If you saw the Charlie Kaufman movie, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, then you probably remember the poem recited by the young woman when she’s riding in the car with Jake. That poem is really something, and Jessie Buckley’s performance was brilliant—I immediately wanted to read more of the author. Google led me to Eva H.D.’s collection, Rotten Perfect Mouth. I was surprised to see it only had 121 ratings on Goodreads. Whaaat? And I was flabbergasted to see the movie only had a 6.6 rating on IMDB. The world has gone mad. Here’s the trailer:
It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in years. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is about people who live in their imagination and build idealized might-have-been lives there, people who and aren’t great at peopleing but have so much to share, parents, aging, loneliness, existential dread, impossible idealism, and it all sifts together through the backdrop of a mounting snowstorm. But it’s so much more than I have words for—it’s a feeling, a mood, a thing to avoid, a pressing call to live your fleeting blip of a life.
Anyway, the internet said “Bonedog” was from Eva H.D.’s collection, Rotten Perfect Mouth, and the movie actually showed the poem in that collection, so I ordered the chapbook from Mansfield Press. This collection of poems is wonderful, and I’m happy I purchased it, but if you’re looking for “Bonedog,” you won’t find it in this collection, or maybe anywhere—I haven’t been able to. I know, I know, everyone on the internet said it’s in this collection and the movie shows the poem in this collection. But sorry, it’s just not there. I was all, huh? when I got to the end and hadn’t come across the poem yet.
But you should still buy this book! I can’t say any of these poems gave me Bonedog feels, but every poem made me feel something and there was that hard, colorless truth somewhere in each poem that bounced off the emptiness. I found myself hearing Jessie Buckley’s voice as I read and reading some of them out loud—to the annoyance of the birds at my bird feeder and my sleeping cat—because these poems wanted to be read out loud. They wanted to be alive. Since I couldn’t find “Bonedog” anywhere to purchase, I printed a copy from the wilds of the internet and folded it into the book’s pages. A win! I’m happy to add this to my poetry collection and hope to read more from Eva H.D. in the future.
Here’s Buckley reciting Eva H.D.’s poem, Bonedog (the recitation starts at 1:20):
