Verwandte Artikel zu This Poem Is a House
Inhaltsangabe
From accomplished writer Ken Sparling comes a spare verse novel about a girl and a boy and the life they're writing together. But the girl wants a story and the boy wants a poem, and the furniture in the house is stuck in the middle. Meditative and magical, a book as complicated as the ways we love, This Poem Is a House is, in the end, about a girl's story sheltering a boy's poem, the way a house shelters the lives of the people who live in it.
Ken Sparling has written six novels, including Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall (Knopf, 1996), commissioned by Gordon Lish. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Ken Sparling is the author of six novels: Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall, commissioned by Gordon Lish; Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt, handmade using discarded library books and a sewing machine; a novel with no title; For Those Whom God Has Blessed with Fingers; Book, which was shortlisted for The Trillium Award; and Intention | Implication | Wind. He lives in Toronto, where he works in a marketing role with the city's public library system.
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God knew that all over the world people were thinking.
Old men cried thinking
back over their years of lament and mistrust. It wasn’t their fault.
God felt that people wanted him.
God was a technician.
He knew how to scrape away at the world.
He could encroach without rupturing.
He knew his job.
God didn’t create the world at all,
he discovered the world,
and had then introduced it to the masses.
And now everyone holds him personally responsible.
The boy wanted to go out into the snow
and be flash frozen,
only to be found ten million years later,
a mythical beast, a symbol.
But a dead one.
Once upon a time there was a little boy and a little girl
who lived in different places
and didn’t know each other.
Then they grew up and met each other
at a dance club.
The boy was attracted to the girl’s curly hair,
crossed front teeth and wayward eye.
He was soon madly in love with her.
Who are these people? the girl asked when they were together
on the dance floor.
I don’t know, said the boy. I’ve never met any of them.
Tell me a story, said the girl.
Well, said the boy, in this story the girl felt
that the boy was a walking fashion statement,
but, even so, she only spent time with him because
she couldn’t seem to get him to go away.
What place do we hold in ourselves for God
when God comes visiting
and our chests expand till it hurts,
God crushing the breath out of us
till our teeth blow out of our faces like tiny white heat-seeking missiles.
We have seen the clouds.
The American holidays came upon us
like panthers ripping
through grass
like small cars pulled
by wild horses.
The African holidays come upon us like radical memories
slipping through the small cracks of love we feel
when we see the sun
come up the far side of the place
where the sun goes down
every night.
The boy came across the bridge.
A crowd was waiting
on the other side.
He saw people.
People he knew.
He saw his mom.
He saw Mrs. Haversimmel.
Old Lady Rain.
Spot.
He felt lonely.
Step forward, they hissed.
They were angry
at him.
Seeing them made him sad.
They were disgusted.
Grow up! they told him.
But the boy was asleep again
and the people were gone
and the morning ravished him
and he got dressed
and went out
to the driveway
and stood with his heart bent forward
in his chest.
The light hurt his eyes.
His dad was suddenly there beside him
lighting up a cigarette,
squinting into the morning.
He looked so tired.
He needed a shave.
The boy turned away into the hurting space
and tried to stare at the moment truthfully
with no illusions.
His dad put the cigarette into his mouth,
drew on it deeply.
When people talk, the boy told the girl, I hear what they say
but something that I want goes
beyond,
or somehow arrives
under the sky of bright,
like hearing the secret pantings of a soul
whispering a secret message.
Who is god?
What is god?
If you ask the question
wrong, they say you will never get the answer
right. Most people already know
the answer they want,
so it’s easy to get the question right.
It’s harder when you really don’t know.
The tree had gone strange, the boy told the girl,
and when we looked at each other
we found we had the same wind on us
but a different wind, also,
each of us.
Because every speck of wind
coming down the hill that morning
was a different speck of wind
yet they all came down the hill together
like they were going to a party
and not each to its own destiny.
I am rising in the wild windy dark.
Roll down your window, the boy said. It’s okay,
he said.
The girl was afraid.
She spent a lot of time playing with the dogs.
The dogs were white.
The girl had feelings.
She tried to slip past them.
She tried to slip her feelings into random moments
of the alreadyness of her ongoing and uncooperative life,
as though they weren’t her moments,
but moments that belonged to another person,
as though they were on loan to her
from the library of moments.
The madman had a furnace room
at the bottom of the stairs
where he kept the lights out all the time.
He would pay the girl, he said.
It was the man who looked like a he was in a coma.
If you saw him sitting back at the back there,
you knew he was waiting.
The girl took the job
not for the money
but just because
the man asked her
so nicely.
She liked the man.
His sad eyes.
She wanted to say yes to those eyes.
The boy’s dad died in October.
Christmas dinner that year was baloney
and honey.
These are people, the boy told himself.
These are people who have been riding route six every night of their life.
When the door opened at the front to let people off, the lights came on.
It was like daylight.
It was like creation.
The guys who designed this bus sure knew a thing or two
about lights, the boy thought.
People on the closed highways were freezing
to death in their cars.
I was in the rec room today, the girl said. Did I tell you about that already?
I have long wavy hair, she added at the last minute.
Then, more languorously: I am a goddess, really,
in the looks department.
I should send you a picture.
Spike is our baby kangaroo
and he’s inviting school kids to come
out for the festivities and pay him
a visit.
Thought sheet
4. How could you use the manual to teach this subject to a friend?
5. What other sources of information on the Laws of Driving are you aware of?
6. When you cleaned computers for a living, did you check behind the machines?
7. Did you remove the dust balls, garbage, etc. which proliferate?
They were all laughing
and drinking
wine.
The boy put his coat on
and went out
the front door
and walked to the end of the street.
It was his father’s street
and his father was with him.
The snow was coming
down in big, fluffy flakes.
It was beautiful.
I believe in lying, said the girl,
down on white.
And, sure, red will arrive.
But lie
on your back
on the white
and let the red ride
over you like a lover.
The jello seahorses rode the waves of the bed
like they were starving.
They rode like stallions salivating
in the form of a new god.
White foam rode
over the edges
of the boy’s dream
like white cum spilling
from the hole
at the top of a cock,
dripping like rain
being pushed
across a moving windshield.
There were amber anchors
in the sand.
A flotilla of boats rushing suddenly leaving
the world deserted and empty.
Dripping gobs of humanity
ran over the far edges of the earth
drifting into the infinite vacuum,
sliding beneath the grand waterfall
at the far end of the great god’s garden.
Someone thought the morning might finally come, the boy told the girl,
but Mother said no.
If anyone had a claim to the mountains,
it would be Bear, who we saw that summer
running over the world like spring water sprung.
The boy prayed mightily that the wind would let up,
and sometimes, yes, the trees would stop falling
and they would gather together in the calm,
amid the carnage,
shiny-eyed and hungry.
The boy’s dog would live long
enough...
Old men cried thinking
back over their years of lament and mistrust. It wasn’t their fault.
God felt that people wanted him.
God was a technician.
He knew how to scrape away at the world.
He could encroach without rupturing.
He knew his job.
God didn’t create the world at all,
he discovered the world,
and had then introduced it to the masses.
And now everyone holds him personally responsible.
The boy wanted to go out into the snow
and be flash frozen,
only to be found ten million years later,
a mythical beast, a symbol.
But a dead one.
Once upon a time there was a little boy and a little girl
who lived in different places
and didn’t know each other.
Then they grew up and met each other
at a dance club.
The boy was attracted to the girl’s curly hair,
crossed front teeth and wayward eye.
He was soon madly in love with her.
Who are these people? the girl asked when they were together
on the dance floor.
I don’t know, said the boy. I’ve never met any of them.
Tell me a story, said the girl.
Well, said the boy, in this story the girl felt
that the boy was a walking fashion statement,
but, even so, she only spent time with him because
she couldn’t seem to get him to go away.
What place do we hold in ourselves for God
when God comes visiting
and our chests expand till it hurts,
God crushing the breath out of us
till our teeth blow out of our faces like tiny white heat-seeking missiles.
We have seen the clouds.
The American holidays came upon us
like panthers ripping
through grass
like small cars pulled
by wild horses.
The African holidays come upon us like radical memories
slipping through the small cracks of love we feel
when we see the sun
come up the far side of the place
where the sun goes down
every night.
The boy came across the bridge.
A crowd was waiting
on the other side.
He saw people.
People he knew.
He saw his mom.
He saw Mrs. Haversimmel.
Old Lady Rain.
Spot.
He felt lonely.
Step forward, they hissed.
They were angry
at him.
Seeing them made him sad.
They were disgusted.
Grow up! they told him.
But the boy was asleep again
and the people were gone
and the morning ravished him
and he got dressed
and went out
to the driveway
and stood with his heart bent forward
in his chest.
The light hurt his eyes.
His dad was suddenly there beside him
lighting up a cigarette,
squinting into the morning.
He looked so tired.
He needed a shave.
The boy turned away into the hurting space
and tried to stare at the moment truthfully
with no illusions.
His dad put the cigarette into his mouth,
drew on it deeply.
When people talk, the boy told the girl, I hear what they say
but something that I want goes
beyond,
or somehow arrives
under the sky of bright,
like hearing the secret pantings of a soul
whispering a secret message.
Who is god?
What is god?
If you ask the question
wrong, they say you will never get the answer
right. Most people already know
the answer they want,
so it’s easy to get the question right.
It’s harder when you really don’t know.
The tree had gone strange, the boy told the girl,
and when we looked at each other
we found we had the same wind on us
but a different wind, also,
each of us.
Because every speck of wind
coming down the hill that morning
was a different speck of wind
yet they all came down the hill together
like they were going to a party
and not each to its own destiny.
I am rising in the wild windy dark.
Roll down your window, the boy said. It’s okay,
he said.
The girl was afraid.
She spent a lot of time playing with the dogs.
The dogs were white.
The girl had feelings.
She tried to slip past them.
She tried to slip her feelings into random moments
of the alreadyness of her ongoing and uncooperative life,
as though they weren’t her moments,
but moments that belonged to another person,
as though they were on loan to her
from the library of moments.
The madman had a furnace room
at the bottom of the stairs
where he kept the lights out all the time.
He would pay the girl, he said.
It was the man who looked like a he was in a coma.
If you saw him sitting back at the back there,
you knew he was waiting.
The girl took the job
not for the money
but just because
the man asked her
so nicely.
She liked the man.
His sad eyes.
She wanted to say yes to those eyes.
The boy’s dad died in October.
Christmas dinner that year was baloney
and honey.
These are people, the boy told himself.
These are people who have been riding route six every night of their life.
When the door opened at the front to let people off, the lights came on.
It was like daylight.
It was like creation.
The guys who designed this bus sure knew a thing or two
about lights, the boy thought.
People on the closed highways were freezing
to death in their cars.
I was in the rec room today, the girl said. Did I tell you about that already?
I have long wavy hair, she added at the last minute.
Then, more languorously: I am a goddess, really,
in the looks department.
I should send you a picture.
Spike is our baby kangaroo
and he’s inviting school kids to come
out for the festivities and pay him
a visit.
Thought sheet
4. How could you use the manual to teach this subject to a friend?
5. What other sources of information on the Laws of Driving are you aware of?
6. When you cleaned computers for a living, did you check behind the machines?
7. Did you remove the dust balls, garbage, etc. which proliferate?
They were all laughing
and drinking
wine.
The boy put his coat on
and went out
the front door
and walked to the end of the street.
It was his father’s street
and his father was with him.
The snow was coming
down in big, fluffy flakes.
It was beautiful.
I believe in lying, said the girl,
down on white.
And, sure, red will arrive.
But lie
on your back
on the white
and let the red ride
over you like a lover.
The jello seahorses rode the waves of the bed
like they were starving.
They rode like stallions salivating
in the form of a new god.
White foam rode
over the edges
of the boy’s dream
like white cum spilling
from the hole
at the top of a cock,
dripping like rain
being pushed
across a moving windshield.
There were amber anchors
in the sand.
A flotilla of boats rushing suddenly leaving
the world deserted and empty.
Dripping gobs of humanity
ran over the far edges of the earth
drifting into the infinite vacuum,
sliding beneath the grand waterfall
at the far end of the great god’s garden.
Someone thought the morning might finally come, the boy told the girl,
but Mother said no.
If anyone had a claim to the mountains,
it would be Bear, who we saw that summer
running over the world like spring water sprung.
The boy prayed mightily that the wind would let up,
and sometimes, yes, the trees would stop falling
and they would gather together in the calm,
amid the carnage,
shiny-eyed and hungry.
The boy’s dog would live long
enough...
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Paperback. Zustand: New. From accomplished writer Ken Sparling comes a spare verse novel about a girl and a boy and the life they're writing together. But the girl wants a story and the boy wants a poem, and the furniture in the house is stuck in the middle. Meditative and magical, a book as complicated as the ways we love, This Poem Is a House is, in the end, about a girl's story sheltering a boy's poem, the way a house shelters the lives of the people who live in it. Ken Sparling has written six novels, including Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall (Knopf, 1996), commissioned by Gordon Lish. He lives in Toronto, Ontario. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers LU-9781552453346
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Paperback. Zustand: New. From accomplished writer Ken Sparling comes a spare verse novel about a girl and a boy and the life they're writing together. But the girl wants a story and the boy wants a poem, and the furniture in the house is stuck in the middle. Meditative and magical, a book as complicated as the ways we love, This Poem Is a House is, in the end, about a girl's story sheltering a boy's poem, the way a house shelters the lives of the people who live in it. Ken Sparling has written six novels, including Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall (Knopf, 1996), commissioned by Gordon Lish. He lives in Toronto, Ontario. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers LU-9781552453346
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