Cities of Flesh and The Dead
by: Diann Blakely
(Elixir Press)
“And to celebrate loss in that city of flesh and the dead…”
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Diann Blakely ranks as one of the South’s finest poets. Cities of Flesh and The Dead (2008), described in Blakely’s words, “the volume can be easily described as one consisting of love poems to various cities, both home and abroad, and the displacement that follows many Americans around like the black dog of depression.”
This book, Blakely’s third, a collection of syllabic poems and sonnets revolves around travel, music and memory. In the book’s Introduction, Sarah Kennedy writes: “A new collection by Diann Blakely always promises entrance to a tragic, beautiful world. Combining controlled prosody and extravagant aesthetic; Blakely makes sonnets, dramatic monologues, and lyrics that, in rough iambic pentameter lines, render gritty details of southern girlhood. These particulars, tempered by sensitivity to emotional and linguistic nuance and harnessed by form have always been features of her work, and Cities of the Flesh and The Dead pushes the lyric first-person narrative at which Blakely has always excelled to include historic personae and interlinked sequences. Attentive, careful, and self-reflexive, these poems create a palimpsest of the contemporary South, where the present is always complicated by the haunting voices of the past.”
Blakely possesses a command over the English language. Her husband, author Stanley Booth, calls her an assassin when it comes to writing. Her vivid images linger in the mind long after the lines are read. This book, divided into five sections, presents an interesting array of characters, symbols and places such Faulkner’s Temple Drake, Mick & Keith, pills, Bonnie & Delaney, suicide, Hank Williams, sex, Patsy Cline, insanity, Gone With the Wind, Ike & Tina Turner, TV, Robert Johnson, Jerry Wexler, family dynamics, Shakespeare, dogwood trees, Dixie cotton, Joe Orton, Tennessee Williams, war, New York, Memphis, New Orleans, London and Boston among many others.
This writer’s favorite Cities poems include “Memphis Blues”, “On The Border”, “Women #5, #18, and #21”, “Photography Wing”, “Another Saturday Night”, “Blood Oranges” and “Music City Duet”. In “Ann Arbor Variations”, Blakely writes: “Do we grieve most for those besides ourselves/When the heart warns we might be next in line?”
Cities of The Flesh and The Dead contains work from a poet of the highest order.
James Calemine
related tags
Music,Lore,
Discourse,
Alabama,
Georgia,
Tennessee,
Texas,
Memphis,
Nashville,
New Orleans,
River,
Mystery and Manners,
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PenneElk says...
Great review. Great poetry. LOVE IT. Thanks, James. Thanks, Diann.
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