Undress, She Said

By Doug Anderson

In Doug Anderson's newest collection, Undress, She Said, we accompany a speaker undaunted by the complex reckonings of history, evolving relationships, and an aging body, a speaker that, besieged by a storm, resolves to "set out into it, the wind / playing the rigging like a harp." Over and over in these pages, Anderson makes music of the gales and rain and turbulent sea. These poems voyage from the subtle violences of a religious upbringing to complex remembrances of time served in the Vietnam War to contemporary emergencies of real and political plagues. Yet, no matter the subject, compassion rudders these lyrics as they turn always and at last to myriad beloveds-the enigmatic Angel of Death, literary and mythological influences, kind strangers, the constantly elusive and elusively constant moon. These words reach out to the reader the way the poet addresses frozen joy from the confines of winter: "Red berry trapped in ice, / let me touch you."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781954245358

Doug Anderson

Doug Anderson is executive director of the Rueben Job Center for Leadership Development at Dakota Wesleyan University. Following several successful pastorates in the North Indiana Conference, he has consulted churches and led workshops for 20 years, and is well known throughout the North Central Jurisdiction. He is also an author, The Race to Reach Out: Connecting Newcomers to Christ in a New Century was published in 2004.

Book preview

Also by Doug Anderson

Poetry

Horse Medicine

The Moon Reflected Fire

Blues for Unemployed Secret Police

Memoir

Keep Your Head Down

UNDRESS, SHE SAID

DOUG ANDERSON

Four Way Books

Tribeca

Copyright © 2022 Doug Anderson

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Anderson, Doug, 1943- author.

Title: Undress, she said / Doug Anderson.

Description: New York : Four Way Books, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022003870 | ISBN 9781954245242 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781954245358 (epub)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3551.N35848 U93 2022 | DDC 811/.54--dc23/eng/20220128

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003870

This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations including the NEA, NEA Cares, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Contents

Prophesy

Part I. Love in Plague Time

All Over Town

The Border

In Plague Time

When the Plague Came

God Will Provide

Wings

Masturbation

The Angel of Death

I Was Preaching to the Choir

Lea’s Bottle Ship Poetics

My Heart

Crown of Thorns Blues

I Gave My Hands the Day Off

Orchid

Invocation

Centauress

Skeleton of Water

Vulnerable

Pastor Fred

Out There Are Things that Sting

Near Chesterfield, New Hampshire

South of Laramie

The New Aesthetic

Old Farm House Fallen in on Itself

Late October

Family Court

Mathematics

Mother’s Day

The Guard at the Nutbush National Bank

Poetry, a River

Roman Charity

Part II. The War Doesn’t End

Splibs and Chucks

Driving Down Route 9 Last Night

Tet, 1968-2015, a Valentine

Killing with a Name

The Good Doctor

Rewind

Fishing on the Lunar New Year

Little Chi

The War Doesn’t End

Somewhere South of Danang, 1967

Saturday Night in Hanoi

Ho Chi Minh at the Omni Parker House

Part III. Homage

Homage to Li Po

The Stars of the Purple Hidden Enclosure

The End of Empire

Homage to Po-Chui

Anonymous Civil Servant, T’ang Dynasty

What They Say about Li-Po

Two Poets Drinking

What Sappho Said to Me

Landays

Thank You, Mahmoud Darwish

Remembering James Tate

John Ashbery Spoke from a Tree

John Ashbery Meets Tu Fu in the Bardo

Part IV. Mythologies

No, It Was Not Like That

Cyclops

Fire

Aphrodite

One Spring

Survivor

Adam

Exegesis of the Unspoken

He Came that Way

Beloved

Age is Asking Me to Give Up Love

Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.

C. D. Wright R.I.P.

PROPHESY

There is a storm coming,

clouds