Julie Doxsee

Reviews

Julie Doxsee’s Objects for a Fog Death

Objects for a Fog Death
by Julie Doxsee
Black Ocean, 2010.
104 pages / $12.95  Buy from Black Ocean or SPD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do not think I will respond
with a bevy of clasp holds
to this bezel. A poem, then,
by way of re/view. How groan
she made it look like an accident
the way “Februarying” brought
us lyfe and the eternal year
but then a fog death behind it.1
I always like to die like that like
2                                      .

It was awaiting me, somewhere
in the vs. but I got lulled into it,
one spur of the surreal detail3 .
Sometimes death is the creep-
ing moment where it silently
“overwhelmed over/ night.”
Doxsee’s spaceTime bends to
accommodate the ghosts in the
grins.4 It’s about getting sucked
in by language as breath, dim
light of some skull torch. Even
partial-heards, like “of your breath/
we sleep” summon the soft
hurt. Pert language makes you
wince and fill. If the objects
have echoes5 , I still know they
are in the things: “origami
swan” “sphinxes/in your hands”
“sea-green floor.” These are the
objects that killed me when I read
this book of kills. They stuffed
me smiling into a deerskin box
with just enough room for my
toes.

 


↩ 1.“sullen hikes in the/ ice cream snow” and “snow/ waiting for a large person’s/ angel smash.”

↩ 2. “when the horses went/ hoarse in slow motion.”

↩ 3. “They’re so/ tiny because I/ erase my house/ with a broom.”

↩ 4. “So why do you/ think I’m quiet when/ the water bulges like a howl/ & your fingers undo/ the bouquet?”

↩ 5. “holdable echoes”

 

***

Gregg Murray is an assistant professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review. He has recent poems in Caketrain, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere, and a few others forthcoming from decomP magazinE, LEVELER, and Spittoon. If you are interested in his weird book reviews, see his recent essay on Giorgio Agamben in Continent. as well. Gregg holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota. For more deets—or to contact Gregg—please visit gregorykirkmurray.com
2 Comments
June 1st, 2012 / 12:00 pm

Julie Doxsee’s Favorite Object Combinations And Favorite Objects To Leave By Themselves

Julie Doxsee is doing a “blog tour” for her terrific new book, Objects For a Fog Death, so I asked Julie to write about her 5 favorite object combinations and her 5 favorite objects to leave by themselves. She did us better than my essaystic suggestion and wrote these “fabley little poem paragraphs.” I have used sophisticated Google Image Search techniques to jimmy up some complements. Enjoy!


Giraffe tooth/Helmet

You pull into a nook in the alley and my helmet clunks yours and this is a kind of talk we’re having but in the talk there is a kill wish and a rocket launch and a bright laser-beam lengthening our hearts across the sidewalk end to end.  There is blood and light.  You pull a giraffe tooth from your pocket, center it in your palm and say have you ever seen one of these?  From under my tongue I pull a giraffe tooth. I center it on my palm and say yes.  We sit this way until the shadows disappear. READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 17 Comments
August 12th, 2010 / 1:24 pm

Doxsee, Julie. Objects for a Fog Death. (2010)

Objects for a Fog Death is a series of odes to images and objects, and to the “you” responsible for distancing these images and objects from mortal relationships. With this distance comes a profound desire and a heightening awareness of earthly proximity. Through the accompanying hypnagogic verses, oceans quiet the voice while disorientation hurls it into a temporary place—hovering overhead or shying away in the murk. Is a river an object? Is fog an object? Or for that matter, is fog a place? Behind this book lies a call for rescue from confinement and immobility, from the ineffability of touch. Out of this fog springs forth the coeval shriek of something that will not be reduced to love. Available now from Black Ocean.

Samples after the jump…

READ MORE >

Uncategorized / 13 Comments
July 29th, 2010 / 2:38 pm