Nicole Walker

Aside from the fact that I already knew the author from way long ago, I bought this book for its title. The phrase, “Noisy Egg,” conjures all the magic I see in childbirth, in existence, in consciousness. It also brings to mind the liquid-kthunk sound of boiling eggs in a metal saucepan.

What follows are some of my favorites from the collection:

FORKS: “The black soil, packed, makes for quick slithers.”

UNTITLED: “I got stuck on the roof in the sticks / of a birds nest / and I have been there ever since.”

WHAT IS WANTED FROM SUICIDES: The last stanza is devastating. From the notes: “It is the accumulation of erasures that makes her, finally, in the end, choose to leave.”

PSALM: This poem haunts like a snatch of song you just barely remember. I spent two years, from ages 19 to 21, whistling a roughly nine-note melody to strangers and friends alike in hopes of naming this tune I couldn’t get out of my head. Years later, my sister Andrea told me that it was an Anne Murray tune that my mother used to play all the time.

TOPOGRAPHY: Among other things, this poem teaches that ‘owl’ is a transitive verb.

METALEPSIS: Number one, the author should be praised for finally putting Harry Chapin in his place. I hate that song. Number two, this poem is eerie and beautiful and morbidly obsessed. “The cat put up no struggle. / He is cradled between the monkey bars. / Cut him down before the kids can see.”

CLEANSING: I love that someone has built a porch without the attendant house. The last line sounds a perfectly elegiac note. I love it. “White trees crack / their leaves beneath / the wind until / they beat to the ground. / Bring it back.”

THE UNLIKELY ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES: This poem is a real tour de force. Just powerful and cool, and if I knew anything about poetry other than how it makes me feel, I'd launch right now into a technical description that would probably do real justice to just how amazing this poem is. One other cool thing: two of the people mentioned by name in the poem are people I know. It was both cool and weird to see them in this strange context. Also weird to have a kind of memory of the event described. If the poem's last line doesn't spark your imagination, there isn't any hope for you at all:

“It is probable that organs which at a very ancient period served / for respiration have actually converted into organs of flight.”… (meer)