Mike Schneider | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

How Many Faces Do You Have? is a poem sequence that interrogates intimacy, each poem a face the poet discovers, a reflection revealed in response to inner questioning. In a voice of quiet sonority, these lyrics journey from a high-school gym dance to a  moonlit beach polka. They linger over sushi in Montreal and an airline meal at 40,000 feet on a flight. They touch joy and pain and celebrate the vicissitudes of love that goes “into the tangled heartland / where there is no trail,” as a gift of being.

  A face

is such a strange thing. Obsessed

with distortion, Modigliani

 loved elongated faces

like Tamara’s at a distance,

 a flattened oval, two black jewels. He

painted with a dagger

 in his teeth, they say, to see the face

       within the face — grave,

 cold-eyed as Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt,

whom I’ve always loved

for her name alone.