Prince of the Air. Poems by Robert Fanning, selected by Ron Mohring as Number Three in Volume Twelve of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.
Release date: August 9, 2024 [49 copies]
25 pages
$12.00
Cover: vintage end papers.
“Robert Fanning sings worlds into being with daring, acrobatic syntax and spellbinding linguistic dexterity. He’s as adept as Houdini (the protagonist and subject of many of these poems), suspending us over existential abysses with playful nuance. Through contemplating the escape artist’s identities (one early name for him was Prince of the Air), these poems interrogate mutability. Whether wrestling with Robert Frost’s locked room, stealing keys under tongues, or courting im/mortality, death is always one anxious slip away. He announces: there’s nothing as holy as want. And we believe him. And when Houdini says: Let’s decipher the dark inside / us, let long hours like chains / slide off, those chains—of flesh and spirit—get sloughed off by the magnetic pole of language as it torques and twists. There is no escape from the pull of these playfully profound poems; surrender is the only escape.”
–David Allen Sullivan, author of Black Butterflies over Baghdad
“Even in smallish doses, Robert Fanning’s work in words is mighty tonic, succor and comfort, and provocation. Read and be healed.”
–Thomas Lynch, author of Bone Rosary: New and Selected Poems
Robert Fanning is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: Severance, Our Sudden Museum, American Prophet, and The Seed Thieves, as well as two chapbooks: Sheet Music and Old Bright Wheel. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, The Atlanta Review, Waxwing, thrush, The Cortland Review, The Common, and many other journals. He is a Professor of English at Central Michigan University, as well as the Founder/Facilitator of the Wellspring Literary Series in Mt. Pleasant, MI., and the Founder/Director of PEN/INSULA POETRY, a resource for Michigan poets.
Tether of Yearning
How it eyed me wildly, sea and idle,
knew me river through. Slipped in on
the gloaming, drowning was floating,
a field for the need-flooding dark.
How it eyed me, blood obsidian,
drift of the moon-hemmed clouds.
Hymn of wind-hum, hymn of sway,
sparking the blood-threading wick.
Seeding the stalk, dew at the tip,
how it teased me summerlong.
How it deftly lipped every cusp.
Caught me with tether, caught me
with web, wanted me song-drawn
and strewn. How it gazed me, saying
soon. Rose as an ocean, blushed
and swollen, breaching flesh and vein.
How it ushered me wildly with tongue.
How it eyed me sweetly—eyed me
and then some, willed me—singing
come. Come shore in the mist, come
cotton on a stick, come kiss in the pink
candy light. For want of a God, old ghost
how it eyed me, ripped to be altered
and spun. Pried me with yearning, whole
where it eyed me, reaching me ripe for
the spill. Wild how it knew me—eyed me
for learning: there’s nothing as holy as want.
[ Our thanks to The Midwest Quarterly for first publishing this poem ]
- Limited edition: only 24 copies are available. Order yours here.
- Thank you for supporting this poet!
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