We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Samuel Amadon, Like a Sea, University of Iowa Press, $17
As its epigraph reveals, this first collection takes its title from a line by Wallace Stevens—“The river that flows nowhere, like a sea”—a phrase that condenses the ruminations on perception, identity, and language that run through the book. Amadon’s genius lies in his disarming approach. He pivots on double entendres, shifts unpredictably, volunteers his flaws: “I run my hand through my hair, more of my hair / comes with my hand whether or not that is a new / thought is almost how I am pleased to think so.” Equipped with simple diction and fidgety syntax, Amadon presents a world refracted through distracted consciousness, recalling Wittgenstein’s precept that “Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.” Paradoxically, Amadon achieves such showing through telling. It’s a polyvocal, colloquial poetics, and the collection runs alternately casual, wry, sharp, tender, metaphysical: “a window I will open now // that it’s safe to say this has been a full morning / of staring through the half-reflection of my face // figuring out how it would sound / to understand every word you were saying.” The reader shares the half-reflection, the sound, and finds herself parsing her own notions of speaker, poet, and reader. Amadon’s assertions and revisions evoke Elizabeth Bishop’s injunction “to portray . . . not a thought, but a mind thinking.” Amadon’s chorus of voices progresses further, invoking Berryman’s Henry in the multivalent Dream Songs as they resist cohesion, impelling us to interpret their enjambed thoughts alongside our own.
Marina Read Weiss is Poetry Editor at Explosion-Proof.
Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.
Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.
“Never do unto me what your uncle has done to us.” A family member’s disappearance leads to personal revelations.
Critics say human rights discourse blunts social transformation. It doesn’t have to.
“My mother has not slept for seven days.” A Taiwanese woman’s brother avoids calling their mother, setting off an insomniac unraveling.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission