In these richly-imagined poems, Amy England quite literally recreates the art form, showing us in poem after poem new ways to dazzle. Yet she makes us, somehow, perfectly comfortable, right at home. Endlessly smart, sensuous, funny, these poems make us gasp with recognition and pleasure. They won’t sit still: they perform for us.

“Babelujah” exults the poet, creating one of her worlds within words within worlds, where sound shapes sense, and sense is the future overtaking us, right now, zipping up fast out of nowhere. Amy England’s verse is full-bore polyphonic, textured, touchable, wrenching, celebratory. These bravados thrill with their gymnastic tumbling, their defiance of gravity—the law, and honoring of gravity—the mode. They are, these jewels, new-world brilliant, hauntingly inventive, ultimately transporting.

What falls from the sky? What, exactly, is it crows say when they gather together? Should you trust a snake with a monocle? What does the poet see in her sleep? Read on. On The Flute Ship Castricum, the muse is a library is a man in a white shirt, the mud tablets of the law are still wet (there’s time!), but hurry, the tourists are out in force. In these richly-imagined poems, Amy England quite literally recreates the art form, showing us in poem after poem new ways to dazzle. Yet she makes us, somehow, perfectly comfortable, right at home. Endlessly smart, sensuous, funny, these poems make us gasp with recognition and pleasure. They won’t sit still: they perform for us.

Format: paperback
ISBN: 978-0-971031-03-6

Amy England received a B.A. in English from Brandeis University, an M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Ph.D. in English and creative writing from the University of Denver. Her book of collages, For the Reckless Sleeper, was published by American Letters and Commentary in 2011. Her work has appeared in journals such as TriQuarterly, Fence, McSweeney’s, Field, and Denver Quarterly, and is anthologized in Sites of Insight (University of Colorado Press, edited by James Lough) and Best American Poetry 2001 (Simon and Schuster, edited by Robert Hass). She teaches at the writing program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Examples of her translations of Japanese poetry, as well as other projects, are available at speedingplanet.net

Whether it’s Japan or Chicago, the white rooms of an empty house or the empty walls of monastery, a vivid magical-realist sense of possibility laces these evocative locations together—swiftly. England’s work is a new form of traveling. —Cole Swensen

“Can’t See Fuji/Interesting” Open door

Frame for our

Done labor:

Downrush of slope, slither of dark

Brown scree (whispering

Vesicular basalt), and up

Lumbering cut, path marked with white

Cast down trash. We sat on the floor

Of the seventh station, eating dinner,

And watched the open square

Plaster over

With iris blue

Fog of absolute

Opacity

Work dimmed away, way

Undone. It was late, and we had just

Escaped erasure.

Bite and then bite

Of steam and rice in the

Warmed throat, eyes fixed

As if on the movie’s most

Exciting moment, Ice or iris wall

Of arriving night.

Endnotes

“The barbarian heart is hard to fathom; the Throne ponders

And dares not relax its armed defense…

Do we not bear ox knives to kill but a chicken,

Trade our most lovely jewels for thorns?”

-Rai Sanyoo

To “The Birth of the Land”

Complete and solidify this drifting land! This commanded the heavenly deities.

Izanagi and Izanami: He-who-invites and She-who-invites

Floating Heavenly Bridge: The six quarters are east west, north south, above below.

They held counsel together: When I met Reiko the first time, the cafeteria around us immediately became ugly. America, illuminated by her exile, was shabby, used, cheap,

saying, Is there not a country beneath? Cf. Coen, “In the observed latitude of 24 deg. 6 minu. saw, shortly after the noon, a large band of foam, mixed with a turbulence of current, wherein we saw many Portuguese Man-of-War and rock-weed, and round jelly-fishes and a piece of wood; which might be sure signs of land; but could see no land.”

Thereupon they thrust down the Jewel Spear of Heaven, and groping about therewith: As the plane descended there were gaps in the clouds, through which a crabbed, various scenery, the brief mirror gleam of drowned fields

found the ocean. A man. Looking out at Nagasaki Bay from the balcony of his study.

They stirred the salt water koworo-koworo “In the Morning at dawning it began to blow stiffly from the S.S.E., so that the sea within a short time became violently hollow, caused by the current which runs against the wind, and the sea which beats against the grounds; and a dense mist set also in… . It is here everywhere high land, what is to be seen in the draught

And the brine from the spear coagulated and became an island which received the name of Ono-goro-jima you find a low-lying bight, bearing North, and the high sand-dune, appearing like Kyckduyn at Huysduynen. This point we gave the name of Santduynige Hoeck, and is from the witte gepleckte hoeck, N.E. by N. about 12 leagues.”

The two deities thereupon descended and dwelt in this island (easier said). A man sitting in a winter house on the mud fan of Deshima. Four years in coming to Japan, he is now twenty paces from it, but cannot get there.

Accordingly they wished to become husband and wife together, and to produce countries. Accordingly I became a professional alien in a small trading company, staring out windows, pretending to compose a business letter.

… made Ono-goro-jima the center of the pillar of the land. I, on the other hand, can’t see any land.

