Some Dance
Description
"To be able to pry apart: / this is object, this is subject / even though (confusion begins) / he can be both. Difficult then / to stand at the mirror and reflect: / I am this. This is what I am." Some Dance is a meditation on stories, the intersection of stories, of things made up, of things imagined, and of things lived - perhaps. Tricks played by memory, scrambling events from life with fiction, are a constant. Ricardo Sternberg seeks a fixed point from which to understand the world, but finds no resolution save for another poem. Everything is in flux, unstable, and leads to unexpected places: a commune in the 1960s, a drunken doctor who deals in contraband, a palm reader, a classroom visited by Jesus, a dance in a darkened kitchen. A lively collection that turns towards the commonplace, classical, and strange, Some Dance masterfully balances serious thought, big ideas, and good humour through surprising, elegant, and colloquial expressions.
Reviews
"All the hallmarks of Sternberg’s best verse are here: the playful tenor, the electric prosody, the self-assurance. Who else would have the guts to tell off the muse to open their finest book?" Arc Poetry Magazine
"The narrators and protagonists of Some Dance live their stories to a tune that is at once smart, humorous, graceful, and sad. Like the music of the spheres in the title poem, Sternberg's voice is more human because it is slightly off, modulating between
“… Sternberg is a master of a certain sort of poem: a delightful poem of conversational semi-formal aplomb that is charmingly witty, gently self-deprecating, and disarmingly poignant. If you let Some Dance spin you across its polished parquetry, you won’t
"This seductive volume's tone is bittersweet. Engagingly at ease with the occult and the magical - palmistry, crystal gazing, auspices, prestidigitation - its poems are nonetheless earthy. The Elizabeth Bishop of her Brazilian poems would be delighted." Stephen Yenser, Department of English, UCLA