Kate Daniels

Kate Daniels is another poet who is also a professor at Vandy. She is only about 5 feet tall, and very very tiny and petite, with large plastic rimmed glasses that she constantly replaces higher up on her nose. I took a poetry writing course with her. And every week, thirteen of us sat sullenly in our chairs, skittishly blurting out quick and senseless comments... we all sat in fear of her arrival.

Such a tiny woman, who could make you feel like a pea. And her (imaginary) 350lb football player bodyguard was holding his giant foot over you, ready to stomp.

It was an interesting class, and I learned so much.

Her poems are incredible. Full of sensuality, they're meaty, juicy, thick, and they manage to throw you completely off-balance. See what I mean...

Bathing

He always bathed afterwards,
slipping his fine and sticky
genitals over the cool rim
of the porcelain sink.
She lay in the other room
smoking and staring tiredly
out the window. The tiny sounds
of the suds came to her
worrisomely. The suck-suck
sound of his hand lathering
soap into his tight, dark curls.
Then the farewell groan of the drain.
The energetic flap of the towel.
When he was before her again,
his teeth covered by a smile,
the sweat and stench removed,
she studied him from the crushed
bed, admiring his cruel
beauty, her body still marked
and odorous. His, clean
and unstained, amnesiac
already.

Here is a poem from her newest publication, titled Four Testimonies. I haven't even gotten through the whole thing yet, it's so thick. When I say thick, I'm not talking about page numbers (there are only 92). I'm talking about weight, depth, density. This one completely captures the idea of moving from an old comfortable place to a new one (and those of you who have visited my page before know I've had issues with this).

Moving

Old walls are new to me. Someone else's
babies were carried up this cracked brick walk,
sung over the threshold, bedded down
in the tiny orange nursery that gives off
the kitchen or in the low-roofed room upstairs
where I hope to write. Not mine
who took their first steps elsewhere
and never had their portraits posed by the short
stone fence or plucked the blossoms
from the magnolia someone planted
far too near the dank north wall.
Someone else conceived her creatures
here and struggled with the washer
in the cold dark basement. Ancient
fuses, busted lights. Other
infants haunted these nights.
Mine are quiet and sleep straight through,
uneasy in new arrangements of their furniture,
new odors, new echoes. New light on the walls.
New darkness in their hearts. And while
they sleep, I pace my newly purchased
halls choking in wallpaper I'd never choose,
dark paints that sink my spirits. Wrenched
out of context, no depth to new life
yet. On the patio, a pail is ful of water
but it's frozen. My houseplants perished
on the journey here. And the first garment
I retrieve from the packed-up cartons
is a shirt with its pocket torn off, still
wearable, I guess, but capable of carrying
nothing. No money or photos, no map,
no scrap of paper with a telephone number
I need to remember. Not even a pen or a pencil
so I can write my way out of here as fast as possible.