Steve Turtell reads from Heroes and Householders

 

When I read Steve Turtell’s poems, I enjoyed them so much I asked Steve to come over so I could record him reading some. He brought Heroes and Householders and read from that book.

Steve is a poet and a cook. Baudelaire says that poetry and cooking are the highest art forms because each must appeal to all the five senses. Poets and cooks need to know how to coordinate and organize too, the first and the middle and the last of what they want to accomplish, in perfect order, making thoughtful pleasure whether eaten or read.

Mmmmm Yum Yes, the poems of a cook and a poet follow in the video. Enjoy.

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The following four poems are from Heroes and Householders, but not read in the video. Partly because I enjoy them, I thought I’d share them here.

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Paralysis

 

One night, drunk, enraged, 

I punched the bathroom wall.

 

Plaster shards clattered on tile, 

fragments clung to splintery lathing. 

 

Next afternoon I 

removed the big pieces. 

 

The hole stayed open 

seven more years.

 

 

How to Write A Sentimental Poem

 

Pick a household object with a long history

—like this brown enamel Dutch oven. 

 

Tell a story about it: “Its over 20 years old, 

part of a set my brother gave me one Christmas.” 

 

Describe the food cooked in it: chowders, 

braised pork chops, steamed salmon, and, 

 

in a fit of Martha-mania, nutmegs, cinnamon sticks

and cloves to spice the stale apartment air. 

 

Recall the friend who said “My God, 

that pot has seen better days. 

 

Don’t you think its time to replace it?” 

The enamel is cracked at the rim 

 

and spider-webbed on the bottom.

from scrubbing too hard when 

 

I was mad at the world. Make sure 

to nod at current fashions in poetry:

 

meat pie lackeys clamor for . .  lives cast over iron foundries

…... . .less class-

consciousness (for gone/fore ground?) . . . only fowls are drawn

in this quarter.

 

Tell the friend to fuck off. 

Indulge in the pathetic fallacy:

 

“This pot has cried with me; 

fed me when I wanted to die.

 

When you’ve done the same 

I’ll love you just as much.”

 

Describe him watching rinse water 

curling down the drain.

 

 

12-Step Meeting

 

Rows of grey metal chairs,

A different jacket on the back of each.

Some hung neatly, others just thrown.

A Spring wind rattles the windows.

Current hums in the overhead lights.

Someone tries to tell the truth

 

 

In the Garden 

 

………...for Sydney Chandler Faulkner

 

This bench was once a tree.

The curved, sap-filled trunk

planed to ruler-straight lumber,

measured, cut, hammered.

 

Bruised clover and grass, 

pebbles and brick dust underfoot, 

two white birch’s sway 

over and around me.

 

In twenty years of constant death

I’ve only seen one man die. 

 

Sydney 

 

looked 80, was 46 when

he gasped for his last taste of air. 

 

One clawed hand raked the sweaty sheet. 

I held the other. 

 

Unseeing eyes flitted. 

Young and stupid, I was eager 

 

for large experiences, I waited

to hear “the death rattle.” 

 

I knew I would write about you.

And for twenty years I couldn’t.

 

Today, older than you were then,

I still can’t describe 

the Sydney-shaped hole 

you punched in the world.

 

 

You can check out Heroes and Householders here: 

Steve Turtell.com

His poems are shaped with an economy, with a supple control, that recalls the lyrics of W.B. Yeats-perfectly solid and down to earth, yet floating with a lyric ease. This is an impressive debut. -Edward Field Steve Turtell’s poems are refreshingly direct and unpretentious.

 

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Steve Turtell, photo by David Perkins