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In Failure Lyric, Kristina Marie Darling captures, with an accuracy few have managed before her, the panicked numbness one feels at the end of a marriage. It is a book in which nothing moves and nobody changes, and yet the poems move together, and yet the people in the poems are changed by the movement of the poems—that is to say, although Failure Lyric tells the story of the end of a marriage, it tells that story not from the perspective of the people involved, but from the perspective of time itself, neither embodied nor personified, but just as it is, pushing and pulling on the people caught in the end of the marriage like the wake of a boat. This way of telling is Darling’s own, and it is miraculous.—Shane McCrae, author of Forgiveness Forgiveness"At the time the glass case was built, the specimen wasn't quite dead." Working the same way memory works, the way dreams work, the poems of Failure Lyric spiral around the death of a relationship like a pack of detectives. Shattered bottles, the envelope full of winter, the birds burying their dead, the wedding dress too heavy or worn by another, the burning orchids: each has its message. Kristina Marie Darling gives us a narrative in images both surreal and everyday that recur and accrete to evoke a sense of deep and irrevocable loss. It's impossible to read without feeling similarly moved. —Janet Holmes, author of HumanophoneKristina Marie Darling’s Failure Lyric begins and ends with erasures, but what remains is nothing short of captivating. Beginnings and endings are bound up in each other as the collection centers around a relationship that seems doomed from the start. Each line branches like an ice crystal into gorgeous imagery that mines the territory between life and death: gardens frozen in full bloom, birds buried in snow, a beloved haunted by the past. This hybrid collection of “failures” catalogs grief by fracturing the world – not to destroy it, but to let in light and make it beautiful.—Kelly Magee, author of Body Language Kristina Marie Darling is the author of nearly twenty books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and Scorched Altar: Selected Poems and Stories 2007-2014 (BlazeVOX Books). Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She was recently selected as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.Book Information:· Paperback: 54 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-193-1$12
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FAILURE LYRIC
KRISTINA MARIE DARLING
B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ] Buffalo, New York
Failure Lyric by Kristina Marie Darling © Copyright 2014 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza Cover image: "Back to Back" by Noah Saterstrom, 12" x 18", mixed media on paper, 2014 First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-193-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014949804 BlazeVOX [books] 131 Euclid Ave Kenmore, NY 14217 [email protected]
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The story can’t begin. An abstraction like human happiness or Hamlet’s vengeance. You can’t fight for the dead, only sleep. No way to begin a story. I intended the blood rushing, the Mahler left open. Even now, you can’t
[FAILURE LYRIC]
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[MINOR FAILURES] When you explained why you were setting the table, I kept mishearing things. I mistook guest for ghost, and before that, Mahler for failure. For awhile, I just stood there, trying to think of something polite to say to you. You told me, quietly, how I would never understand. That I was only a woman who wanted to be a wife. On the table, champagne flutes sparkled. The silver forks shimmered in pairs. That was when I cleared away the dishes. I opened my mouth to speak—
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[BOSTON] The first night I was iced out of the city. Beneath the window, a dead bird covered in snow. You said you had been waiting in the hotel lobby, with your red silk tie, those drinks in tiny cups. At my feet, shattered glass. The finch's broken neck. I just sat there, counting the dirty feathers, its cracked bones. The dead bird said nothing. Still, I couldn't stop looking. Even in the dark, it felt like staring into a mirror.
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[MIRROR] My sister looked at me and said, You choose the love you think you deserve. She poured another cup of herbal tea. Out the window, I see birds burying their dead.
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[BOSTON] On the second night, the city still wouldn't have me. I find myself turning away from photographs. Like that shot of you in a black wool suit. The people who come close to shake your hand. And a sky that looks even colder than the weather. I won't stop pleading with the city. When the lights go out, I try again. And again. All those prayers wasted on a sheet of ice.
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[PRAYER] That you'll appear before me. Like a white horse galloping through the eye of a needle.
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[BOSTON] On the third night, they started leaving the city. That was when I first arrived. A woman at the hotel desk said you'd made a reservation. So I took an elevator to the eighteenth floor. I found frost on every mirror, the locks on the doors sealed shut from the cold. People kept leaving the city, taking their coats and wallets with them. All I could do was wait. When the ice thawed, I realized you were already gone.
