Country of Memory

By Charles M. Fishman

Country of Memory is a memoir in poetry that uncovers the confusing, mysterious, and often dangerous paths we travel to make sense of our lives. The poems center on family, friendship, nature, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972323139
• ISBN13: 9780972323130
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Uccelli Pr
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Poetry of Goodness and Beauty

Charles Fishman is one of those rare poets who opens his mind and heart to the work of others. In his anthology 'Blood to Remember: American Poets remember the Holocaust' he did a monumental job of collecting and truly listening to the widest possible range of poets reflecting upon what is arguably the most horrible event in human history. For some four decades now he has contributed first - rate poetry to almost every poetic journal of distinction one can think of. In this present volume he makes a long journey , a journey in memory back to the world of his childhood and the people he loved there. Fishman is a rarity in a way , a poet whose genuine respect and love for the people in his life pervade his poetry. His sympathy for his parents in these poems is tremendous, and so many of the poems move deeply in that one feels him holding on still now to those long lost, and yet still with him. In one of my favorites of this collection ' My Father on a Sled Smoking ' he sees his father fifty years ago smoking himself to death then, and then shifts and sees him in his true final moments. 'Pitch the fresh pack/hidden in your jacket into the glitter of ice/and snow. Take off your cap and let it go./ Breathe in the sweet chill of this undreamnt of/ moment when life offers you a choice. Father:/ listen to my voice that calls out to you/ across the snow- bound void: you will swerve/at the last jolting second, and death's branches/ wil scar you face but, five decades later,/ you will sit ,knees wrapped in a white wool blanket/ a dear scared frail old man, dozing to Frank Sinatra / and almost at peace as sleep drags you down.' Many of the best poems of this collection are about the poet's father whose gift for happiness and appreciation of the beauty in life seems to have been bequeathed to his son. But his love for his mother is also apparent in these poems. In one chilling one he tells of her coming close to death, her recovery from bone cancer. 'When I learn that you will live/ that life flows back into each cell/ each bone and when you tell me.My heart/ is set on dancing. Ten thousand sunsets shift from black/ to rose. Words hold me again in their sweet/ and fiery embrace.' Fishman tells too in these poems of his poetic vocation , of his slow learning of the love of words, and of how words are from him a life- giving reality, a source of endless play and meaning. Who reads these poems will read a man, a very good man, a man reflecting on his family and his life as a poet, and on the world which he makes more beautiful and more memorable with his words. These poems are a special gift to those who love words and life and poetry.

Poetry that breathes

Charles Fishman has always been a strong poet, and this fifth full-length collection of work shows him once again using the fine point of a pen to paint his canvas and chisel his stones. That these poems recall his childhood, youth--his life--does nothing to undercut their universality. His lines transport the reader to a realm of intense appreciation for life, which in the end is the point of poetry--to thicken the air into sauce, and ripen fruit to bursting. So it is that we relive the moment that Skipper fell through the "thin fabric of ice," when he ran ahead to the place it "ripped into sheer strips of translucent frost." Likewise the photographs from his family album come alive. We see the day in "April or May 1953," when "spring grass rubs green darkness into day," the season when "in this house, as always, it is the past" and his grandfather Isidore reaching out "through the torn veil of language." Words are his "plunging beak," his "wild thorny cry" that pull the old movie house into the present "in pale blue smoke that pulsed like rays from a star," that lament the demise of trees he climbed in a "moment that thumped against our hearts with the heft of arrowheads," that curse the tough guys "knuckles for the vise of my poem" and render the wheels of his bike "blue as the ice on a petrel's mouth." In Jerusalem, the wind howls sand that took "on the hue of ripened wheat," its tongue "licked each brick and left it gold." In Egypt, his fingers pull "pure pearl light from the moon." This country of memory breathes and bleeds. --Alyssa A. Lappen

Words crafted by an artist

The dilemma with reviewing Mr. Fishman's fine book is doing it justice as a reviewer. At his touch, the mundane moments of life are disarmingly transformed to lyrical. Country of Memory is this poet's fifth book length collection. Everything about his latest offering is choice, from the esthetically pleasing cover to the contents. With a sympathetic eye, he paints word pictures of childhood memories. Whether these thoughts put to paper are troubling or sentimental, we live moments of his life through a careful choice of words and cadence. In this excerpt from "Words", for example, the writer reflects on a conversation with his father. It expresses passionately the poet's love of language: I loved words as much as you loved silence: words that wakened intoxicated explored words with the rank smell of viscera that excoriated and restored I collected words, forged from gold or zirconium words ethereal as breath and dark plutonium words more fatal than death Words my daggers my lariats my fire-scorched tongs my antlers my cockscomb my rhinocerous horn words my plunging beak my wild and thorny cry. Mr Fishman contemplates the seasons in New England, wonders to be found along the ocean's shore, and our purpose within nature. And "With Jack in Egypt" he embraces the spirit of Jack Kerouac, who represents an era few of us today remember: ...I hear Jack tapping grace- notes onto the scrolling page: his white-magic tantric spells and blitzing ecstasies his prayers for release from the dark 50s furies of America, as if he were a spirit who could not find his Egypt. And finally, he writes psalms of regret and hindsight regarding love and losses he has known. Love lyrics quiet and profound express regret and hope in "Another Life": Things fail - we know this. But these hands once touched you with a grace your body answered, and we knew that pleasure intended to stay: a lazy continuum. Charles Fishman uses words like a jackhammer, a searchlight, a scalpel, and a lover's hand. If you love poetry, you need to read Country of Memory. These words are crafted by an artist.