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Beyond the Scent of Sorrow by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

November 22, 2011 by

Beyond the Scent of Sorrow by Sweta Srivastava Vikram is a small collection of poems that draw parallels between nature and women.  Reminiscent of Ecofeminism, a political and social combination of feminism and deep ecology that draws parallels between women and nature and calls attention to the misuse of both by patriarchy, Vikram develops a dialogue about the harm done to nature and women across the globe.  Dominance of both by outside constructs — whether it is capitalism or man — has belittled the importance and strengths of both.  Rather than wallow in the pain and repression, Vikram’s verse strives to cultivate women and nature’s strengths to demonstrate there is a way to overcome the oppression.

"in colonies of Armani,
singing a sad melody, attracting worker bees and wasps

to give their friends honey, the walk on burning coals.
A trap before he shoots bullets" (from "It's a Man's World", page 4)

Specifically, Vikram discusses in the preface how there are parallels drawn between women and the eucalyptus tree, which were both once integral to society and are now thought of as commodities that can be replaced.  The collection is broken into two parts, with the first part seemingly more focused on the changing role of both women and nature in society and the dire consequences that occur because their worth is devalued, such as the displacement of birds and animals when the eucalyptus is cut down in “Eucalyptus Trees” (page 3).  Additionally, the poems in this section describe how women and nature are abused by society (not necessarily just by men), like in “Unholy Men” and “It’s a Man’s World” (pages 4-5).

In part two, the secrets held by women and nature are revealed — their strengths that must be hidden from society or be devalued outright.  Women and nature here are dichotomies in and of themselves in that they must present a strong front to the society that abuses them, while at the same time hiding their strengths and internalizing the devaluation of their gifts.

"Wearing a veil over my dilemma,
the skull of questions is hidden.

What was mine? Some could argue.
To make a point bland as sand, I say,

Ask the bird that lost its nest resting in the eucalyptus tree,
Mother nature faced irony with a damp silence --" (From "Silence", page 14)

Vikram’s verse is sparse and powerful, evoking reflection and a grander examination of the world around us. Beyond the Scent of Sorrow calls attention to the depravity of human action, but also to the hope that things can be changed if we have the will to change it.  Do not be fooled by the comparisons here in to thinking that men are the enemy because they are not; the collection is more about the decisions we make as humans and the consequences those decisions have on our world and ourselves.

Beyond the Scent of Sorrow by Sweta Srivastava Vikram is the third collection of hers that I’ve read, and since this was published in 2011, it is eligible for this year’s Indie Lit Awards.  It resonated with me for its references to Portugal, my father’s homeland, and for its echoes of a philosophy, social, and political movement I have studied and internalized over the years.

About the Poet:

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an award winning writer, a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, educator, and blogger. Born in India, Sweta spent her formative years between the steel city of Rourkela, the blue waters of North Africa, the green hills of Mussoorie, and the erudite air of Pune before arriving in bustling New York. Growing up between three continents, six cities, five schools, and three masters degrees, what remained constant in Sweta’s life was her relationship with words.

Check out Diary of an Eccentric’s review.

This is my 31st book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 3rd book and final book for the South Asian Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, poetry, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews, South Asian Reading Challenge Tagged With: , ,

A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood by Allen Braden

November 16, 2011 by

A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood by Allen Braden is a slim collection of poems, published as part of the Virginia Quarterly Review Poetry Series, and is steeped in bird imagery and rural life.  His images are at once beautiful and raw, bringing with it the full force of nature’s unbridled beauty and fearsome nature.  Even the most beautiful images take on an aggressive persona, like the catalpa petals in “Remembering Precious Landscape, but with an Elegy in Mind” (page 9) that become “splayed.”

On the flip side, nature’s sexuality emerges as the narrator recounts love and precious moments between lovers.  In “Flight Theory” (Page 4-7), “How many nights did I try/to retrace the complexities/of starlings with my hands over her skin?/”  For this poem alone, the collection is worth buying.  The imagery is most vivid and charged here, creating a world that readers can get lost in.

Moments of rural life and childhood memories also grace these pages as the narrator of each poem takes the environment and personifies it with emotion.  The connection to a father, but the distance of that connection will make readers wonder how well they really know/knew their parents.  Also the dichotomy of love is present, with its passionate supportive nature and its violent passion that can render relationships asunder, leaving only pain and hate.

