In Praise of Usefulness
Wind Ridge Books, 2014
Available for purchase at Phoenix Books, on Amazon and at independent bookshops everywhere.
In Praise of Usefulness, Angela Patten’s third collection of poetry, finds the expatriate Irish poet once again poised between thoughts of Ireland, the country that engendered her love of language and literature, and America, the country that fostered her development as a woman and a poet. Far from taking a sentimental view of the past, however, these poems take an unflinching look at the challenges involved in relinquishing the sweet assurances of her childhood for the harsher realities of a responsible adult life. With characteristic irony and self-deprecating humor, Patten finds much to praise in everyday life from the ritual of morning coffee to the joys of a hot shower. “What could I do,” she asks, “but savor each incalculable drop?”
Praise for In Praise of Usefulness
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"Patten’s work is, in a manner of speaking, full of the devil. She is a poet who embraces the world and all its sins and foibles, but she’s also full of mischief, teasing (and enchanting) the reader with her surprises. Angela Patten is a champion of working people, in Ireland and in the States, a poet of the everyday ordinary world and the hardworking, honest and decent people who populate it."
—John Surowiecki, Flies, The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats and other books.
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“In Praise of Usefulness, Angela Patten’s third collection of poetry, meditates on the boundaries between childhood and adulthood and Ireland and America...”
Two poems from In Praise of Usefulness
Lonely Planet
“Odors that the smolts experience during this time of heightened sensitivity are stored in the brain and become important direction-finding cues years later, when adults attempt to return to their home streams.” –The Scientific American.
Learning by Rote
Luki at six is learning the names of dinosaurs—
Giganotosaurus, Titanosaurus, Pteranodon.
He marvels at their massive jaws, their claws
and teeth, their appetite for widespread mayhem.
Marvels too at my ignorance of prehistory
science, anatomy, almost everything.
At six I had to memorize the Maynooth Catechism,
learn words like sepulcher, crucifixion, calumniate.
Recite the litany of the seven deadly sins
seven sacraments, seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Cudgel my conscience to deduce
the destructive consequences of my crimes.
Luki prefers the Cretaceous to the Jurassic period.
I liked the names of obscure saints
who were fed to lions in the Coliseum.
He peoples new planets with Lego, colored pencils, paper.
I mapped angelic choirs of Seraphim and Cherubim
Thrones and Dominions, Virtues, Powers
and Principalities, laying up for myself treasures in heaven.
Both of us true believers in what we are told—
spectacular vertebrates, stupefying monsters, flying saints.
I am a fish
the Iraqi man on NPR says quietly
and Baghdad is my sea.
If I do not return to it
I will die.
He is going back to the place
where he watched aghast
as three teenage boys
pulled a man from a car
and shot him in the head
the dark blood seeping down
the narrow street like a scandal.
The place where an old woman
crossing the road to buy bread
her garments billowing
like a ship with black sails
was blown to pieces
by a suicide bomber
who could not bear
to wait his turn at death
but had to rig the race
win by a photo finish
prove himself worthy
of a place in paradise.
Homesick for months
the Iraqi man is happy
now he has made up his mind
to return to the place
where he hopes to be buried
next to his wife, his parents.
The place where his family gathers
to celebrate births and birthdays
eat fattoush, tabbouleh, hummus
remark on the miracle
of merely being alive.
Not like his American colleague
who left his wife for another woman
and now finds himself in a foreign country
missing his passport, visa, compass.
The Iraqi man no longer wonders
if his homing instinct represents
fidelity or fiction.
Lucky to be a fish
that loves its bowl.
Listen to a podcast Interview with Angela Patten on
Write the Book, a Burlington, Vermont podcast about writing.
Vermont poet Angela Patten, author of the new collection, In Praise of Usefulness, published by Wind Ridge Books of Vermont.
This week’s Write The Book Prompt is the one that led Angela Patten to write the poem "Tabula Rasa." Her husband, Daniel Lusk, recommended it to her; write about about something that happened to you that you can not remember. This will probably mean something that happened when you were so small, you don’t have access to those memories. But I suppose it could mean something that happened when you were medicated, or ill, or asleep. Maybe even something that happened to you before you were born.