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Survivable World
Poetry "with an emotional honesty that gives voice to the ever changing vectors of promise and loss in a world marked by the devastation of AIDS" -- Betsy Sholl. Cover Art by Fred Wilkinson. Winner of the 2003 Washington Prize.
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Ron Mohring
12 books61 followersRon Mohring is the author of Relative Hearts (Lily Poetry Review, 2023) and The Boy Who Reads in the Trees (The Word Works, 2024).
His previous poetry collections are Survivable World, winner of the 2003 Washington Prize, and four prizewinning chapbooks: Amateur Grief, The David Museum, Beneficence, and Touch Me Not. Mohring lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his husband.
In 2007 he founded Seven Kitchens Press, which has published over 200 contemporary poetry chapbooks in hand-tied editions.
His previous poetry collections are Survivable World, winner of the 2003 Washington Prize, and four prizewinning chapbooks: Amateur Grief, The David Museum, Beneficence, and Touch Me Not. Mohring lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his husband.
In 2007 he founded Seven Kitchens Press, which has published over 200 contemporary poetry chapbooks in hand-tied editions.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 30, 2008
Survivable World is nothing short of amazing- harrowing, hilarious, resplendent, resurrective. The specificity of loss and redemption cataloged throughout the poetry in this book reminds the reader of the indomitability of the spirit, the lengths it will go to grasp, to hold onto, to reclaim. Mohring creates a world of poetry which moves beyond its words and their rivers of loss and onto the other side which is redemption.
December 14, 2008
Notes from a Caregiver's Hand and Heart
Few poets have been able to convey the power of a love story as that that Ron Mohring shares in his gently gripping collection of poems SURVIVABLE WORLD. Though these poems are all connected to the loss of his lover David to AIDS, they refuse to enter the realm of morose, morbid, and synthetically manipulated sobbings. Instead what Mohring has created are captured memories and moments of a life shared as wholly as any two lovers in memory. His poems delineate the struggle with the slow decline of the exodus from the living world in a matter of fact style that allows the reader to observe the complex machinations of the daily routines that accompany disease - the thoughts from the caregiver role as well as the lover's quiet anguish, watching the one person that has completed his life, slowly, and with both loss of dignity that is real, as well as the loving that makes the coping mechanisms beautiful.
Mohring gives us the memories born before the disease, the shock and ultimate management of reality, the quiet moments of death and goodbyes, and even the post mortem attempts to find life again, alone. In TO HAVE AND TO HOLD he ends his poem with these words: '...You'd gone before/ the funeral, before the doctor signed/ you dead, switched off the machine/ bullying your lungs. I would touch your skull - / frontal, parietal, occipital - and mourn what it/ contained, what couldn't last, knowing/ this receptacle was all that would remain,/ gutted bowl and useless frame kiln-fired, fractured,/ packaged and delivered to my living hands.'
This miraculous collection of poems will doubtless be a source of comfort to the survivors of this plague, but is should be read by everyone who faces the truths of mortality. There is a generous amount of love in SURVIVABLE WORLD, enough to encourage even the most fragile among us whose vision of death is threatening. In Ron Mohring's hand life becomes even more treasured. Highly recommended.
Grady Harp
Few poets have been able to convey the power of a love story as that that Ron Mohring shares in his gently gripping collection of poems SURVIVABLE WORLD. Though these poems are all connected to the loss of his lover David to AIDS, they refuse to enter the realm of morose, morbid, and synthetically manipulated sobbings. Instead what Mohring has created are captured memories and moments of a life shared as wholly as any two lovers in memory. His poems delineate the struggle with the slow decline of the exodus from the living world in a matter of fact style that allows the reader to observe the complex machinations of the daily routines that accompany disease - the thoughts from the caregiver role as well as the lover's quiet anguish, watching the one person that has completed his life, slowly, and with both loss of dignity that is real, as well as the loving that makes the coping mechanisms beautiful.
Mohring gives us the memories born before the disease, the shock and ultimate management of reality, the quiet moments of death and goodbyes, and even the post mortem attempts to find life again, alone. In TO HAVE AND TO HOLD he ends his poem with these words: '...You'd gone before/ the funeral, before the doctor signed/ you dead, switched off the machine/ bullying your lungs. I would touch your skull - / frontal, parietal, occipital - and mourn what it/ contained, what couldn't last, knowing/ this receptacle was all that would remain,/ gutted bowl and useless frame kiln-fired, fractured,/ packaged and delivered to my living hands.'
This miraculous collection of poems will doubtless be a source of comfort to the survivors of this plague, but is should be read by everyone who faces the truths of mortality. There is a generous amount of love in SURVIVABLE WORLD, enough to encourage even the most fragile among us whose vision of death is threatening. In Ron Mohring's hand life becomes even more treasured. Highly recommended.