Braden has crafted variations of the sonnet in this collection, but readers who do not revel in form poetry may not notice the variation.  However, these varied sonnets continue the poet’s careful attention to detail to bring out the brute nature of humanity and to affirm our place in the natural world through carefully balanced language.  A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood offers readers a look at humankind in its basest moments, highlighting those emotions we often feel when we are alone but never speak of in the presence of others, even those who love us best.

About the Poet:

Allen Braden is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a residency from the Poetry Center and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His poems have appeared in such publications as the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Witness.

 

This is my 69th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 30th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2011, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The Conference of the Birds by Peter Sis

November 9, 2011 by

The Conference of the Birds by Peter Sis, an acclaimed children’s author and illustrator, has taken his skills to a 12th century Sufi epic poem of the same name written by Farid ud-Din Attar, who was not only a poet but a mystic.  Often these types of poems have a hidden spiritual meaning, and Sis deftly captures the essence of Attar’s poem with illustration.

In this illustrated version of the epic poem, the pictures speak for the poet, Attar who wakes from a dream to realize he’s a hoopoe bird.  Once he transforms, he calls all of the birds of the world together to find their true king, Simorgh, by flying through the seven valleys — The Valley Of Quest, The Valley Of Love, The Valley Of Understanding, The Valley Of Detachment, The Valley Of Unity, The Valley Of Amazement, and The Valley Of Death — to reach Mountain Kaf.

In the beginning, the transformation of Attar is shown much like animated cartoons would have been created, with the flipping of each panel where each image has slight differences to create the illusion of movement.  Once the birds agree to take the journey, it is clear that it will take them through a number of valleys that will test their resolve, with each bird’s skills and weaknesses hammered by adversity and uncertainty.  Sis creates vivid birds of various colors and species.  Even if the pages of this book were not textured, readers could see the feathers and layers on these birds.

And there are many layers to these birds, their feathers, and their story.  The poem sheds light on the inner spiritual journey each of us travels, the trials that we face, and the perseverance it takes to stay on course and believe in ourselves.  For some the journey is too hard, and they turn back, but for others, it is important enough to move onward despite the risks and sorrow.  Like the poem, The Conference of the Birds by Peter Sis is multilayered, with great attention to detail from the feathers on the birds, the birds making up the larger birds, and the trees that create the mountains.  A gem of a book from an illustrator and writer who sees beyond just the words to the world it creates and the messages it brings.  Likely to be on the best of list for the year.

As an aside, I read this a couple of times carefully and with my infant daughter. She loved feeling the pages and looking at the vivid imagery, and I can tell you that keeping her attention for an entire book is difficult. This is great for kids and adults. Sis has created something of lasting beauty.

About the Author:

Born in Brno, in the former Czechoslovakia, in 1949, Peter Sís is an internationally acclaimed illustrator, author, and filmmaker. Most recently, in 2007, he published The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, which was awarded the Robert F. Sibert Medal and was also named a Caldecott Honor Book. Peter Sís was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2003. He is the author of twenty children’s books and a seven-time winner of the The New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year.  Please check out his Web page.

Please check out this video interview from BEA:

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sis pays homage to traditional Islamic art and its figurative representations and geometric patterns as the valleys are depicted as a series of mazes.  (Seriously, read that review, it is stunning).

 

If you’d like to check out the rest of the tour, please click on the TLC Book Tour icon at the right.

 

 

This is my 29th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 66th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, Penguin, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

To Join the Lost by Seth Steinzor

November 3, 2011 by

To Join the Lost by Seth Steinzor is a modernization of Dante’s Inferno, and the irony that Dante takes a lawyer with him on his next visit should not be lost on readers.  Seth infuses his epic poem with modern tools and vices from bulldozers to politics.  Traveling the same path as Dante into the depths of Hell’s nine circles, Seth sees those trapped in between and those who have sinned in a multitude of ways.

With each canto there is a flavor of “famous” sinners, but also references to the poet’s own sins and regrets.  Where the epic poem is strongest is where Steinzor references his own troubles, his own lack of faith, his own indecision, and his own failures. “loading racks and shoving them along a/track of stainless steel into a/box of stainless steel — lower the lever,/close the gate — punch the big red/button, wait — shuddering, hissing — raise/the gate, releasing white clouds –/reach in, extract a rack of formerly filthy,/now gleaming and steaming glasses, or shiny,/clunky porcelain, or scratched-up aluminum/knives, forks, and spoons so hot//” (page 18 of Canto II)

Yes, the poem references some events, many the most horrific in nature (i.e. the Holocaust), and yes, this may seem trite and unnecessary, but these are the moments that most of humanity knows either first hand or through study.  These historic instances of unmitigated evil correlate to the references Dante makes from his historical knowledge, such as the reign of Julius Caesar and family wars that existed during that time.  However, Dante relies heavily on mythology and religious text to craft each of his cantos, though there are references to his own love, Beatrice, within the poem.  This is how Steinzor’s and Dante’s poems are similar.

