Returning the Sword to the Stone

by Mark Leidner

Poetry. California Interest. Art. Film. Music. The follow-up to his beloved debut collection Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, Mark Leidner's RETURNING THE SWORD TO THE STONE is simultaneously profound and irreverent, in the same way that the world is flat as we walk and round as we live. "A child surprised that a neon sign / isn't hot the first time they touch one / knows how it feels as an adult to achieve one's goals" states the speaker of "Youth Is A Fugitive" and this sentiment is one of the central precepts of RETURNING THE SWORD TO THE STONE. Congealing directly off the page, these are poems that only Mark Leidner could have written.

Genres: Poetry, Fantasy

85 pages, Paperback

Published February 23, 2021

About the author

Mark Leidner is a Georgia-born writer of books and movies. He currently lives in California.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the time of my writing of this review, this book has a perfect 5-star rating with everyone who has read it. Imagine if the whole world read this (and IT should!) and there was 7.64 billion 5-star ratings. It would justify my belief that this is the best book in the world today (and possibly even tomorrow). In fact, every month on the 29th, a poem from this book (preferably Salad on the Wind) should be read by everyone. And for every wedding, the poem Being With You should be recited like a prayer. Mr. Leidner's delightfully strange and playful poems constantly break new ground while somehow highlighting the despair of humanity. Employing everything from spoonerisms to haunted epigraphical images, Leidner puts us in his wheelhouse, where Robyn Hitchcock and the ghost of James Tate write the scripts for your next dreams. Added to my all-time fave list.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOONERISMS

let’s dance
debt’s lance
bent to me
meant to be
love of treasure
trove of leisure
death of retail
wreath of detail
hustled a mystery
muscled a history
found a buyer
bound a fire
car wash
war cash
pays dues
days, pews
scattered showers
shattered, scours
debt bubble
bet double
party on
arty pawn
tragic mopes
magic tropes
ballads of sadness
salads of badness
various cultures
carry us vultures
near and far
fear and noir
crackles and grows
grackles and crows
eat the flowers
fleet, the hours
boring, the meetings
mooring the beatings
looted and burned
booted and learned
popcorn
cop porn
amuse without bite
abuse without might
random tongues
tandem rungs
a platter of latitudes
a ladder of platitudes
the ways of mind
the maze of wind
a massive past
a passive mast
the iconic law
the laconic awe
of golden ages
of olden gauges
of glamorous cliffs
clamorous glyphs
a cute stupidity
astute cupidity
sung us in the fauna
fungus in the sauna
lakes moving
makes loving
license
silence



***

no lore, no mess
no more, no less
fuck labels
luck, fables
habit, roles
rabbit holes
good marriages
mood garages
the rest is naked
the nest is raked
the worst of birds
the burst of words
lots to pick from
pots to lick from
a lottery for posers
a pottery for losers
reading the news
needing the ruse
the whole of rumor
the role of humor
scary prisms
prairie schisms
buffering is seeing
suffering is being
at fashion’s pace
at passion’s face
the nature of storms
the stature of norms
weird how stealth
steered how wealth
harried the bidden
buried the hidden
deeper by the chosen
cheaper by the dozen
verses howled
hearses, voweled
bland with fame
fanned with blame
a nailable vow
available now
shop, dine, fly
flop, shine, die
stamped under cars
camped under stars
the roof of the prison
the proof of the risen
brought to sing
sought to bring
song, but rain
wrong, but sane
brought to sake
sought to break
hung from a limb
lung from a hymn
din wowing
windowing
numinous light
luminous night
clear as day
dear as clay
to every road
to reverie, owed
a psalm to come
a calm to some

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful, as always. If I am asked to quote a line, I would have to quote every freaking thing from the collection. Mark Leidner, if you are reading this, I just want you to know that I am your maddest fan from the Philippines.

[Jo McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know how this poetry works, but it does.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few collections of poetry are able to pull off simultaneously being playful and goofy and clever and sharp and tender, but this one seems to do so with ease. What a gem of a book.

[Loretta Riach · Rating 5 out of 5]

very nice. clever, and fun with words, and similes abound- turns out they are not solely an invention from the mind of Hera Lindsay Bird?? loved ‘Love Is a Waveform’.

[Grace]

My favorite was Salad in the Wind.

It’s interesting to read your favorite poet’s favorite poet…

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like

getting the gang back together to pull off one last heist
but your getaway driver lost their license
and your safecracker has tinnitus
and your right hand man is calling out your suspect reason for taking the job in the first place.

there's a problem with the blueprints
and that old detective who asks the good questions is standing under the streetlight by your apartment again.

your failure is all but assured

but this assurance feels bright and comforting


everything that can go wrong will go wrong
& so of course everything is going according to plan

[Sebastian Castillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The existence of some writers feels like a gift. To me, Mark Leidner is one of those writers. I look forward to everything he puts out, and have yet to come away from his books without a feeling of intense delight and wonder. The poems here offer the kind of warmth and playfulness that I've come to associate with Mark's work.

