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    Thunderbird
    Thunderbird
    Thunderbird
    Ebook99 pages42 minutes

    Thunderbird

    By Dorothea Lasky

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    • Public anticipation for Lasky’s third book is high, following her critically acclaimed debut, AWE, and 2010’s Black Life (still frequently reviewed and talked about in poetry circles).

    • Although Lasky has a particularly strong following among young readers, her work has that rare quality of offering something to every reader. Elements of confessionalism, feminism, the gothic and the grotesque form a potent and unmistakable concoction known for inducing laughter just before twisting the knife.

    • We expect Thunderbird to be high on the academic radar. Lasky is popular among MFA students and professors, and has taught in a multitude of venues, from graduate writing programs to elementary schools. Her poems are instructive in the use of a personal voice, contemporary spirituality, the poetic line, and heightened honesty and emotion.

    • Lasky publicly identifies with Sylvia Plath, and her work shares an affinity with Plath's. This affinity is especially strong in Thunderbird, her most powerful work to date.

    • Thunderbird is as stylistically accessible as her previous work, but new readers and fans alike will be astounded by the continued maturity of Lasky's craft. Here, she expertly blurs identity, and like Plath before her, penetrates the underbelly of the psyche.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWave Books
    Release dateOct 26, 2012
    ISBN9781933517704
    Thunderbird
    Author

    Dorothea Lasky

    Dorothea Lasky is the author of six full-length collections of poetry and prose: ROME and Animal, Milk, Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE. Born in St. Louis in 1978, her poems have appeared in POETRY, The New Yorker and The Paris Review, among other places. She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People about Poetry and the co-author with Alex Dimitrov of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University's School of the Arts and directs the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program.

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      Book preview

      Thunderbird - Dorothea Lasky

      Baby of air

      Baby of air

      You rose into the mystical

      Side of things

      You could no longer live with us

      We put you in a little home

      Where they shut and locked the door

      And at night

      You blew out

      And went wandering through the sea and sand

      People cannot keep air in

      I blow air in

      I cannot keep it in

      I read you a poem once

      And you called it beauty

      And then I read you another one and

      You called it harmony air

      My brother is not air, he is water

      He is not a baby, he is older than me

      And when he brushes the hair from my face

      I cannot see him, but he surrounds me

      I cannot see you baby of air

      I put you in your bed and you get out

      I put you in the air and you blend

      I put you on the beach and you blow out

      Like an air bird, flying and flying

      I find other things similar to you

      And like you, they are air and

      Are nothing eventually

      I am not made out of air

      I hold your baby body in me

      As I am a mother to you

      I am a mother to you

      My brother is my mother

      He tells me when I have lost you

      To grieve grieve

      He says grieving is good

      He says crying is good

      He says sadness hits you in waves

      Of water and air

      I feel your fine hair hit me when I am sleeping

      I feel your hair hit me in the head

      Will you remember me

      When you breeze upon the other world

      O you are already there

      O you are already there

      My brother tells me, you are already there

      He is already there, he says

      And I cry

      And he tells me

      It is ok to cry

      It is ok to cry,

      He says

      You are not made of air

      It is ok to cry, he says

      When you are not made of air

      I had a man

      Today when I was walking

      I had a man tell me as he passed

      That I was a white bitch (he was white)

      And to not look at him

      Or he was going to ‘fuck me in my little butthole’

      I wandered away

      Who is to say

      I think I am a white bitch

      My butt is big

      But I believe my butthole is little

      This violence that we put on women

      I don’t think it’s crazy

      Someone I know said

      ‘Oh, that man was crazy’

      I don’t think he was crazy

      Maybe he could tell I had a look in my eye

      That wasn’t crazy anymore

      Maybe he could feel the wild cool blood in me

      And it frightened him

      And he lashed out in fear

      Maybe he knew I was the same as him

      But had been born with this kind face and eyes

      Doughlike appurtenances

      What about the day I left

      What happened then

      Still I’m glad he said that to me

      Still I’m glad he was so cruel to me

      What bitter eye knew I had a voice

      To say what men have done to me

      What unkind wind has blown thru my brain

      To make me speak for the wretched

      To speak wretchedly about the ugly

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