Poems by

Kim Triedman

Poetry book, 90 pages, cover price $15

ISBN: 978-1-59948-408-2

Release date: 2012

Kim Triedman

Kim Triedman has published widely in such literary journals as Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Women Arts Quarterly, and Poetry International. She won the 2008 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest for her first collection, bathe in it or sleep, and has won and placed in numerous other poetry and fiction competitions. After the 2010 earthquake, she developed and edited of Poets for Haiti: An Anthology of Poetry and Art (Yileen Press, 2010), which benefitted Partners in Health. She is a graduate of Brown University. Her first novel, The Other Room, is due out in October, 2013.

Plum(b) invites us into multiplicity and simultaneity. Here for instance is the sense of a plumb line, balanced and straight, essential to any human structure in which the parts need to fit together. At the same time there is another domain to the word: the sense of a plum as ripened fruit of the earth, our desire for it inevitable, instinctive, if not at times wild, then quietly close to wildness. The art of Triedman’s poetry throughout this book is to hold such dual impulses together in a sustained, unresolved, and ultimately creative tension. Such tension from poem to poem allows her to probe the depths of experience and feeling, to plumb them if you will, always with that invaluable, wide-angle trait of the poet’s mind, what Keats called ‘negative capability.’

–Fred Marchant,
author of The Looking House

What I love most about these poems is their uncanny range – their ability to be lyrical and almost pastoral one instant, darkly comedic the next. One never gets the feeling that Triedman is just engaging in meaningless acrobatics, though; these poems are sincere as sunrise or a drop of blood, full of intense and shining purpose, and to see through them is like remembering all at once that you have eyes.

–Michael Meyerhofer,
author of Damnatio Memoriae

‘Between the past and the future,’ Kim Triedman writes, ‘stands a house.'” And how does she live in the house of her present? ‘With the windows open.’ It takes courage to live open to experience, to a world where things tip, spill, fall, hurtle, circle, sprawl, slide, snake, spill, break, careen, scatter. There is love in this book–erotic love, mother love, love of animals and nature–but it’s not an easy love. One has to work hard to hold together. And Triedman does, relying on unflinching observation and a far-reaching imagination to provide a plumb line to anchor an unknown future.

–Wendy Mnookin,
author of The Moon Makes Its Own Plea

Socks

I’ve often fancied you with just socks and a briefcase–
black socks, that is, and maybe it’s strange but no stranger
really than anything else, than the light in the room
for example or the dog. Details is what I mean to say
plus you never looked half-bad, either, even from behind.
It’s just a snapshot, just like any other–not a world, not a
war – just a moment, the kind that maybe sticks around for awhile
or not but it does that thing, anyhow: the way the muscle
it twitches–eyes, lips, heart–light tripping on and off
like a loose bulb in an old socket, the way for just a moment
you breathe and you breathe and you recognize
with a clean and ancient joy

that you are breathing.

Still Life with Timber

Empty the pantry of bread, the bottles of wine.
Delete the lines of every song that was sung,
every book that was read. Blow out all of
the candles on all of the cakes for all of
the birthdays. Throw out the baby. Dismantle
the bed.

Never mind–the timbers are still sound
as is the shingling on the roof. The walls
are plumb. In the basement the furnace
still kicks on, throwing off a kind of heat.

Provisions

I bought one pomegranate this morning just to admire it.
They were two for five dollars, but I was only
purchasing color.

Can we eat it? my daughter asked that evening.
She was limping through her chemistry homework,
watching me watching the pomegranate.

Not until I’m finished, I answered vaguely,
wondering what exactly that meant.

It sat on the counter, defining red. Even the tomatoes
knew not to argue.

When my husband came home, he palmed it absently
then rolled it down the hallway for the dog.

It’s in my office, now, catching the afternoon sun.
I’m not sure why it matters so much
but it does. I know that the seeds inside are
waiting, jewel-like, encrusted in their pulpy womb.
But for the moment I’m content just to
see it there when I turn my head. Sitting
quietly on the sill. Concentrating all that color
in one place.

Carrion

I have seen the vultures with their glutton-eyes.
The poets, too,

circling, peering down a blank
and silent sky. Something

will happen; the sun will drag
its bloodied corpse
towards the night. And carcasses, too–

entrails heaped
like gifts across the road.
Sure, there will be

dying. So much
good meat.

If you would like to read more of Plum(b) by Kim Triedman, order your copy today.