That kid in seventh grade who went overnight from scrawny and skinny to muscled jock claiming he had to shave twice a day. The girl in the pink sweater who moved through the crowded halls of eighth grade like she was parting the Red Sea. The furtive glance at the skinny girl in glasses rewarded with an equally furtive return glance. The physics teacher who was barely this side of crazy. The best friend in high school whom you planned the rest of your life with. And don’t forget the music—the best music ever, with nothing to match it before or since.
This is the stuff that puts the form in our formative years. And this is the stuff of Dave Malone’s newest collection of poetry, You Know the Ones.
Malone doesn’t confine himself to those middle school and high school years. He knows what shapes us is also the landscape we’re born and raised in, and the people who are never more than a few feet away—the grandparents, the mothers, the fathers, the brothers and sisters, the extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and distant relatives whom we’re not sure are really relatives but it doesn’t matter because they’ve been part of the landscape forever. (On my mother’s side of the family, it was a woman named Danella Rose, whom I always thought of as an aunt. She came to all the family gatherings; she gave me and my brothers $2 on every birthday. One day I discovered she wasn’t related but was really one of my mother’s best friends from the church she grew up in.)
And then the love stories, the stories that last, sometimes even longer than the love that inspired them. This wouldn’t be a Dave Malone poetry collection without love poems, and You Know the Ones includes them as well, intimate looks at the love a man has for his wife. Illustrating several of the poems are photographs, old ones, the kinds you find in your mother’s scrapbook, when you realize for the first time that she was once 17 and had dreams.
You read these poems, and you think of where you came from, the joys and horrors of your teen years, and the love you experience for the people you’re closest to. I had a friend just like Mike.
Don’t Touch
You know the ones.
Close friends, high school days.
They are the best where they are.
Chiseled in time.
For me the most
It’s Mike. Twig-shaped tough
Who would be, mark his words,
The Crue’s drummer.
The Kansas light
Drummed upon him
On days we shot
Hoops one on one.
But now I know
Time has beaten us
Into days of mildest
Living, slowness.
And yet on some
Sweet, brooding nights,
The gold of August:
A brisk, slam dunk.
Dave Malone
We didn’t play basketball (I was rather hopeless in the sport and a bit too short) but I know what it is to have a friend, “chiseled in time,” locked in those memories of youth and music and new experience and just beginning to explode from a disappearing childhood.
Malone is the author of six other poetry collections: 23 Sonnets (2011); Under the Sycamore (2011); Poems to Love and the Body (2011); Seasons in Love (2013); View from the North 10: Poems After Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (2013); and O: Love Poems from the Ozarks (2015). He’s also published two novels, Not Forgiven, Not Forgotten (2012) and Purgatory: A Good Way to Die (2014), and a two-act play, The Hearts of Blue Whales (2013).
Malone may write about his beloved Missouri Ozarks, but what he writes is universal. Family, friends, geography – these are the things that shape us and launch us, the things that simultaneously hold us and push us away, and upward, and the things that ultimately matter.
Related:
Tweetspeak’s review of O: Love Poems from the Ozarks
Tweetspeak’s review of View from the North 10: Poems After Mark Rothko’s No. 15
Tweetspeak’s review of Under the Sycamore
Journey into Poetry by Dave Malone
Tiny Machine, Love Poem from Dave Malone
Unmarked, Love Poem from Dave Malone
Photo by Luke Price, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, and Poetry at Work.
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How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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Sandra Heska King says
For me it was “Aunt” Alma and “Uncle” Dale. My parents were so close to them that my name would have been Sheryl if they hadn’t chosen that name for their firstborn who came along three months before me. (I never thought to ask if that was a problem.) I might have even been a teen before I figured things out.
Seriously, I need another bookcase.
Glynn says
I could write a novel about my Aunt Laurentine, who was fond of telling her sisters that she was the cultured one in the family. She loved her dogs and cats, too, so much so that she liked to keep them close, even after they were gone. The family called her backyard “the pet cemetery.”
Sandra Heska King says
A pet cemetery might have been better than a bunch of little urns lined up on the fireplace mantel…
Maureen says
Glynn and Sandra,
I think I might best your stories of pets’ final resting place. My maternal grandmother kept hers in the freezer, so loathe was she to cremate or bury them. Several were discovered after she died in 1990. She left her estate to the SPCA.
Dave Malone says
Oh my goodness, now that’s a story!
Beth Gaither says
Love you Malone! When do I get an autographed copy of the latest book?? Your old UB buddy, Gator
Dave Malone says
Hey old friend!
I’ll message you, and we’ll make it happen. 🙂
Sandra Heska King says
Oh, good heavens! Yes, Maureen. You win!
Maureen says
Congratulations to Dave! And thank you, Glynn, for spotlighting Dave’s new collection.
Dave Malone says
Thanks, Maureen!
Dave Malone says
These are great stories, Sandra and Glynn. 🙂
Beth Gaither says
Hey Malone! Nice picture! Would love to see you!
Gator
Bethany R. says
Such a great description, Glynn: “The girl in the pink sweater who moved through the crowded halls of eighth grade like she was parting the Red Sea.”
You Know the Ones, is such a great title. Love how it connects the reader and writer right away. I enjoyed the featured poem, and that wonderful phrase, ”Twig-shaped tough.”
The stories in the Comments are fascinating!
Dave Malone says
Glynn’s opening is killer, isn’t it? Thanks, Bethany, for the kind words. I’ve always struggled with book titles, and I think this choice beats its lame working title, Family and Friends. I’m glad you resonated with one of my favorite phrases in the book. Btw, you can craft a pretty stellar line, yourself. 🙂
Bethany R. says
I’m chuckling at your comment about the working title.
Would love to read your new book in full and take in more favorite phrases. (Btw, thanks so much for reading some of my lines, and sharing that—made my day.)
Dave Malone says
🙂 I’m glad. And you, mine!