Kings of the F**king Sea

"The sun rose out of the road, burning it gold until it passed right through me" is the first aside/prologue to Dan Boehl's brilliant collection of poems. When I was in the Scouts, one summer I spent the week at camp getting my Sailing merit badge. My favorite part about getting it, other then being out on the water, tying knots and turtle diving(flipping the ship completely over in the middle of the lake and having to re-flip it, which was a lot more fun than it sounds) was the rocking sensation of being on a ship, as I lay in my cot late at night. I went to bed usually several hours after I was out of the water, as we spent hours playing capture the flag and joking around the campfire, but the rocking sensation stayed with me. I loved that feeling, and I never got sea sick. It was like I was still out on the lake. I experienced that same feeling after reading Kings of the F**king Sea; it stayed with me. Almost every page had me chanting, yes, f**king, yes. I'll list some favorite lines, but I have to cut myself off, or I'll just end up typing 3/4s of the book.

"Remember how smoke/
issued from the stacks/ like the dreams of factories/
when factories were the dreams of cities/ and cities were the dreams/ of our immigrant parents?

Kotex (Romanov): The whole poem is brilliant. The jump in time, the confusion, the knot in your stomach that you know means doom is swimming below, and you are the stupid naked swimmer in the ocean at midnight, during feeding time.

[The Asides were amazing!] [Here's one: Gitau's mother's knotty fingers weaving the bark baskets, and how it can't be seen where the fingers begin and the basket begins.]

Conference (Regatta) "I mean, the sea is how/ we find our place in the world/ but it's also our place."
I feel, deep down, that this is talk of real men at sea, or I like to imagine it to be.

[The Hunt for Pink October (yes, not the greatest name for a fictional ship)] ["I carry you always in my heart like a bundle of dogwood blooms, their pink springs eternal like the river of immigrants who suffer because of your greed." A letter from our beloved captain to the enemy captain.]

The LE MISE ET LES MAL-HEURS DE LA GUERRE section

This section reminded me of Leonard Cohen's The Partisan, and not just because Cohen sings in French for part of the song. Both are haunting:

Cohen: There were three of us this morning/ I'm the only one this evening/
but I must go on/ the frontiers are my prison

Boehl: (The Hangman's Tree) "1000/ people hang from one tree. There/ is this part I never told you./ Half of those people used to be my/ neighbors./ The other half were my friends."

The meta-ness. A injured sailor (in "The Hospital) writes in his journal: badly wounded in/ arm has suffered/ much and some peaches/ don't forget {lines from Whitman's Civil War journals} and bureaucracy at it's best (Distribution of Medals): "..the government program designed to bolster the proliferation of arts, a program that teaches the amputees returning home to write odes to their missing limbs."

The last section gets really Spider Man 3-y, kind of so much that you want to watch Spiderman 3 again. Which I strangely loved.

Pickup (Gaza): "Sell your cleverness/ and buy bewilderment."

[Ballad of the Seven Passages]  "Nobody wins. Some just lose more beautifully." Sounds like baseball advice.

I loved the final lines: "One day/ when I return/ I hope to find a manuscript/ on the coffee table/ written by someone else./ I'll take it out with me/ and let the pages/ topple in the wind."

 I was at the Shedd for a free admission day  last week. It's amazing to be be in the darkness and see all the colors, that don't even seem like colors. My photos don't do justice.

Looking in the tanks, I was reminded of a friend who told me he would always would hold his breath when watching a film or television and character went underwater. I always thought that was the goofiest thing I ever heard. Still do.

under & out