Reading this book feels like going to the beach with a good friend. If you love the beach, that is, which in this case, you do. You very much like the beach!

[Angelo Maneage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Existential Punchlines and Pondering: On Mark Leidner’s Returning the Sword to the Stone


I believe every dog turd is a sundial
when the sun is out, and when the moon is out
every buffoon is a poet, and wisdom is anything

Returning the Sword is soft and river-like, with sentences of all sizes and lines rich with minerals: “A sexually transmitted fear of clowns” or “Velociraptors waltzing in wedding gowns”.

Heartbreaking and existentially soaked, Leidner’s one-liner poetics balance between—or maybe yank at—sincerity and hilarity which both need each other for the other to exist. This book is paradoxical like that. Each line jump is an inside joke, one we are all in on but do not yet know it; this bigger-than-us-all existence we share feels “secretly hilarious” to Leidner. The speaker of these poems wants to know we all know the thing they know, which is some new reality that is actually just this common one only slightly alternate. “It’s like a pool where the lifeguards have rifles and they shoot whoever’s drowning.” Calm observation + anecdote + existential connection is the formula that acts as a perpetual motor, dance, and performance throughout Returning the Sword to the Stone.

“Every poem is a list,” Leidner says in LOVE IS A WAVEFORM. And it’s true, SALAD ON THE WIND is ten sonnets each composed entirely of almost-punchlines that are grabbed from an underbelly of all dimension and -ism, and gently placed onto the ground we all share. There’s a familiarity with all of these impossibilities, and a playfulness in their jumps. No matter the spoonerism in front you—“popcorn / cop porn”—it asks you to throw one in yourself.

Leidner grounds us in form to then surprise us with “A guillotine halving a maraschino cherry”. A crown of sonnets composed of deadpan richness, a modified villanelle wearing upside down clothes. Rhyme schemes and images invite us into an operation with the precision and secrecy of an organized crime. These poems are concerned with constraint and rules, and appear as a micro-dosed late-night stand-up set. A rule is a rule to Leidner, but the sky’s limit produces black holes to be baked into muffins. The control of the air of the page will never let you find a comma at the end of a line. Leidner believes in cleanliness and compartments. Neon and labyrinths. Mise en place. Liedner will chop the line in the interest of rhythm and comic timing, and he’ll cement it to your feet.

Returning the Sword has apparent love for love and romance and life and humility and multi-dimensional imagination in a way that seems to be a final form of Zen. “It’s like flying first class / I don’t care if we crash.” It feels like Leidner is transcribing his scribbled ponderings and jokes that need legs and drawings of roosters that are crows in a Moleskine or the back of a receipt or a fast food napkin or his palm, refining with precision like he’s just woken from a state of premonition and would love to share it with you.

I sew closed the neckholes of my sweatshirts
then sew beltloops along their bottom hems
and slide my legs through the sleeves
because I wear sweatshirts like pants—
and I cut the crotches out of all my sweatpants
for my head to go through
because I wear sweatpants like shirts
with my arms through the legs
and I’m running for President.

[Wyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at Phil Elverum’s recommendation (via twitter). At first I wasn’t really connecting to Leidner’s style—the comical whimsy wasn’t actually connecting for me, and I felt disappointed that absurdism was finally failing me (or I was failing absurdism, more likely). The thing with these types of poems, though, is that it just takes one hyper-specific and effective stanza to basically unlock the enjoyment of the entire thing. That happened enough on this initial read to eventually win me over. There’s a thrill in these moments, too, that comes from knowing that future rereads will inevitably uncover new and unexpected lines that make you laugh, smile, tear up, etc etc.

This collection also contains an immediate top-ten poem of all time for me in “Having a ‘Having a Coke With You’ With You.” Just a perfect piece that eschews a lot of the contextless meandering that, while admittedly great, dominates the rest of this collection.

I dunno, it’s just good and well worth reading. Do yourself a favor and read it!

[Kelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It’s like a pool where the lifeguards have rifles and they shoot whoever’s drowning.” (20)

This is a peculiar collection that shifts from appreciation of the sacred to bottomless irreverence between lines, basking in the simplicity of love’s gentle moments to spitting in the eye of god.

Words are broken down to their base parts and then remade and reassembled into prose that question the futility of trying to articulate any feeling into meaning. This collection really emphasizes and demonstrates how seldom it is that revelation be found in the nonsense of life and it’s happenings at all. Striving to find some underlying incitement to these prose feels like missing the points, feels like needing tragedy to have meaning for my own sake, feels like I’m in too deep and staring down the barrel of a rifle in a lifeguard’s hands.

This is not an easy collection. It’s bizarre and outlandish, constantly catching the reader off guard. Just when you’re comfortable, you’re thrown in the deep end again.

That said, I enjoyed the struggle and would recommend this collection for anyone who, like me, enjoys something odd yet somehow profound~

[Liam Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

My original idea for this review was short and simple: glibness with a coat of paint. Amd though that's not an inapt description of most the poetry in the collection, to be fair to Leidner, he does approach genuine feeling in a poem such as "Volunteering" and he can write. My wish is that he will push himself deeper and further as a poet in his future work.

