To unearth a poem is a finer task than for it to fall from the sky. Casey Degnan has turned over every rock encountered on two continents and found 105 poems. Reading Wohnung is a little like living a day in the voyeuristic life of the poet. You cannot help, as the pages rip by, to feel less the storyteller and more the “People on Trainsâ€, described throughout the passages found here; a title which could’ve easily scripted the spine of this book. Degnan wastes no time with the formality of remorse or moral prowess handing over these poems to the confidants, so much so that the exorcism feels less of a confession of the writer, but moreover a clean slate for the reader to see the actual world from. It is as if Degnan has stated that there is a formal way that almost every interaction, every barfight, every Alp, every fall from a balcony, every divorce has been seen in one archetypal vehicle; now see it this way.
The neighborhood of poems created here, with its skewed address, and absent magistrate, is a bullet read. All of this stated, From the Fifth Floor Wohnung Windows does not give the impression of a new form of storytelling, or a departure from American rhetoric. This book gives the taste of a writer who knows how to tell a new story played on the strings of his father’s guitar. It leaves the impression that a path has been beaten, and Degnan has gone further, swam deeper, taken a breath not knowing if the oxygen will let us resurface; but down there, under those new floor stones, are the fertile tales.
Degnan has that rare ability to pierce--and sometimes to pummel--the armored scales that separate inner experience of reality from reality itself. Fifth Floor allows readers to see with new vision--never again will we look at perched pigeons in the same dull way. Degnan allows readers to hear with new ears--never again will children laugh, trains rumble, or pretty women whisper in the moonlight, without relish.
After traveling mentally through the worlds created by Degnan in Fifth Floor, you put down the book and look around with a fresh way of being. You realize that the secret of satisfaction lies not on a train, in a park, not even on a mountain in a sled, but right outside your Fifth Floor window. Of course one cannot KNOW that satisfaction is found at home--in us all around us all the time wherever we are--until one has first GONE on the trips. Fortunately, Degnan does the legwork for us. Thus by just reading we can go out, and come back, and discover ourselves all without getting out of bed.
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NEW POEMS FROM CASEY DEGNAN'S UP AND COMING BOOK
Peek-a-boo
I am right in front of your eyes
the burning yellow cactus flower in Death Valley
the albino tiger fish eyes felt behind bamboo shoots
the second image you see in an optical allusion
I am the escape act of the Chinese Water Torture Cell
the centaur and the mermaid
the purple dragon of Japanese folklore
I am the steam rising from the sewers on Sixth St.
the black swan
the amber room
the wildcard in the deck
I am the ember in the smoldering smoke
the silver lining in the night
the olive branch stretching into the sun
the limerent romantic fucking in the rose garden
I am Captain Kidd
the New Amsterdam
the ocean liner
the oak island
the great whale whimpering
I am the treasure trove
the green clover in the patch spent searching for
the boy at the bus stop juggling acorns
I am hiding in between sheets
ready of not
come find me.
The Thunder
I am a tiger shark
the key in the sky tied to a kite
a bell on the end of the wire
the Kamikaze kid jumping Geronimo
flipping in the rain
storming through the deep blue
the spool’s in the hands of a genius
the spirit’s screaming in the sky
watch the fish line unreel to the end of the spindle stick
watch the flash of ringing sparkle
they’re trying to reel me in
I’m gonna snap
the line
grounded
to a 8 ½x11 white walled room
all the energy building from my childhood claustrophobia
Saint Elmo’s Fire five shocking seconds in sight
I was to die that way
somewhere in the clouds
my mother’d say
my mind be found
in the gutter
buried in the bottle
her younger replica to read my message
rescue me from the desert island
climb me down from the cliff
channel the current of my bipolar discharge
deep into the bedrock of books under sheets of trees
I am only here because of her
I am nothing but a flash of light
on your lens
a book in your hands
words working their way through the black holes
of your eyes
conducting via ventricles and veins
nerves and neurons
a separating strip of synapses
reaching out like a tree branch into the sun
like lightning
until the tip touches something
it can hold on to
only seen for a second
that suddenly disappears
in a blink
you only hear of
after I am long gone
and out of sight.
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All poems are copyrighted © by Casey Alan Degnan
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