"The Last Usable Hour" by Deborah Landau (published 2011)

In a world of scrolling, where I am constantly reading more of the same, unimpressive, kind but not potent, charming but not soulful stuff, stuck amidst the Lang Leavs, Rupi Kaurs, and Nayyirah Waheeds (sorry, not sorry, in my humble opinion only)... Deborah Landau's small book of poetry, "The Last Usable Hour" struck a resonant, harmonious chord with me. There's not too much to *see* in this book. Her poems are textured emotionally and are sparsely descriptive. Sometimes she seems to be talking to herself ("What the hell do you think you're doing?), at just the tip of a certain kind of madness. She remembers little things people say, just a line or two, or how they seemed ("Across the table his mind right there... behind his talking face") she thinks things to herself that conflict with what is actually happening, she's distracted yet not, sometimes stuck in trains of thought, and always drawn in by desire. What is this desire? It's nothing, she seems to write, within her laconic prose. It's there, but I'm unaffected, detached, distant. Just like... just like. Streams of consciousness. My favorite aspect of "The Last Usable Hour", and I think I'll probably find this in more poetry by Landau, is her ability to capture the essence of the moment without becoming taken away by it. She is coolly distant, but fully present. Observant and sentient. It's a melancholic sort of beauty to do this, I know. It's for those who anticipate the end of the party while the party is still gaining momentum. Who gets left behind? Who stays? How does it feel in the morning? How does it feel now? What is it that I want? What is it that I am doing that is just this automatic obscurity of action and reaction? She is sentient but is she real? And though perhaps there is a sense of desolation and the fact of being crestfallen, still she seems to say: thank you for letting me feel this. Her poetry connects this desolate and crestfallen state of the soul to her immediate geography. Her place. (In fact, New York.) Her "siren-wracked, river-bordered, pigeon shitted, skyline bunched, and branchless" setting. But amidst this... "such spooked radiance, the creeping up of it". Oh, "The Last Usable Hour" reminds me why I love poetry. It's the essence of the thing, whatever it - the thing - is. Nothing else needs to be done, because, when you're breathing in life poetry, you're already there. "...and death in the air like the smell of tunnels... beautiful and defaced"