Constellations: Poems From My Universe
Richard Fireman believes a good poem should reflect both individual and universal perspectives, and strives to do so in his work, expressing his thoughts and feelings about both the microcosm of his life's experiences and the macrocosm of the universe at large. Each of his poems are constellations in the sky of his life, presented to the reader for interpretation and meaning. Here is the world as I see it, he says; this is how it seems to me. We are all in the same world, looking up at the stars, and this is my viewpoint, one man in the vast unknowable universe.
Constellations are our attempt to make sense of the universe.
We create patterns in the sky, trying to understand what God might mean,
and write our stories as if we knew.
These poems are my constellations. The words are stars.
May their light be a guide to find your way home.
Scape
Ancestors called them constellations,
populated the heavens with stories,
made the giant wheel turn
to human rhythms, pushed
the wheel turning night
to day turning life
to tales of gods and men and women turning
into gods, conquering monsters as we conquer
the turning of time, guiding
the wheel with imagination's surging push,
through any black hole yet unthought-of,
past any edge at the end of any world.
New Worlds Need Names
This time it was all going well
but as we watched the TV
she said it's going too well,
something's going to happen.
At the end of the show I got ready to leave
and she asked me to take her home.
She was home. She didn't know
like she didn't know I came to see her each week
or what a galaxy was
or how to tear a tissue.
She couldn't understand how I knew she'd be there,
how I'd know what planet to point the ship at.
As I write this I hear on the news
we sent up a rocket to catch a piece of a comet.
On the way home on the radio is a story
of snow falling on the living and dead.
Outside the car freezing rain is falling.
Last week my mother said Pop is coming
but didn't know whose or the difference.
In the old days they were wise to make constellations
when they didn't know where they were heading,
to recognize what was too far away.
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Immediately after the turn of the millennium, in the organization that sponsored the local university's literary magazine, Richard Fireman's poems dazzled the peer reviewers. That he was not an English major made no difference to the students, faculty, and staff who produced and read the magazine. For years they admired his talent with the English language, accepted several of his submissions, and read those poems with enthusiasm.
At that time, many of his poems explored the bittersweet space between love and loss, and the painful, inevitable progression from the former
to the latter. He endured it all. But by also recording it all, he experienced some relief, and evoked in his readers similar emotions as well as the comforting hope that, eventually, after the loss, everything will be OK.
Since then, his poetic talents have continued to grow, and the scope of his vision has broadened to explore many other aspects of life. In other words, everything is OK. Readers of this volume can expect to experience a challenging aspect of our shared humanity, and may gain valuable insights into how to endure the process of loss by transforming it into art.
Stanley Blair, Ph.D. Associate Professor, English Department Monmouth University
_____
Embedded in Fireman's Constellations is an invitation to "stay awhile while we have time." This is easy, considering his tone, image and language, as we bob between infinity and his daily routine, which looks very much like ours: cat, dog, love. He is adept at bringing the heavens closer as he searches for something to rely on in our ever-changing world, facing his own death as he has his father's, his mother's, his friends'. He tells it like it is for him, which deeply involves our own musings. In flirting with the unknowable, he discovers his longed-for wisdom, the constellations still there to help us know where we are headed, right here, connected with each other and all those stars.
Perie Longo, PhD Santa Barbara, CA Poet Laureate Emerita Author of Baggage Claim
_____
It's true that poets have always been obsessed by certain subjects: time, mortality, love, and the stars. Rich Fireman's head is always looking into the skies, moving between galaxies, and wording his way through the times of his life. Rich Fireman's work is direct and frank, filled with yearning and nostalgia while still embracing the moment. Torn between his inability to believe in God, and his wanting to believe, he is at his best when unsentimental and grounded in the present.
This is poetry that, despite its title, is highly accessible and grounded by the sorrow of impermanence. Fireman invites us into a "grammar of stars," "shifts of wind," "miles of space between the moments of our lives," and "trees that are branches of love" as he takes us into "the skymap of time."
If you are in recovery from loss-and who isn't?-this book will knock on the door of your heart.
Sherry Reiter, Phd, Director of the Creative "Righting" Center, Co-Author of Writing Away the Demons: Stories of creative Coping Through Transformative Writing
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