The New York Review of Books - USA (2021-11-21)

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 19

JOY TAKES HOLDin the brain, or the soul,
when it takes place at all. For some of us it
also drives the body: the pleasures of run-
ning on a beach, the exhilarating surren-
ders of sex, the “simple thrill/ of touching
ground.” Patrick Rosal’s poems pursue
such joys through the rough New Jersey
cities of his youth and the Filipino locales
of his heritage. Most of his best poems
show people — himself or others — using
their bodies for good: “b-/ boys contort
cocksure /swagger into dance.” A teacher
ties children together “with wire and stray
twine” to rescue them from a typhoon. The
“Little Men With Fast Hands” in his ode of
that name include a knife-wielding rebel in

the wartime Philippines as well as a bas-
ketball player who shows him “how to box
out /a stocky forward on the inside with a
slick /hip-pull so the ref can’t see.”
Children stride through Rosal’s poetry,
too, bold and vulnerable, winning and
needy, reminding adults what’s important,
in the Philippines or in America or any-
where. In his allegorical “Town Called
Sadness,” hope comes from an 11-year-old
in a parking lot, “in sagging socks,” stand-
ing and playing the French horn, “one
hunch-shouldered child/ clutching a little
dazzling galaxy/ of voluptuous metal.”
When Rosal remembers himself as a child,
though, that power turns to anger. The fu-
ture poet had no clue what to do with the
storm and stress in his own body, nor with
the sense of injustice he got from the
street: “How many times I was swift,”
Rosal admits, “to headbutt another kid in
the chin/ or moosh some brat in the face.”
Some of Rosal’s best poems (“A Town
Called Sadness” among them) work as an-
ecdotes or parables, easy to follow and bet-
ter for it. Others rely on lists, catalogs, ac-
cumulation, as in “Kundiman Ending on a
Theme From T La Rock”: “Your
very /revelry Your break-/ neck scat the
loot /you boost Your/ rags Your sev-
en- / thousand-island /slang.” A kundi-
man is a Tagalog art song or love song, of-
ten with anticolonial implications; Rosal
uses the name for four poems here, all of
them taken from his 2006 book “My Amer-
ican Kundiman.” The same immigrant sol-
idarity and energy emerge in the fists and
heels, the parties and the violence, in Ros-

al’s New York and New Jersey neighbor-

hoods: “the hilot’ssong /spilled into New

Brunswick streets/ drunk with a bor-

rowed liquor/ we call time.” (A hilot is a

traditional healer.)

Almost a third of this volume consists of

new work. These latest poems, also his

most ambitious, propel Rosal away from

realistic scenes and stories, into longer as-

sociative monologues, dream visions, ex-

tended figures:

Shame

is like you’re made

of 10,

beautiful doors

and every day

you try to keep them

all

from flying open

at once.

The characters themselves fly into the

open, or make the attempt, difficult wings

emerging from their adolescent backs in a

recurrent metaphor for becoming oneself:

“the boy—I told you—/ is trying to fly.”

The nine-page leadoff poem, written al-

most entirely in terse couplets, builds to

“boys who dream/ repeatedly of wings”:

“so few of us know what to tell them” when

the day comes, on the first “morning they

wake up/ and feel what it’s like/ to be

changed by pain.”

Rosal understands pain, in the present

and in the historical past. But when he can,

he chooses fulfillment instead. Watching

Kobe Bryant in his prime, the poet can

“bear witness to a body in flight/ and for a

moment know what to do/ with half our

human sorrow.” Another kind of witness

comes through erotic desire, bodily con-

tact, sex: “Making Out on a Hill Overlook-

ing the Hudson,” Rosal imagines “I could

stop the sun right now/ I could be wicked

as a fruit thief,” opening up (as he puts it in

the previous poem) the “old spark of the

body working/ and working and work-

ing /it all on out.” Another new poem ex-

periments with quick, typographically un-

even phrases, stuttering and plummeting

down the page as the poet tells himself to

survive, to live, to outlive his former, de-

structive self:

Check yourself

for sorrow No noose

today The rope’s

for climbing

Not too high

now Too brave

Too nimble Too

agile for perpetual

mourning I once

set fire

to a whole piano

in my mother’s yard

The language in these pages remains

visceral, demotic, open to all comers and

capable of neat aural effects: of an ant-in-

fested tamarind fruit, “the busted husk

has unfurled/ a fine line of burgundy

around my hand and wrist.”

Rosal’s lively vernacular — especially in

the lengthier, newer poems — can sound

almost improvised, proudly suited for oral

delivery: The poems invite us to hear

them out loud. Other recent poets share

some of his virtues: Consider the muscu-

lar wisdom of Gerald Stern, the expansive

democracy of Martín Espada, the patient

storytelling of Mark Wunderlich or the

tough-guy stances of Philip Levine,

though no one would mistake their poems

for his.

THOUGH HIS EARLIER BOOKSfound an au-

dience — and won big poetry awards —

this selection makes the best way to get

into Rosal, because it’s the first volume to

show his range. To read these poems one

after another is to experience a kind of

double or triple vision: an American bed-

room, an Ilocan coastal village, a Metuch-

en street. That vision leads, in turn, to felt

connections, to loyalty as solid as Rosal’s

firmest, longest lines: “I pray for the dogs

in my heart to sleep/ and for the house of

my cousin built into the side of a moun-

tain /packed with rock and fire to be safe.”

The man (and he is a man) behind those

poems, the man the poems ask us to imag-

ine, “cannot/ stop /saying yes.” He talks

loud, works out, loves life, might punch the

air: He can get platitudinous, or predict-

able. But he can also bring his readers with

him as he faces, at once, history and de-

light, injustice and “each living physical

moment,” the “spark of the body work-

ing /and working and working/ it all on

out.” 0

Leaps and Bounds

The physical exuberance of Patrick Rosal’s new and selected poems.

By STEPHANIE BURT

THE LAST THING

New & Selected Poems
By Patrick Rosal
205 pp. Karen & Michael Braziller/Persea
Books. $26.95.

LEAH HAYES

STEPHANIE BURT’Smost recent books are “Don’t
Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read
Poems” and a collection of modern transla-
tions, “After Callimachus.” She teaches Eng-
lish at Harvard.