About the Book
Bird Conjuring: Good omen, like a sudden appearance of birds, or just an inordinate urge to ascend.
The ancients knew words to be magic vehicles that when spoken or, better yet, sung with intention and intensity, could amend or alter trends and events. The power of the word. Seeking origins and consonances led to shaman songs and incantations, charms and spells where words are tools of transformation and healing. There are resonances too with gnomic verses and riddles, aphorisms and adages. The black soil of the primordial. Drawn by an insistent urge toward utterance, David Cloutier's poems emerge, unspooling meaning within meaning, image on image, one with its sonic architecture. The aural qualities of words become an arena, or better, playground. He says, "Poems are like dust, evidence of some decades' walking." Chronologically arranged (mostly), Bird Conjuring has five sections: Another Time, Tracks of the Dead, Other Lights, Pinnacles and Others, and Nightscripts, each with a focus or concern. There are several long poem sequences, opening horizons. Whatever else, this poetry tracks an inner direction along another axis of meaning. Bird Conjuring evokes, invokes and lays a humble claim to the legacy of orphic utterance: poem-making (poesis, to make).
About the Author :
David Cloutier grew up in New England. He pursued creative and cultural studies and graduated from Brown University with an M.A. in Creative Writing. Always a poet, he has worked as a teacher, literary publisher, arts council director, and festival producer in California, New Mexico, North Carolina and Rhode Island. Notably, he created and directed the Monterey World Music Festival (1997-2003), in an effort to expand global cultural awareness. He has translated poems by several 20th century French poets including Jean Laude and Claude Esteban. Additionally, in his search for poetic origins and consonances, he compiled several volumes of the oral poetry of the world. A seeker, sometimes finder, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Carolyn Burns, psychotherapist.
Review :
"Cloutier brings us back to the land, to the simplicity we have forgotten, how to live among elemental forms life began with, how to turn an ear to the soil and listen to every nuance. There is power in the staccato of this language. It is the power we feel when poetry reaches the level of mythology." -Patrick Bizarro, Raccoon, Memphis
"The poet's voice merges with the shaman's voice... Impossible to read this silently. The song, the chant must be heard. The texture of weaving moves behind the song, the revival of craftsmanship surging up again out of natural sources... A strong cinema-like sequence enables him to focus on specific loss, specific wonder, the power of simple, natural forms arising out of physical objects." -James Schevill, American Poetry Review, Philadelphia
"Restructuring our thinking and redirecting our vision in order to penetrate beneath the skin of these poems, we understand not only 'the heart's tree' but also the tree's heart. We have a responsibility, Cloutier seems to say. to comprehend both spiritually...." -Konrad Hopkins and Ronald van Roekel, Trends, Paisley, Scotland
He reminds me of William Carlos Williams whose always moral vision gives an uplift to experience... This intuitive logic, this feeling of paradox, runs throughout. His lines are like 'the lightning script emblazoned across the night.' His poems bear all experience in a 'voice that moves through marks.'" -Shelby Stephenson, The Pilot, Southern Pines, North Carolina
"Clearly, the poems achieve their effects through the poet's purity of intent. The sense of forest quiet gives each word a chance to reveal the sound of its bell." -Henry Gould, East Side/West Side, Providence, Rhode Island
