Lisa Jarnot

I was recently turned on to Lisa Jarnot's poetry by a professor of mine. I read a bunch of her work online, and almost immediately I identified with her words, her rhythm, her images, her song. It was one of those moments where one knows a shard of one's self lives in particular lines of poetry; a warming, familiar feeling. A hot cocoa of verse. What made the feeling even more fantastic and fulfilling was how oblivious I was to her words. The discovery was beautiful.

BROOKLYN ANCHORAGE

and at noon I will fall in love

and nothing will have meaning

except for the brownness of

the sky, and tradition, and water

and in the water off the railway

in New Haven all the lights

go on across the sun, and for

millennia those who kiss fall into

hospitals, riding trains, wearing

black shoes, pursued by those

they love, the Chinese in the armies

with the shiny sound of Johnny Cash,

and in my plan to be myself

I became someone else with

soft lips and a secret life,

and I left, from an airport,

in tradition of the water

on the plains, until the train

started moving and yesterday

it seemed true that suddenly

inside of the newspaper

there was a powerline and

my heart stopped, and everything

leaned down from the sky to kill me

and now the cattails sing.

What I love about this poem is its nonchalance, and the sort of quotidian rhythm that it sings itself in. I thought first of Frank O'Hara's poems--the opening line "and at noon I will fall in love" reminds me so much of O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died" ("because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton / at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner") and "Personal Poem" ("Now when I walk around at lunchtime"). Jarnot tosses these images over her shoulder like a peacoat and walks about with them, casually. A darkness undercuts the poem--this is where O'Hara's and hers differ--but there is a sort of jubilance that Jarnot uses to wrap about the overhanging gloom, for example "my heart stopped, and everything / leaned down from the sky to kill me / and now the cattails sing" lords an uneasiness to the piece. Jarnot's wild eye and ear for enjambment and internal rhythm lend the poem a conversational tone as well.

Jarnot lives in New York City. I just ordered her 2001 book, Ring of Fire, and I am very excited for her poetry to avalanche in my blood.

Be excellent to one another, and do good work,

--Ryan Skrabalak

Image source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HkY1TkCcO9Y/R7x2rYH19fI/AAAAAAAAAlg/iha5b99D2-U/s320/jarnot.bmp