[EG Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could read this for the first time for the second time. It's that good.

It's rare that a poetry collection elicits actual laughs from me; this one did, many times, and the poems take sharp turns to offer some of the clearest, most surprising, insights I've comes across in a while.

[Holly Pelesky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leidner is playful and does this thing with words where any world suddenly feels possible. the meaning is there for you to excavate if you want it; the words are there for you to enjoy no matter the depth of reading you enter

[Eric Brauneis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute playground of language, equal parts funny and profound.

[crowjonah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I went about my day, I distractedly kept trying to figure out why I was feeling vaguely delighted and then remembering it was because of having just read some of these poems.

[Laura Borealis · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is my favourite ice cream after a day at the beach

[Rachel West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some parts were so funny and some parts were incredibly sad. I’m most devastated that no one will ever write a poem like “Having “Having a Coke with You” with You” about me.

[Matthew Hinea · Rating 5 out of 5]

good job mark!

[Parker Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instant classic, like every Leidner book I’ve read.

[Josh Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Folks he's done it again. Full of poems which are very fun (penultimate poem about a "jeansed horse"), and very touching (realisations of love, plague blessings) and arranged in such a way that enhances the experience of both. Happy to lend my copy to any Wellington friends eager to experience some feelings.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s so beautiful. I showed Being With You to my wife and she said, “I think his brain works kinda like mine.”

[Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really loved Beaty Was the Case... I loved the hilarity laced through all the poems, the ease of cracking a joke and taking the joke seriously. The serious that was underlying the levity. All of that just operated so well in that book.

Not in this one, though. In many of the poems, it loses its timing. Or it stretches the poem too long. "The Jeansed Horse" opens with such a ridiculous image. I mean why would a horse be wearing jeans? What horse would relish a piece of clothing that hid its mane? I love this opening. But then, for my reading, the poem elaborates too far. I find exaggerating the money to be flat. And, worse of all, it feels as though it's trying to solve the poem for me. I would rather not have an escape route proposed for the poem.

I kind of prefer how Beauty Was the Case... seemed to withhold the reason for the poem, where the poet was kind of watching me out of the corner of his eye, assured I would never be on the inside of his joke. I liked being that outsider. I thought it was funny to be there. These poems seem a little too interested in putting me on the inside part of a joke. And then the inside just feels like it goes on too long.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are moments of true profundity in this collection, cresting like waves from an ocean of Brautiganesque absurdity (the absurdity itself also quite enjoyable). Unfortunately they are occasionally undercut by (to stretch the metaphor) sandbars of painfully twee cliche. Poems like "Youth is a Fugitive," "Salad on the Wind," and the title poem, which are basically just lists of images and aphorisms, can start to feel like first drafts that could've been perfected with just a little editing.
Then there are lines like "The eyes are teeth that see," which I just have no idea what to do with that.

But overall a really good collection, funny, surprising, and even sometimes moving.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant and hilarious. Here are three of my favorite lines:

It's like finally giving up the intel in an eerily perfect impression of
your interrogator.

---

I hate it when I humiliate a nerd
in the lunchroom or bathroom
only for them to become cool later
humiliating me at a house party or a school dance.

---

The last generation to remember meeting people before the internet
birthing the last one to remember when strangers could touch.

[NT · Rating 5 out of 5]

The profound can be comic, the tragic cannot! My takeaway after reading Cassandra at the Wedding, billed as a tragicomedy, and this genius collection of profound and very funny poems. Favorites: "The Truth about Wizards" and "Volunteering" analyze current workplace institutions and what it's like to be part of them, which involves a desperation to leave, pulling a fast one on our managers along the way. "I'm Running for President" and "Spoonerisms" offer an alien's-eye-perspective on our stupid political gesturing: "reading the news / needing the ruse". "Plague Blessing" has a section that begins with "The worst thing I can think of is that as long as suffering gets worse / in the future, the suffering of the past becomes so instructive, / you can almost be glad that it happened" -- brilliant. "Church", "Love is a Waveform", "The Jeansed Horse", and "Humility" are just wonderful and funny.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

In poetry books I dog ear the pages of my favorite poems so that I can more easily happen upon them if I pick up a book later. Well, I could open this book to just about any page and find one of the hilarious, thoughtful poems with a dog ear. There are poems in here that are uproariously funny. I reread the title poem several times and I just can't help but erupt into laughter.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll begin with a caveat that I’m not sure I really *get* modern poetry. These poems were pleasing to read, and I appreciated the humor, wit, and heart. That said, I think some of the poems could have been more substantive. Still, I liked the perspective they offer.

[Isaac Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best poetry collections I've read. beautiful, simple, with feelings! also references beautiful poetry (frank O'Hara)

if I were to write more poetry, I'd like to think it'd be

somewhat like this
tome what like sis