Screens, by Henry Crawford
MAKE IT NEW: And Henry Crawford Does
I’m always looking for poetry that’s wholly original and written with specific eyes. So, I recommend these poems by Henry Crawford (poet/lawyer/software engineer.)
SCREENS (Broadstone Books) reflects Henry’s individuality and uniqueness; and the book begins:
“Preflight”
(excerpted)
Thank you. For picking up. This
book. In the airport bookstore.
Minutes. Before you go. Spend ’em
here. With me. In the bookstore.
With the diet sodas. Neck pillows.
Ear buds. And iPhone. Attachments.
Take your time…
“Preflight” with its colloquial truncated line shows how the speaker depicts life. The poem is a lighthearted invitation but demonstrates a world where time robs us of leisure. These emphatic compressed phrases craft surprise and hold tension.
“Jersey City,” (another record of our current time) is enhanced with modern hieroglyphics to show an invaded culture. Crawford uses brackets not only to signal technical intrusions but to animate words, made more significant by visual interruptions.
“Jersey City” (in entirety)
[it was probably] [just the gentle] [tapping] [of brakes] [the way a car]
[will come to rest] [at a red light] [in the rain] [on the corner ] [there
was] [a green and white] [Go-Go Mart] [appearing in the rain-water
light] [of my windshield] [a night-store] [OPEN 24 hours] [and I was
happy] [to see] [this store] [the items inside] [crayon bright] [set out
in rows] [by a red smock woman] [working alone] [her outline
melting] [in the drizzle] [of my window] [minding her store] [at night]
[her freezers] [her magazines] [her lotto machine] [her coffee] [pots]
[all quiet and still] [she was a red smock woman] [her store] [a
fluorescent rainbow] [cast across the splash-water street] [and I was
happy] [to be stopped] [waiting] [on this flawed corner of paradise]
[as the light] [was turning] [green]
Crawford’s stories shiver on the edge of thought, then disappear leaving us with memory as our lens. In “American Shooter,” once again our culture is defined not in the extended line of the 19th or 20th centuries, but the forced piercing words like bullets, defining America. Journalists would not speak this way, but poets, with their cognitive training to reconstruct the present, can.
“American Shooter” (excerpted)
To fly. Through glass. Pierce.
Break. Bleed. Through skin.
To gleam. In rifle barrel black.
To go. Round. In Rounds. Of Pop.
And Pop. And. Pop Pop Pop.
To watch. To make. To break.
The skin. Sense. The clocking.
Speed of sound. To Sing. In slugs.
Of happy feet dancing. Numb.
On deafened. Sideways ground.
Explode. Now. You diamond fire.
Bullet. Feel the hammer fall.
…
And among these many poems, tenderness. Byron says, “Sorrow is knowledge” and Crawford’s knowledge of relationships and melancholy is sequenced throughout, as never heard before.
“An Open Piano” (in entirety)
It was the day
I noticed the mustard jar squatting heavy
on the refrigerator shelf. The day
I looked up the word ‘awkwardly’ in our blue
promiscuous dictionary. Yes,
it was the day I noticed my socks running
out of thread so I called upstairs for a hand.
That day. The one when the telephone was let off the hook
and almonds broke out all over us. The
very day I handed you my driver’s license
and took your glass of warm refreshing milk
in a careless never ceasing way. You know, that
day. The time I heard a sound like a salon
coming out of our living room.
The day I looked in to see the black enameled cover
lifted off the piano and keys exploding
all over your finite grin. That day
when nothing stood between us.
Henry Crawford’s poems sampled here reveal extraordinary talent, but their full lightness and weight can only be found by reading every single poem rubbed up against every other. SCREENS is a scaffolding for ‘the sadness that comforts the soul’—these poems are heightened dramatic episodes revealing the ugly and the beautiful in our lives—and how both belong, transformed by inimitable language, creative aesthetics, and a high fidelity of feeling.
Grace Cavalieri was Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate. She founded and produces “The Poet and The Poem from The Library of Congress,” now celebrating 48 years on-air.
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