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Book Details
Reviews for Language as a Second Language
by George Wallace, editor of Poetry Bay
These are fearless poems that dance on a tightrope of surrealism, wit and irrepressible energy. The tone ranges from scatalogical to sacred. Like the women in one poem who would 'Spank the air like wet fireworks,' or else eat a frog instead of kissing it into a prince, these poems laugh at convention and punish the night like so many roman candles.Ted Bookey offers us mayhem, madness - and then the unexpected tenderness and intimacy of 'His Beautiful Women,' or the sobering moral reflection of 'Kein Warum.' Handle with care - there is dangerous fun inside this book.
by Wayne Atherton, editor of Cafe Review
Ted Bookey's latest book of poems Language As a Second Language contain many delightfully humorous romps infused with a deft sense of familial affability. NU SHU (for Nancy Henry), is one of the rare poems written by a sensitive, intelligent man who truly understands woman-ness. Another of his poems, LISTENING TO CORELLI IN NEW ENGLAND, is a good example of Bookey's equally serious perspective on life; he works the wide range of human emotion with great care.
by Ed Pomerantz, Playwright
Language As A Second Language is pure pleasure. What is so impressive is its range and variety -- so many different voices -- in tone and character I haven't heard before. I Took Her Hand In Mine and Listening To Archangelo are really new and unexpected. And of course the "old" Bookey is in top form, particularly, for one, in the title poem and especially Torture, With Eggs, my favorite, which isn't only a great poem, but a terrific short story and one act play as well!
In this time of paralysis and despair, thanks for reminding me that the act of language and poetry really counts.
by John Berbrich, editor of Barbaric Yawp
A poetry chapbook that you can have some fun with if you pay attention. Bookey plays with words and some of the poems are filed with puns. Bad Poem begins "Bad Poem verses the page / It's the qualm before the form" and concludes, "this is the bottom line."
Although humor shines from every page, Bookey is not merely having fun and includes serious work among the witticisms.
by Baron Wormser, Poet Laureate of Maine
Bookey's poetry is exactly what poetry should be - irrepressible. At turns meditative and playful, he has his astute finger on the mystery of the human pulse. His language is scintillating, wry and overflowing with brio. His humanity is always palpable.
Sample from Language as a Second Language
Language As A Second Language
I rushed tingling to the men’s room where I sat blissfully
copying her words to my notebook after my Bronx cousin
had spritzed across the restaurant, “Hey, you, waideh!
Where’s the wawdeh that I orduhed for my dawdeh !
Someone could shrivel up & bust of thirst in here.”
Awesome, I thought, that any language could be
So fraught with such exuberant fraughtage.
Nowadays it is the nuggeted poetry
of my neighbor Ernie Pratt I envy
& scribble down, that Down-East
Maine-speak: if I say Nice day,
Ernie, how he drawls back, Yep,
But when them clouds bust
It’s gonna po-uh buckits!
Another time & place words flowed from an urban spigot.
Here, far from the seltzer of the city, I am the cause
of mirth in others—over 20 years, & for as long as
I am living here, I still can’t pass: what gets lost
in any good translation is translation. As for me
Maine remains a second language, as English did
for Conrad & Nabokov—Oh yeah, I only wish !
So I’m in the Gardiner diner & when the waitress says
You from New York City, right ? I fake big surprise,
say Bronx, howcudja tell ? She says she just knows
when I open my mouth & out comes a cuppacawfee
Yeah, I say, but really, can’tcha tell me how’dja know,
so she gives me: You are not the only one can talk
New York Smartass. The next booth guffaws, so
I shut up that mouth, that only loves & wants
to speak for everything it hears speak to it,
& licks its chops for the sunshine of things
served up in words: it’s what a poet does,
no matter where. & that was long ago
the job I signed on to do for life.
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