{"id":693,"date":"2022-01-11T12:11:41","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T17:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertfillman.com\/?page_id=693"},"modified":"2023-06-22T17:35:47","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T21:35:47","slug":"house-bird","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.robertfillman.com\/?page_id=693","title":{"rendered":"House Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fillman’s debut collection House Bird<\/em> is available for purchase at<\/span> Amazon<\/a>, Barnes and Noble<\/a>, Firefly Bookstore<\/a> the publisher<\/span>\u00a0@Terrapin Books<\/a>, and from other online retailers.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Back-cover Blurbs for <\/strong>November<\/span> Weather Spell<\/strong><\/em>:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\r\n
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The poems in\u00a0House Bird<\/em>\u00a0drill deep beneath the surface of domestic life, finding the essential truth in the tension between what gets said and what goes unsaid, exploring the consequences of speaking and the consequences of remaining silent. Fillman reveals how vulnerable we are, even in our own bedrooms, basements, driveways. Like in the Hopper and Wyeth paintings that inspire some of his poems, he finds the mood between desire and loneliness, that feeling so profound and universal that we can only bow our heads in recognition. A remarkable debut by a promising young poet.<\/span> –Jim Daniels, author of Gun\/Shy<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n

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These are wonderful poems, full of memory and keen observation, alive to their fingertips.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever forget \u201cThe Blue Hour,\u201d for instance, with its image of the dead \u2018swirling \/ from chimneys like hundreds of souls \/ lured by stars,\u2019 and then that final image of \u2018Katie Estan\u2019s older sister,\u2019 dead from meningitis, who returns to drift past the speaker\u2019s \u2018snow-shackled rooftop.\u2019\u00a0Poem after poem in\u00a0House Bird<\/em>\u00a0is beyond beautiful.\u00a0This is a book to savor, to reread.\u00a0A splendid poetic achievement.<\/span> –Jay Parini, author of New and Collected Poems:\u00a0 1975-2015<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Fillman excavates what might seem ordinary to find radiance. In striking, fully articulated poems, he explores generational ties and the pains-taking wages of parenthood. These poems are clear-eyed, generous, and compassionate. As when Fillman writes movingly about blessing a house for its future inhabitants, in similar fashion, these poems offer their blessings to readers.<\/span> –Lee Upton, author of Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems<\/em><\/strong><\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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cover photo by Jason Martin\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Reviews of House Bird<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\r\n

Sugar House Review: Review of\u00a0House Bird<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 by Jennifer Judge\u00a0 (full-text)<\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Newpages: Down Right Poetry – Review of House Bird<\/em><\/a> by Ron Mohring (full-text) \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Pembroke Magazine: Review of\u00a0House Bird <\/em><\/a>by Aaron Cole (full-text)\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Good Reads review<\/a> by Elizabeth Gauffreau (full-text) \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The Pedestal: Review of House Bird<\/a> by Brian Fanelli (full-text) \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The Night Heron Barks: review of House Bird <\/em><\/a>by Jon Riccio (full-text) \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The Watershed Journal: Review of\u00a0House Bird<\/em> <\/a>by Karen Weyant (full-text) \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Excerpt from The Hollins Critic: Review of House Bird<\/em> <\/span>by George Franklin<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The poems in House Bird <\/em>are full of stories about families and neighborhoods, settings with which we are familiar and that make us feel comfortable.\u00a0 Fillman is homesteading a specific poetic territory, the house and neighborhood as a kind of liminal space.\u00a0 On one side of the threshold is the life we imagine for ourselves, full of possibilities, and on the other side is death: not a romanticized death or even a dramatic one, but a cold, empty negation that could engulf us at any second.\u00a0 There, in between, is the house where we grew up or the one where we raise our own children, a house built on the edge of contingency.\u00a0 House Bird<\/em> explores a space few poets know exists.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The title poem of the collection, \u201cHouse Bird,\u201d is centered in this threshold space.\u00a0 The image is from Andrew Wyeth\u2019s Bird in the House<\/em>, a bird that the \u201cevening light dislodged\u201d \u201cfrom its perch, shot it straight through \/ an open window, stone-gray \/ stopped on the mantel,\u201d But, \u201cHouse Bird\u201d also describes the poet.\u00a0 (\u201cHouse bird\u201d is an old-time expression for someone who stays around the house.)\u00a0 In this case, it is the poet who takes the house as the place where our real lives happen, lives we have to work to understand.\u00a0 The light from the window seems to offer the house bird a kind of protection up there on the mantel.\u00a0 The \u201cStarling in the Furnace Room,\u201d who arrives in a later poem in the book, is not so lucky:<\/span><\/p>\r\n