Grady Harp
August 30, 2019
"Survivable World" pulls the reader through a time forgotten by too many. Author Ron Mohring watched his partner, David, die of AIDS. In expressive detail he carries us through the memories and grief. In his poem, "Song for David," we see his partner: "Waking, he shudders, wrenches free/as one yanks a shoe from sucking mud/wet with fear, the sheets/dark with night sweat,/and lunges from the dream to cling to me." The author negotiates his distance and closeness: "To comfort but not reassure, to be/as close as I can bear, stay open,/yet withhold some space/that's mine alone, to let/the nightmare edges tear reality," Here he is with someone in this liminal space where he, "cannot know/if what will linger here/will be a trace/or him, or me."
And of course, it's not just David in this process of dying. In the poem "The Process" the I character/author does not go to a funeral with his partner: "David's in Ohio, a funeral, our ninth/friend this year." We feel the anger, fear, and anguish over so much loss this generation experienced.
There is anger in his poem, "Into Mine," he wants to throw a paperweight into a tank of fish. He has been told it will lower his blood pressure to watch them; instead he has the urge to see that moment when they are "poured from their survivable world." The world he no longer has.
Near the end of the book is one of the longest poems, "Windows," he is making a quilt. Corrected in a quilt shop that it is a coverlet because it has "no batting, and no quilting to speak of." He nods, but wants to say, "Lady who gives a shit?" The project is the point, not the label, he has found a project that grows and grows, like his garden we see in other poems.
He shows the resilience to continue, for this author is still here. In the poem "Losses," we have a found mouse who goes into survival mode leaving her babies behind so she won't die: "her stark response" & "blunt efficiency." There is a message, "Cut your losses, begin again." As he does ultimately despite it all.
There are strong poems about sex, nature, and people in small towns; poems filled with rich details and language as in the poem "That Day" where he examines, "How the name David balances on the pivot of its V,/a D at each end, the vowels facing, A, I./David. Gravid. livid. Fervid. Avid."
It won the 2003 Washington Prize and has a blurb by David Wojahn, who writes, "Mohring's spare, powerful, and haunted poems are steeped in an elegiac feeling, and with a governing vision that is both sorrowful and transcendent."
It is a go-to book to read and reread, to feel and begin to understand the trauma so many of us lived through during the AIDS war. Although the disease has changed and things seem better now, it is only less visible. We have not seen the worst of AIDS or other new viruses. It is a relevant book that should be required reading. As I said at the beginning too many do not know the history.
This is a potent issue for me and I'll reveal that I also have a poetry book about AIDS. It was taught to students at LIU-Brooklyn who were shocked our government was silent and did not respond when AIDS was spreading in the early 80s. It took them the length of the class to absorb and believe the history; books written by people who lived through this time are necessary.
And of course, it's not just David in this process of dying. In the poem "The Process" the I character/author does not go to a funeral with his partner: "David's in Ohio, a funeral, our ninth/friend this year." We feel the anger, fear, and anguish over so much loss this generation experienced.
There is anger in his poem, "Into Mine," he wants to throw a paperweight into a tank of fish. He has been told it will lower his blood pressure to watch them; instead he has the urge to see that moment when they are "poured from their survivable world." The world he no longer has.
Near the end of the book is one of the longest poems, "Windows," he is making a quilt. Corrected in a quilt shop that it is a coverlet because it has "no batting, and no quilting to speak of." He nods, but wants to say, "Lady who gives a shit?" The project is the point, not the label, he has found a project that grows and grows, like his garden we see in other poems.
He shows the resilience to continue, for this author is still here. In the poem "Losses," we have a found mouse who goes into survival mode leaving her babies behind so she won't die: "her stark response" & "blunt efficiency." There is a message, "Cut your losses, begin again." As he does ultimately despite it all.
There are strong poems about sex, nature, and people in small towns; poems filled with rich details and language as in the poem "That Day" where he examines, "How the name David balances on the pivot of its V,/a D at each end, the vowels facing, A, I./David. Gravid. livid. Fervid. Avid."
It won the 2003 Washington Prize and has a blurb by David Wojahn, who writes, "Mohring's spare, powerful, and haunted poems are steeped in an elegiac feeling, and with a governing vision that is both sorrowful and transcendent."
It is a go-to book to read and reread, to feel and begin to understand the trauma so many of us lived through during the AIDS war. Although the disease has changed and things seem better now, it is only less visible. We have not seen the worst of AIDS or other new viruses. It is a relevant book that should be required reading. As I said at the beginning too many do not know the history.
This is a potent issue for me and I'll reveal that I also have a poetry book about AIDS. It was taught to students at LIU-Brooklyn who were shocked our government was silent and did not respond when AIDS was spreading in the early 80s. It took them the length of the class to absorb and believe the history; books written by people who lived through this time are necessary.
September 18, 2020
Brilliant, beautiful poetry that touches love and pain from depths of the heart.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews