The Abridged History of Rainfall

By Jay Hopler

Jay Hopler's second collection, a mourning song for his father, is an elegy of uproar, a careening hymn to disaster and its aftermath. In lyric poems by turns droll and desolate, Hopler documents the struggle to live in the face of great loss, a task that sends him ranging through Florida's torrid subtropics, the mountains of the American West, the streets of Rome, and the Umbrian countryside. Vivid, dynamic, unrestrained: The Abridged History of Rainfall is a festival of glowing saints and fighting cocks, of firebombs and birdsong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McSweeney's
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944211363

Book preview

I.

WINTER NIGHT FULL OF STARS

I am a winter night full of stars. I am that star, the one you

thought was a plane.

I am the shadow of that plane casting its blackness over the

lake house like a

Shroud. And I am that shroud, black, embroidered

With stars, under which you grew cold that January

Night, laid out upon your catafalque

Of down.

And those feathers

Were as snow in that mortuary air—, floated like snowflakes

in that mortuary air

When the wind came up. And when the wind died down,

They were as snow upon

The ground.

Am I the smoke drifting through the bare branches

Of a Japanese maple—, or am I the Japanese maple, smoke

drifting through its bare branches?

It is not smoke, but light burning

To a fine ash. And in that darkness, may you, like those dark

blooms, shine. Come, O—

Let us to dust

Together.

WHERE IS ALL THIS WATER COMING FROM?

Another dull, unrainy day.

Not warm. Not cool. A little wind, then none.

My mother turns a light on

And sits down on the sofa with a book.

A blue jay lights for an instant

On the back fence. Some clouds wisp by.

Or is that smoke? Some smoke wisps by.

Bright, though distant,

The sound of gunfire. Or a car backfiring.

On the air, the smell of wet wood burning.

But that can’t be—. All day

The clouds have rolled their grim lead

Westward and left us…nothing.

I wonder what she’s reading.

The Unabridged History

Of Rainfall. No, it’s Günter Eich,

Botschaften des Regens. That book, when read

By a widow, in her marriage house, aloud, and in the German,

Makes a man want

To turn his eyes sky-

Ward and confide

His despair to the migrating

Birds. If only there were migrating

Birds.

SELF-PITY IS BETTER THAN NO PITY AT ALL

When the moon’s white push unplumbs the sunflower,

The yellow mums behind my father’s house disappear

In a combustion of butterflies. Too bad

I am not a lover of

Reviews for The Abridged History of Rainfall

[dasam-5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jay Hopler’s “The Abridged History of Rainfall” is a collection of good poetry: many fine lines and phrases, imagery that is true and right. Many of the poems have a clear voice that is one we want to listen to. Others play with archaic voices or the stylized voice of Wallace Stevens. Sometimes the poet seems to undermine his own poetic eloquence:

“A squadron of dragonflies is darning the darkening/yard” is a fine line, but the poet then says:

“Correction: a squadron of dragonflies is darning the air above the darkening/Yard” —- not as strong an image or conceit.

Given that these are poems mourning the loss of his father, some seem a bit precious and others a bit cold. Hopler is at his most eloquent in simplicity, as in lEpitaph”:

I cannot tell you
How many years I have done
This.

Last year when I did this,
My father was alive.l

Still and all, I recommend the collection. It is honest more than effete, precise more than ironic. How do you effectively speak the absence. “Abridged” is a game attempt.