A Daily Glance
Simone Muench's Orange Crush is beautiful and sad, history and contemporary. Like her earlier books, the language in this collection stuns with its beauty and flow even when not describing beautiful things:
Trouble came and trouble
brought greasy, ungenerous things:
poke root and bladderwrack,
chalklines in bloody bedrooms
and black reptilian bags
smelling of acetylene.
The "orange" in the book refers to women outside the theater in the 17th century selling oranges (or more), but to me the most interesting use of the orange is in the "Orange Girl Cast," a longer poem with pieces dedicated to women in her Simone's life. The pieces often bring in lines from her friends, such as "We drink in strange trades, skalling over your chest of bees," which refers to Kristy Odelius' collection Strange Trades. This book just confirms what I already knew: that Simone Muench is one of the best contemporary poets.
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