Unlike Dante who uses mythology and Catholicism to make his points, Steinzor relies more heavily on Buddhism.  “. . .  That flat little pebble’s the/world of your daily awareness.  The pond is/everything else.”  (page 43, Canto VI)  The line break after “is” signifies a Buddhist precept of being in the here and now without thought to the past or the future — to be in the moment.  Many parts of this epic poem are enjoyable, but are bogged down in parts by movement through the circles with Dante and similar pungent smells.  However, Steinzor’s verses shine beneath the mire with vivid imagery in stunning ways occasionally.  “crowd of moving parts that, overlapping,/layer almost to opacity,/the eye drawn in, each figure a mottled window/into unimaginable//dimension, an almost empty pane.”  (page 23 of Canto III) or “Then, suddenly, he dived down smack/upon the landfill — a belly-flop! I sat/on his back, and he body-surfed across/the writhing mass.  We regained our feet near an/idling ‘dozer.” (page 44 of Canto VI)

To Join the Lost by Seth Steinzor modernizes Dante’s Inferno in a way that is personal for the poet and tackles some of histories most evil moments and most controversial politically.  Some readers will not enjoy the comments about a former president or other topics touched upon in this epic poem, but the gems in this epic are the more personal aspects of the piece.

***Stay Tuned tomorrow for my Interview with Seth Steinzor.***

About the Author:

Seth Steinzor has been writing poetry nonstop since his teens. To Join the Lost is his first book.  Visit his Website.  Here’s a preview of one Canto.

 

 

Please check out the other stops on the tour by clicking the TLC Book Tours image at the left.

 

 

 

This is my 28th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 65th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems by Emma Eden Ramos

November 1, 2011 by

Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems by Emma Eden Ramos, published by Heavy Hands Ink this year (it is eligible for the Indie Lit Awards), is primarily a series of poems about British-American psychotherapist Annette, her daughter Julia, and a Croatian immigrant, Milena.  Ramos uses the idea of the Triptych beautifully here, in which the poems about or told from Julia and Milena’s points of view are hinged on the poems told from Annette’s point of view.  Moreover, the poems from Julia and Milena’s points of view are used to flesh out the larger story of Annette and her grief, establishing not only the entrapment of “troubles” or suicidal feelings felt by the victims, but also the sense of enormous loss and emptiness felt by the surviving family members.  The message is the goal, and it is not bogged down by overly “pretty” or gruesome language.

From Fold One: Introductions in “Annette” (page 5), “I am a beautiful woman, perhaps the most beautiful/I’ve seen/But the exterior, she perjures herself like an unruly/teen.”  The first line of comparison is drawn when the poet takes the reader from this image of a beautiful woman whose exterior is deceiving to her daughter’s introduction, a young woman as troubled as her dead brother and her mother.  The line is further drawn to include Milena, who now feels out of place in her adopted home, America, since her father passed into a world of rest.  This unrest establishes the foundation upon which Ramos builds the Triptych or the links between these women.

On the surface, it is easy to see the connections between a mother grieving for her lost son and Milena grieving for her lost father.  Julia, it appears, is on the outside looking in because she does not believe her mother “sees” her through the grief, which gives her permission to be suicidal.  The connection Julia sees between her mother and her deceased brother are more than she can reconcile, especially when she too lost someone she loved.  It is not until the final panel is revealed — Fold Three: Connections — that the whole picture is revealed.  There is a melding here of these women, a verbal acknowledgment that they are the same.  However, what separates them is how they tackle the aftermath of suicide.

The other selected poems in the work are not as strong, unfortunately, but Emma Eden Ramos’ conversational style is maintained in the final poems.  Moreover, the stories in the final poems are so different that the collection would have been better served by further introspection by the three main women in the beginning set.  Two of the final poems are focused on body image and religion, but one of the poems maintains the examination of suicide, though in a more cryptic, less direct way.

Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems is a unique chapbook from a young poet, Emma Eden Ramos, that demonstrates a personable style that can reach out to readers and draw them into the story.

Please check out one of the best poems in the collection at the Virtual Poetry Circle.

About the Poet:

Emma Eden Ramos is a twenty-four year old writer from New York City. She has had short stories published in literary journals such as BlazeVOX Journal, The Legendary, The Citron Review, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Stories for children Magazine, and The StoryTeller Tymes.

Her poetry has appeared in Calliope Nerve, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Children, Churches and Daddies Magazine. Emma’s novelette, Where the Children Play, was published in the Spring 2010 issue of BlazeVOX Journal. Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems is Emma’s first collection of poems. At present, Emma is writing a middle-grade novelette. She will be a student at Brooklyn College in the spring. Connect with her on GoodReads.

This is my 27th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 64th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa

October 7, 2011 by

The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa — broken into three sections — challenges the mind and the internal rhythm of our souls.  It challenges our preconceptions about everything from music to what it means to be an African American.  In the form of aubades and odes, Komunyakaa evokes song throughout the collection, which have readers very focused on how the rhythms of the poems impact them beyond the words spoken.  The poet is striving to reach not only the logical mind here, but something deeper, ethereal, like a soul.

There are allusions in this volume that are religious, musical, and mythological, but these do not detract from the poems’ power.  “Kindness” (page 28), is one of the most dense poems in the collection, filled with a number of allusions including the consumption of salt as a sign of friendship.  However, even if not all the references are clear at first glance, it is clear that kindness is often recognized even in the bleakest of moments and in the darkest of places even if someone has been a “stranger” to it.

There are a range of emotions and thoughts in this collection, the narrator of these poems changes like the lizard, adapting to the moment and blending into the environment he finds himself in. The cover is reminiscent of the dark jungle of our lives as we try to navigate our way sometimes in the shadows for the silence of observation, but oftentimes to hide from the actions and decisions we have made or are frightened of making.  Meanwhile, other decisions seem inevitable and natural.

Excerpt from:  Conceived in a Time of War (page 37)

Because your mother & father kissed
beneath a hail of Roman candles,
you crawled out of one thousand
tiny deaths, stubborn as aster
in stony clay.  A goddess of dawn
scooted under a zing of barbed wire
to witness your birth. . . .

Komunyakaa’s poems have a musicality equivalent to Jazz.  “Jazz has space, and space equals freedom, a place where the wheels of imagination can turn and a certain kind of meditation can take place.  It offers a meditational opportunity,” he once said.  His poems are just like this, providing moments of pause, allowing readers to interact with the lines and images.  “How many ghosts followed us/into the basement to Muniak’s bepop gig/to hear the saxophone argue with the piano?/” from “Aubade at Hotel Copernicus” (page 33-4).

Komunyakaa is paying homage to all forms of the human spirit — good or bad — in The Chameleon Couch, but the poems are never indifferent. In “A Translation of Silk” (page 17), “One can shove his face against silk/& breathe in centuries of perfume/on the edge of a war-torn morning/where men fell so hard for iron/they could taste it. Now, today,/a breeze disturbs a leafy pagoda/printed on slow cloth. A creek/begins to move. His brain trails,/lagging behind his fingers to learn/suggestion is more than radiance/” Some poems are about the legacy we leave behind, the anger about historical events like the Holocaust, and the quieter moments each of us shares with our lover or family. Another extraordinary candidate for the 2011 Indie Lit Awards and the “best of” list.

Also please check out the poem from this collection that I featured in the 117th Virtual Poetry Circle.

About the Poet:

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernaculaand the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the poetry world.

His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

This is my 26th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2011, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Waking by Ron Rash

October 5, 2011 by

Waking by Ron Rash — a collection of poems broken up into five parts — and the cover’s barren landscape with its snowed in vehicle is a perfect depiction of the desolate landscape presented in the first selection of poems.  From “Woodshed in Watauga County” (page 7) “as mud daubers and dust motes/drifted above like moments/unmoored from time, and the world/” and from “Junk Car in Snow” (page 8), “No shade tree surgery could/revive its engine, so rolled/into the pasture, left stalled/among cattle, soon rust-scabs/”   Rash does desolation and emptiness well, but he also just as easily paints vivid imagery reminiscent of lucid dreams and the lingering impression of those dreams during the stages of waking.  In “Milking Traces” (page 5), “those narrow levels seemed like/belts worn on the hill’s bulged waist,/if climbed straight up, tall steps for/stone Aztec ruins–though razed/”