Then the male deity inquired of the female deity, In thy body, is there aught formed? Thunberg faithfully followed the theories of Linnaeus, who insisted that the generative organs were the key to classifying plants,

She replied, saying, My body, formed though it be formed, comparing calyx to labia majora, corolla to labia minora,

has one place which is formed insufficiently. Earth the plant’s belly, vasa chylifera the roots, bones stem, lungs leaves, heart heat

Then Izanagi said, my body… has one place… which is formed to excess. There are sheets of pressed flowers on Thunberg’s table. Aster dubius. Amethystea caerulea. Verbena officialis, common vervain, Juno’s tears. It grows everywhere. He writes:

Therefore, I would like to take that place in which my body is formed to excess and insert it into that place in thy body which is formed insufficiently, and thus give birth to the land. How would that be? “I therefore earnestly desire you to permit me to sojourn on the mainland a sufficient time to accomplish my research, to our two countries’ mutual benefit.”

Now the male deity turning by the left, and the female by the right, Reiko, whose name means the sound of jewels, ultimate debutante, idea of east, married her gardener lover,

they went round the pillar of the land separately and nothing as interesting has happened to her since, to her relief. The world has narrowed to home again, and caught me in its pinch.

When they met together on the other side, the female deity spoke first: In the case of Salvia japonica, the two stamens within the bilabiate corolla meet late in anthesis,

Ana-ni-yasi, I have met with a comely youth! touching their anthers to the forked pistil, and then curl back around the inflexed outer lobes of the lower lip.

Izanagi was displeased: How is it that thou, a woman, shouldst have been the first to speak? “I hope you will not think me unmindful of your profound hospitality in this request…Your obedient servant, Carl Thunberg, physician to the Jan Compangie embassay.”

Nevertheless, they commenced to live as husband and wife. Rei, whose name is an arrow from a point, idea of east, doubtful star.

And gave birth to LEECH-CHILD, who even at the age of three could not stand upright. “At the time 3 glasses of the second watch had passed, saw still the light of our consort, but lost sight of it soon.”

Accordingly, they gave birth to the ROCK-CAMPHOR-REED-BOAT-OF-HEAVEN, in which they placed the leech child, and abandoned it to the winds. “With God’s help, we got clear of the land. Looking around for our consort [that is, the flute-ship Castricum], but could nowhere see her, over which we were sad again, did not know what to think whether she was lost or not.”

Nor did their minds take pleasure in the next birth, which was of the island Ahaji. “The island which will not meet,” i.e., is not satisfactory. May also be interpreted as “my shame.” The characters with which this name is written mean “foam road.” Perhaps the true derivation is “millet-land.”

To “Princess Yamato and Prince Plenty”

After this Yamato-toto-hi-momo-so-bime no Mikoto (Princess Japan; ni, sun, + hon, origin; Idea, that is, of East)

became the wife of Onomochi (also O-mono-nushi, the Great Land-lord God). I work on the tenth floor, in Nihonbashi, not far from that hotel where the Dutch ambassador stayed each year to greet the emperor. The physician was always a great draw, and a hundred scholars of Edo came to question him.

This god, however, was never seen in the daytime. What is unfamiliar one sees utterly, with the staring of an infant (feel the eyes go round and blue),

but then how do I know what I have seen? “As my Lord comes only at night, I am unable to view his August countenance distinctly.” I must study the map all over again. That night is North is old age, winter water, black tortoise. South, the noon where I am now, is phoenix fire, red of weddings.

The spring that Thunberg waited for is a topiary dragon, East, childhood, blue (for blue read green).”I beseech him therefore to delay a while:” The year seems to have stopped at June. Each day the hot concrete drives me in and up, to office to apartment, to any removal no matter how unsatisfactory. “That I may look upon the majesty of his beauty.” The Great God in the night.

When the gods decided to create more lands, they faced the problem of language. The world was not yet born, and the sounds of creation could be heard faintly in the distance. Like the soft echo of a god’s laughter reverberating across the sea, each syllable carried an idea. They pondered whether to speak in syllables or in stanzas, whether to sing or to chant, or perhaps even to dance.

Thus, language became the first currency in the creation of the world, and the gods labored tirelessly, creating hills and rivers from their words, trees and creatures from their songs. And when their labor was done, they rested beneath the shade of a tree, watching as the new world spun slowly into existence.

In the land of dreams, the flowers whispered in colors that had never been seen, and the moonlight was soft with secrets that only the stars knew. From the smallest pebble to the largest mountain, everything was imbued with the energy of that first word spoken by the gods. “Let there be light,” they said, and thus the world was born, glowing with a soft, eternal brilliance.

This brilliance is what we seek when we climb to the highest peak, or gaze upon the stars. It is the light that guides us, even in the darkest hours, and the voice that calls us forward, urging us to continue the work of creation. For the gods, though silent now, have left us their gift—language, the most sacred of tools to create and shape the world. And so, the cycle continues.

The gods, though hidden in their silence, still speak to us through the winds, the waves, and the fire. Every echo is their voice, every ripple is their touch. And we, the children of their creation, must listen, must learn, and must continue the work they began.

And in the end, when the last of the hills has been formed and the last word spoken, the gods will return. They will see the world they created, and smile upon the beauty of their labor, knowing that it has been passed down, generation by generation, in the language of the land.

To them, it was enough to create a world that would never stop evolving, a world that would always speak in the tongues of those who came before. It is a world that we too must speak into existence.

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