Collector of Lapsed Time/ poems by David Appelbaum/ book review by Laurence Carr

David Appelbaum’s new collection of poems, or I should say, one of several new collections, offers a title that immediately draws in the reader. Collector of Lapsed Time explores a wide range of subject matter, but consistently plays upon the theme of time and how time shapes the people and objects that are presented in each piece. From the beginning, we feel the omnipresence of time, not necessarily in an oppressive way, but as a constant: at our backs, overhead, just out of reach and perhaps importantly for these poems, under our feet, on the ground we walk on. 

Before the poems begin Appelbaum has placed before us two ideas, the beginning of a trail of breadcrumbs that he invites us to follow:

col-lection, from Latin co + ligere, to gather together 
col-lection, from Latin co + legere, to read with another 

Both the author and reader gather thoughts transcribed into words and share them. I often felt these poems were being read aloud to me by the lyrical storyteller. One of the strongest features of this volume is its immediacy. I always felt in the present moment with the author. He was conveying words, and I was answering with my own thoughts and reflections on his many observations. And together we created a conversation poem by poem.
Bones, dust, clocks, stones, and trees become the focal point, the literary jumping-off point to deeper meditations. I’ve delved often into David Appelbaum’s canon of poetic works as well as his prose. He has always had the gift or informally, the knack for looking at objects, especially within our natural world; taking the time to observe them; taking additional time to understand their relationship in our universe, and then reporting his findings, sometimes in essays as in his engaging Evidence of Place: On personal geography and sometimes in poetry, as in this current volume. 

/////

From “Sea Charts”
The clocks silent, the baying doesn’t come from dogs, the puce sells drowned sailors’ 
uniforms. I wish for time to read the dynasties to you, time now
shrunken, impotent change, sinuous, drawn out. The bookseller is here still, offering 
other portolans, this one with a mausoleum of a pillaged temple. 

/////

From “Music Making”
In the music maker’s house, there was music made by no one. It 
first played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik from a lacquered box, a 
photo of a movie star inside the lid. Its handle lent to over- 
winding. At a shop in Berlin, he bought a second-hand one 
that broke after a few measures of a Bach fugue. The tinny 
sound, music for one, pleased him, tears falling on metal, clapper 
on a glass bell, straw against a ceramic cup. It was the
sound of vacancy. It had no echo. 

/////

The subtle, the seemingly inconsequential, and the often overlooked are illuminated and then presented to us, the readers, as gifts, connected with unbreakable threads. We can observe these images from afar or reel them in as if on kite strings for a more detailed look.
I enjoy how each poem meditates on itself but allows us access not only through its flow of literate language but through its poetic form. These are long line poems, many moving into prose poems. We have full declarative sentences here, sentences that form paragraphs that allow the reader to delve into the layering of thoughts and themes that the poet is exploring. These are not fast reads, but in our time of demanded immediacy, there’s an oasis here. A stopping place from the daily desert we trod across, our destination sometimes unknown. David Appelbaum’s , Collector of Lapsed Time, is a quiet space of respite where we can take sips from a literary pool and feel renewed for our journey ahead. I hope that readers will visit and revisit this intriguing volume of poems. It’s worth discovering.

//////

David Appelbaum is a writer who has worked in the university and in publishing, and is the creator of Codhill Press. An author of numerous books, articles and poetry, his most recent poetry collections are Collector of Lapsed Time; Simple With; and collections of personal essays: Evidence of Place, On Personal Geography (Codhill Press, 2023) and notes on water: an aqueous phenomenology [Monkfish, 2018]. 

His poetry collection,  Portuguese Sailor Boy [Black Spring, 2020] is reviewed here in Lightwood. You can read this and additional work by David Appelbaum in Lightwood by scrolling to our Search link and entering his name.