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Sometimes I Hear The Clock Speak |
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| Lori Desrosiers |
ISBN: 978-1-910669-30-3 Page Count: 68 Publication Date: Thursday, March 10, 2016 Cover Artwork: © Olejnik | Dreamstime.com |
About this Book
“Lori Desrosiers’ Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak enfolds in an origami of memory the poet’s life and the lives of her family and others. As with any fine poetry, the poems mostly transcend clock-time, soaring to a Blakean cleansing of the “doors of perception.” In vignettes alchemized from everyday experiences, the poet gives us an “eternity in an hour” of music-laced memoir. Here is an immersion in the dance of a woman who shakes off the shackles of domestic oppression; here is a gentle dreamer who embraces the liberation of being a daring writer.”
"Opening this new book by Lori Desrosiers you will find of memory and search, of second-thoughts and playful indecisions, poems that go back in time to retrieve music and mend heart.
Indeed, the reader will find all kinds of music here: there is a violin that lacks music and there is a brother’s voice that speaks like father’s – but not when he sings. There is a reveille at 7.15am, and there is a young baby whose voice is known by her singing. And it is music that brings half-deaf father back from the dead. Page after page the reader will come to learn that it is memory – that beautiful, final chord, which reveals us to ourselves, and yet is unwritten by us."
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Author Biography
Lori Desrosiers is the author of The Philosopher’s Daughter, published by Salmon Poetry in 2013 and a chapbook, Inner Sky from Glass Lyre Press. Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak is her second full-length collection. Her poems have appeared in New Millennium Review, Contemporary American Voices, Best Indie Lit New England, String Poet, Blue Fifth Review, Pirene's Fountain, The New Verse News, The Mom Egg, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She edits Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry and WORDPEACE, an online journal dedicated to peace and justice. She teaches Literature and Composition at Westfield State University and Holyoke Community College, and Poetry in the Interdisciplinary Studies program for the Lesley University M.F.A. graduate program.
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Reviews
Review: Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak reviewed by Dennis Daly (April 2016)
Samba scat, pot-laced giggles, a baby crying in tune, bugled reveille, a cantor’s baritone, the thwap of a heron’s wings, the hiccup of time, and many other lyrical moments punctuate the deep mnemonic resonance flowing through Lori Desrosiers’ captivating new poetry collection entitled Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak. These poems shimmy successfully past the emotional complexities of life with organic joy and growing perception. Desrosiers’ words thrill with the thrum of life needing to be lived.
In her piece, The Year of Bad Decisions, the poet splices aural childhood memories with adult concerns. The touch is light and the onward movement detailed and deepening. Desrosiers acknowledges life’s events with nods of interest, her eyes always returning to the yet-to-be determined future. A brother’s trombone competes for attention with the poet’s violin in the heart of the poem. Neither prevail.
It’s Hard to be Six, Desrosiers poem that explains everything you ever want to know about childhood, works uncommonly well by modulating its humor and toning its irony. The poet’s persona opens this childhood chronicle by insisting, “I tell my mother the truth.” Indeed she does. A young Cassandra, this protagonist confronts the grown-ups that run her world. Here’s one pretty funny stanza,
Sometimes chance intervenes and childhood memories need revising. Desrosiers, in her poem My Violin, learns the difference between a student violin and a professional instrument years after discontinuing her lessons. Illuminations like this can upset an artist’s complacency and assumed self-knowledge. The piece concludes by separating the artist from the instrument,
Good art ages well, but good artists sometimes not so much. In her poem entitled My Brother’s Voice Desrosiers chronicles her family’s genetic choral talents. Inheritance proceeds not in straight lines, but unpredictably, in many artistic families. Wrinkles inevitably appear and intertwine with everyday life. Consider this cruel misdirection of nature,
My favorite piece in this collection is a well-crafted poem entitled Sestina for my Daughter Margot. Desrosiers navigates successfully between the dual shoals of sentiment and regret into a sea of reconciliation and potential. Vocal memories and music are the oars that get her there. The repetition of word endings in this classic sestina work beautifully by controlling and channeling the emotion. Here’s two of the more telling stanzas,
Reverie Obscura, Desrosiers clever meditation on the art of poetry, catches reality in a novel way. The poem begins as a panorama, then progresses into a camera obscura metaphor, where the world appears through pin holes as platonic projections, only upside down. Consider how the poet exits that world,
As Desrosiers’ persona tumbles back to human actuality and its constrained visions, her poems seem to continue on. One oral memory after another hesitates like a charmed particle in “time’s flutter,” then spins off into the arcing buzz of space. Singular poems like these orbit their readers.
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