Sue William Silverman
PRAISE"In Silverman's collection the language is luxuriant and sensuous, evoking glimpses of a wide range of mid-twentieth-century life, from vibrant West Indian culture to the jarring neon cityscapes of the Northeast. The vista, geographic and human, from Guatemala to Croatia, from the returning Vietnam vet to the young amusement park rider at the Jersey shore, is wide." ~~ Bostonia
"Sue William Silverman's collection is a bracing debut--rangy, restless, and giddy with lush particulars. Geography and memory fuse into a single landscape, encompassing everything from the West Indies to the Negev, Yucatan to the Jersey Shore. It is rare to encounter a first book of poetry so willing to embrace the incantatory powers of the language, or so capable of using them to map the self." ~~ David Wojahn, Spirit Cabinet.
"Sue Silverman is widely known for the often heartbreaking prose that limns personal experience. As she turns here to lyric, her words are still deft as deft knows how to be; the poignance remains; but what a range of things and people and events and humor pervades these mouth-filling pages. She makes much of her sensory apparatus, as, given its acuteness, she is right to do; but there is also a fierce intelligence at work in Hieroglyphics in Neon, something rather akin to what the Augustans called Wit. Right brain, left brain, the whole human body: all conspire to make this book both a romp and a protracted meditation. Brava!" ~~ Sydney Lea, Ghost Pain.
"'When I push,/it yields,' writes Sue William Silverman, and in Hieroglyphics in Neon, memory is the "rusty gate" she opens, the voodoo of language to conjure up and make real the bent corner of the map or the smudge of a fingerprint, to index the relentlessness of the past from which 'we dream and awaken, awaken and dream.' It's all here, 'the defunct, the damned, the divine,' ripe for the picking." ~~ Mary Ann Samyn, Purr. |
Hieroglyphics in NeonThe poetry collection, Hieroglyphics in Neon (Orchises Press), is 71 pages. Here are two poems from the collection. I hope you enjoy them! (Please note: this poetry collection includes the poetry sequence "Hieronymus Bosch's Illustrated Alphabet.") PARASELENE BLUE (Asbury Park, 1965) I lift the Venetian blind in my bedroom to watch the young wife swaying indigo rayon, rhinestones clasping spiked heels, hair in a French twist, alone, her husband rarely home, “Moonlight Sinatra” low on her record player, the needle grooving Jersey nights of moonlight serenade, our shingled beach houses so close I think I smell White Shoulders perfume, hear her rustling skirt--me in sweat-damp cotton pajamas, ribboned ponytail. My parents and sister sleeping, my bare feet feel the vibration of the Frigidaire downstairs, the ocean shusshing moon song along the shore, boardwalk darkening, only the top of the Ferris visible, wheeling toward longing. The moon got in my eyes... its globe glowing in one window pane trailed in another pane by a mock moon. And I know I am this little moon orbiting her blue nights when we wish for more than our small, faint hummings, distant vinyl romance, because I am the only one to hear the moonlight become us. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION In 75 A.D., 50,000 Roman soldiers surround walled Jerusalem catapulting 30-ton limestone balls, dead animals, diseased bodies, captured soldiers, flaming objects, sand bags to blind-- all hurtling from 26-foot stock houses built from 12 miles of trees in 10 days, designed by Vitruvius--skeletal silhouettes darkening a blue Mediterranean sky-- the launching mechanism a sinewy rope from Achilles’ tendons of cows-- two and a half miles hammered, soaked, twisted, dried, bowstring stretched between wood arms, 9-ton torsion pulling the slider, winch handle manually cranked, winding the rope around the cylinder, cocking the claw and trigger block, whipping back and catapulting the missile 123 yards, boulders blackened to disguise, demolishing protective walls, city in flames. For the next almost 2000 years it’s the same-- only much better, and only far worse. |
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