist essentials.
‘Come Evening’ is Good’s fourth of five Origami micro chapbooks he would eventually release, beginning after he’d delivered the second Red Ceilings collection Pink Fire and extending over the next five years. This collection comes on the heels, is the first following the Pushcart Prize nomination of a poem from ‘Obscure Signs of Progress’ in 2013 excitingly; so if you enjoy Howie’s writing here you will want to be sure to snag that too!
Good is a journalism prof at SUNY university, and like many other of the best writers of very short, economical poetry with a formal reporting background (Ernest Hemingway, Charlotte Digregorio) his intuitive grasp of eliminating all excess and superfluidity to craft the most punchy, hard-boiled prose is as striking and appreciable here as in earlier collections.
With an unusually mixed media and lo-fi cover for Origami, this collection begins with a hand drawn image of a man and women over smeared handwritten pages of a notebook, split down the middle by a spiral ring. Their images are ink-washed, faded, have a watercolor quality o them. The content of the poems appears to capture these characters’ travails, if obliquely. Their narrative is framed against a fantastic, science fiction, apocalyptic landscape to gripping effect. A love story in dystopia makes for a rare treat, one is reminded of classic flights such as Brazil or Dark City. Quite exciting to see Howie’s choice of subject and form evolving, where he choices to join his narrative lens towards. This makes for some of the most hard-hitting and pointed micro poems of his yet. There is a bit of Baudelaire in Good’s icons and embodiments, which never fail to startle or provoke intense reflection. This collection also at times represents the poet at both his grimmest and most technologically focused. The piece titled “Mirror in the Mirror” perhaps best telegraphs that structural interest, turn toward postmodern interests and questions about his medium itself, its purpose and inner workings. Also the usual healthy portions of lunacy and confusion. Occasionally suggestive of Inger Christensen at her best. Reminiscent of the book of revelations, more so than usual even. A jolly good micro chapbook once again!
“An angel descended uninvited via a system of ropes and pulleys…”
Displaying 1 of 1 review