In section two, many of the poems focus on farming and the hard work that comes along with cutting through the wilderness to build a life.  In many ways, this could be construed as the cloudy ascent from sleep or the struggle of growing up from childhood into adolescence and adulthood.  Each journey can be arduous, but the destinations can be well worth the struggle or so Rash’s poems suggest.  In “Pocketknives” (page 18), “vanity of men caught once/when dead in a coat and tie,/so ordered from catalogs,/saved and traded for, searched for/in sheds and fields if lost, passed/father to son as heirlooms,/like talismans carried close/to the bone, cloaked as the hearts/”  But there is a subtly to the hope in these poems.

Each poem in this collection relies heavily on nature imagery and the suppositions the poet makes, and Rash seems to be reflective and regretful in some, while content and accepting in others.  Many of these poems can weigh heavily on the reader, especially if read in sequence.  The prologue poem really sets the tone for the collection, which can fulfill a dreary day or provide a modicum of solace for those who are feeling reflective.  The poem suggests that readers pause, reflect on their lives and moments with family and friends to see the true nature of them rather than rush through daily activities and becoming absorbed in the mere movement of life.

Resolution (page xi)

The surge and clatter of whitewater conceals
how shallow underneath is, how quickly gone.
Leave that noise behind.  Come here
where the water is slow, and clear.
Watch the crawfish prance across the sand,
the mica flash, the sculpen blend with stone.
It's all beyond your reach though it appears
as near and known as your outstretched hand.

Waking by Ron Rash is a solid collection of poems that shifts between reality and dreams and nostalgia and how things are.  Readers interested in the Southern traditions and culture will see a brighter presence of the majestic mountains and sparkling rivers.  They will see nature as it is and how southerners interact with it and build lives from the frontier that still exists.

About the Poet:

Ron Rash is the author of three prize-winning novels: One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and two collections of stories. A recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.

This is my 25th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 57th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

She by Saul Williams

September 16, 2011 by

She by Saul Williams is a collection of interconnected musical poems coupled with a collection of images from Marcia Jones that tells a story about a woman and their journey together.  On his Website, he says, “This book chronicles my thoughts and feelings as a young man working through an early relationship with an amazing visual artist as we embark on adulthood and parenthood in the same breath.”

Each of Williams’ poems has a unique rhythm to it, and should be read aloud for effect.  Each is as expressive as you would expect Williams to be in real life, becoming an extension of himself and his digital, visual, and audio art.  Unlike other collections, Williams’ She is a story beginning to end with a prologue and epilogue and prose poetry.  The nameless She is integral to the journey, a connection to the past and the future, illustrated through short lines and “out loud” cadence that screams to be read aloud.

While readers could dip in and out of the collection and experience it in small chunks, it is best to read it cover to cover to grasp its full impact. Tackling issues of separatism, aging, and opposing desires, Williams pinpoints the harshest of realities and deals them a deft blow when he demonstrates the commonalities between us all. Because these poems do not have titles, the clear intent is to create a continuous narrative in which “calamity makes cousins of us all” (page 22) and “we live.” (page xi)

Nature imagery and personification can make the issues more vivid, “there is a gathering in the forest. the leaves have refused to change. they say that they are tired of things never remaining the same, of dying to be reborn, of winter’s dry withered hand.” (page 7) But lest the images become to heavy, there are moments of whimsy as well.

I have seen the truth
many times
but for the first time
she saw me

I wore suspenders
for the judgment
in my pants

(page 13)

As the relationship goes down hill, readers will not a dramatic change in the poems as the narrator struggles to let go for the sake of love. “I am a canvas/painted over/whether it be by your hand/or mine own.” (page 113) The images included in the book are unusual and appear to mix mediums, and often resemble pages from a scrapbook that a mother would keep of her children. In a way these pages resemble Williams’ play on words as he picks them apart and alters their definitions to explain the moment he is in.

Reading She alone in a room is not enough. It should be read aloud, shared with others, and most who pick up a copy will do just that. Seeing Saul Williams read it would make it even better, but its up to you to find out where he’s reading or performing next. There is not enough that can be said about this collection, except go read it!

Some reason Saul reminds me of Don Cheadle in this photo.

About the Poet:

Saul Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.