I remember feathers flying,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

a tiny heart that ceased to beat,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

the afternoon suddenly dark,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

trapped in iridescent silence.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Fillman shows us how close death is and how we build our lives in relation to it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The life the poet has built in this dangerous space has come at great cost.\u00a0 He never underestimates how hard it is to talk with other people, especially ones we love.\u00a0 In \u201cTalking Over a Classic Rock FM Station,\u201d he tells the story of drinking with his uncle, whose wife had told him \u201cnot to come back this time.\u201d\u00a0 The uncle is drinking Old Milwaukee, and he is drinking cans of Coke.\u00a0 The \u201ctruck radio plays \/ one song after another.\u201d\u00a0 Neither can say what needs to be said.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

If the question is how we learn to live in this in-between world, the answer may lie in looking closely at the reality of it.\u00a0 I am reminded of Hardy\u2019s line: \u201cIf a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.\u201d\u00a0 In what is one of the most striking poems in the collection, \u201cThe Snake Man\u2019s Lesson,\u201d Fillman describes watching a neighbor, Sid, \u201cfeed baby \/ mice to his saddle-brown boa.\u201d\u00a0 When the audience of kids is frightened and hides their faces,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

He promised it was over,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

got us to uncover our eyes<\/span><\/p>\r\n

in time to see that muscular<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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shiny body coiling around<\/span><\/p>\r\n

its motionless prey. \u00a0Years later,<\/span><\/p>\r\n

I learned he was a professor<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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of wildlife management, who taught<\/span><\/p>\r\n

us that death meant life, shed light on<\/span><\/p>\r\n

the other side of the story<\/span><\/p>\r\n

and dared us to look\u2014<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The trick played on the neighborhood kids, convincing them to open their eyes in time to see the white mouse crushed in snake\u2019s coils is suspiciously familiar.\u00a0 It is the trick House Bird<\/em> plays on its readers.\u00a0 For the brief space of the poems, we open our eyes just in time to see how close our lives are, not to a hypothetical death but to a death that is just outside the window or in the uncovered electrical outlet.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In House Bird\u2019s<\/em> final poem, \u201cThe Blue Hour,\u201d Fillman finds his threshold space at dusk in autumn when the clocks are set back.\u00a0 The \u201cextra blue hour of light\u201d is a \u201csacred time when the living \/ and the dead can see each other.\u201d\u00a0 He watches \u201cthe steam whirling \/ from chimneys like hundreds of souls \/ lured by stars\u2026. Those souls are \u201ccaught between worlds \/ for less than a second, then gone.\u00a0 This was twenty years before he wrote the poem, and he ends it with another memory, a vision of \u201cKatie Estan\u2019s older sister,\u201d who had died of meningitis, drifting past his \u201csnow-shackled rooftop,\u201d \u201ca wobbling Venus, \/ dancing her way into the dark.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The language of the poems in House Bird<\/em> is elegant and clean.\u00a0 Anything else would sound false in Fillman\u2019s personal landscape.\u00a0 The poems tend toward either free verse or syllabics.\u00a0 In other words, there is enough structure to get the job done, but not enough to permit us, his readers, the easy out of distancing ourselves from the poems, treating them as constructions rather than communications.\u00a0 Fillman has experiences he wants us to know about and to experience for ourselves, and he allows nothing to get in the way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

[from The Hollins Critic<\/em>, Vol. LIX, No. 2, April 2022]<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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Interviews about House Bird<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\r\n

An Interview With The Poet Robert Fillman<\/a><\/blockquote>