To Keep Love Blurry
2/5
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About this ebook
• As poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle, Craig Morgan Teicher is well-known and respected in the poetry community.
• Poems from the collection have appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, The Nation, Boston Review, and in other prestigious journals.
• Craig's wife Brenda Shaughnessy's new book, Our Andromeda, will be published by Copper Canyon Press the same month as To Keep Love Blurry. The couple is planning joint readings and promotion in NYC and elsewhere. BOA and Copper Canyon are in talks about other joint promotions.
• To Keep Love Blurry will carry blurbs from D.A. Powell, Dana Levin, and, possibly, Frank Bidart.
Craig Morgan Teicher
Craig Morgan Teicher is the author of four books of poems: Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey (BOA, 2021); The Trembling Answers (BOA, 2017), which won the 2015 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; To Keep Love Blurry (BOA, 2012); and Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems (CLP, 2007), winner of the 2007 Colorado Prize for Poetry. He also wrote Cradle Book: Stories and Fables (BOA, 2010) and the chapbook Ambivalence and Other Conundrums (Omnidawn, 2014). His first collection of essays, We Begin in Gladness, was published by Graywolf in November, 2018. Teicher edited Once and For All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz (New Directions, 2016) and serves as a poetry editor for The Literary Review. He writes about books for many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The LA Times, and NPR. He worked for many years at Publishers Weekly and is now Digital Director of The Paris Review. He is a 2021 recipient of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and children.
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Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCradle Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWelcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for To Keep Love Blurry
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The first and last poem in Craig Morgan Teicher's "To Keep Love Blurry" redeem the book and earn it two stars instead of one. The rest of the poems largely consist of what I'd call trite thoughts put to paper seemingly unedited. The majority of the book deals with the death of a mother, a rocky marriage, and a loss of self-definition following a job loss. These could be weighty topics for a poem, if they were deftly handled, but here the poems are very personalized, not at all universal, and come across more as whining than thoughtful reflections. I kept wanting to scream at the author, "Everyone's life is full of struggle and pain, you're not the only one, but what do you do with the pain?" The answer in poem after poem was that the author wallows in self-pity. The first and last poems were the only ones that addressed a larger universe outside the author's ego and made no direct mention of personal struggles, and for that they were a breath of fresh air.
Book preview
To Keep Love Blurry - Craig Morgan Teicher
PART ONE
The Prince of Rivers
In the land of rivers I was the prince of rivers.
In the land of houses I lived in a thousand houses.
In the land of scattered bones my bones were scattered
by worshipful princes who carried each one like a scepter.
I was there and a breeze eddied around me.
In the land of questions I was the subject of questions.
I’m sorry what was lost was found utterly changed.
I could see through the sky and bring down the lonely stars.
When I was happy, lambs were born. They stood up
enacting their first dance of balance. In the land of frost
I was never cold. A warm breeze eddied around me.
When I thundered the sky tore like paper. Beyond the sky
the sky tore and rain fell into the moon’s dark holes.
In the land of eagles I received messages from eagles.
I’m sorry the moon is a fake gray plate. I’m sorry the day
is so dark. In the land of the future I saw men of stone.
When I was sad all the seas swelled. The islands
were swallowed and forgotten; books were drenched and forgotten.
When I was old my hair was as long as my story.
I’m sorry the branch bearing fruit is so high.
When I was young trees arched toward me like I was the sun.
I’m sorry the dead are quiet as ash. I’m sorry what’s left is so cold.
I knew I could escape through a hole in the sky. Wherever
I wept thick stalks grew. I knew I could weep for a long time to come.
Father
"You think too much—it’s what I’ve always said.
There’s nothing new you’ll find by looking in your head,
no encoded family secrets, no incestuous kiss
from a molested aunt. It’s just exactly this,
just memories less in focus when remembered again,
modified, chipped into kindling for fear—
I’ve spent most of my life afraid, being unclear
about whether an honest mistake counts as a sin,
and what the consequences were of hurtful things I did.
There are no big answers, no revelations.
Isn’t my life proof enough that anything I hid
I lost? I’ll die, and so will you, without explanations.
I’m no model, but do go for things you can touch—
souvenir snow globes, girls. You think too much."
Mother
"‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead’—you’ve said
so so many times. You wear my death like a birthmark.
It’s not what I intended, but I do let it go to my head
occasionally. God knows I was modest in life.
But is my death enough to motor all your days, to spark
enough imagination and verve to sustain your son and wife?
Does it really excite you and keep you awake
to the world at hand? Maybe. You’ve managed to make
a little name for yourself, and you’re funny,
which is a surprise. You were always a good writer,
so nothing’s shocking there, and you even make some money!
But obsessing over me—I’m afraid it keeps you slighter...
But this is not the kind of stuff I would have said.
It’s your call. This is you talking to you—I’m dead."
Confession
Lowell did it best because he understood
that even when his art was saying I’ve been bad,
he had to make himself look good.
No one loves a truly self-loathing lad,
though one and all are charmed
by a man’s interest in his own evil,
which he puts on show for those he’s harmed
or those who haven’t been but hope they will
be. Daredevil, rock star, martyr-circus-freak,
he sets himself on fire every night,
doused later as the audience cries, how unique.
It’s a trick they like; he’s perfectly alright,
because he’s in love with himself, playing hate.
True self-haters perform to empty houses, late.
It Came from the Primordial Ooze
The mind is so big it’s easy to get lost in thought,
big as a grapefruit, or like an astonishing
house bigger on the inside than its frame
could possibly contain. I remember something
I’d forgot and wonder what it got lost behind,
beneath, around, about. Books are divided
into pages, stacked and bound, because no one
can read one all at once, hence chapters
and why a good song is just three minutes long,
as if a kind of mind can only think
so much, which explains why an octopus
can learn to open a jar but not drive a car.
A voice answers most questions the self asks
the self, but where does he go when
the self says I know? If I write down everything
I think and