From Wikipedia about Williams and Marcia Jones’ relationship:

Williams and artist Marcia Jones began their relationship in 1995 as collaborative artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word circuit. Their daughter, Saturn, was born in 1996. His collection of poems S/HE is a series of reflections on the demise of the relationship. Marcia Jones, a visual artist and art professor, created the cover artwork for The Seventh Octave, images through-out S/HE in response to Williams, and set designed his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star.

This is my 24th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 54th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, Read in 2011, reviews, Simon & Schuster Tagged With: , ,

Buoyancy and Other Myths by Richard Peabody

September 15, 2011 by

Buoyancy and Other Myths by Richard Peabody is a slim collection that gets at the heart of family drama broken into three parts:  Shooting Myself in the Foot, Kissing Games, and Between Funerals.  The narrator in these poems ages and matures from a young boy eager to help his father but afraid of falling short to an older man similarly worried about falling short, but more accepting of reality.

Unlike the young man in “Family Secrets” who is shaking sense into his brother, the man in the latter poems, like “Orbits,” comes to the realization that the past cannot be hidden and regrets do nothing but hold you back.  You must roll with the punches.  What is striking in some of these poems is the calmness of the narrator, even as violent thoughts or actions are being displayed.  For instance, in “Family Secrets” (page 11) — which is a powerful way to start a collection — “Music isn’t enough tonight./Scratching, clawing, eyes like stones./If I erase him I will expand./His sins wiped clean. Nowhere/for him to leer from. No perch/or receptacle that can hold that/particular weight. He gives up./”  Is his brother still living and he wishes that he didn’t have to remember him or is it what happened to his brother that he does not wish to remember and it would be easier to erase him entirely?

Nearing the end of the collection, it seems as though this narrator has found peace or at least outwardly demonstrates contentment, or is it resignation?  In “I Live Behind a Bakery” (page 55-6), “Only most days/it’s easier/to just read a book/with that smell/all around me/and think buttery thoughts.//”  Peabody has a lot of cutesy ideas that he plays with in his poetry, like living behind a bakery or dating vampires, but these images are metaphors for other things like the contentment that you find in the simple things of life or even in the relationships you have.  However, there is an undercurrent in these poems urging readers to move beyond contentment, leap into more dangerous and possibly fulfilling territory.

Guitar Player (page 36)

Fingers know secrets
that eyes can’t understand.

While not all the poems are memorable or strong, there are a few gems within the collection’s pages that are worth reading more than once. Some are simply powerful in a few lines. Buoyancy and Other Myths by Richard Peabody explores the nature of relationships and how they propel us to greater things to seek out new directions and yes, to grow.

About the Poet:

Richard Peabody, a prolific poet, fiction writer and editor, is an experienced teacher and important activist in the Washington , D.C., community of letters. Peabody is the editor of Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976), and has published a novella, two books of short stories, six books of poems, plus an e-book, and edited (or co-edited) nineteen anthologies including: “Mondo Barbie,” “Conversations with Gore Vidal,” “A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation,” and “Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix.” Peabody teaches fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program.

This is my 23rd book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 53rd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This is a stop on The Literary Road Trip since Richard Peabody is a local Washington, D.C., area poet.

Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2011, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

August 30, 2011 by

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, who served in the U.S. army for seven years after receiving his MFA and was a team leader for one year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and was printed by Alice James Books — a nonprofit cooperative poetry press.  (The title poem, “Here, Bullet,” was recently profiled in the Virtual Poetry Circle.)  The collection is broken down into four sections, and each section is preceded by a quote relevant to it, with some even quoting the Qur’an.  Turner is adept at illustrating the violence of war, but also the humanity that accompanies it.  From the startling nature of rockets going off over head to the silence of bullets as they enter the body, he provides a keen eye into how those instruments of war impact both sides of the battle equally psychologically, physically, and spiritually.

Soldiers who craft wartime poetry have generally either fallen into the category of using graphic violence to shock and awe the reader or using quieter imagery to bring about reader understanding about psychological impacts of battle.  There also are those that have political poems that are heavy on criticism or propaganda, but those would fall less into the wartime poetry category.  Turner combines both violence and peace in his imagery, but in a unique way that has violence silently creeping into the lines and shocking readers.  For instance, in “Eulogy” (page 20), readers may hardly notice the suicide of Private Miller because he takes “brass and fire into his mouth,” but once the birds fly up off the water by the sound, it is clear the brass and fire are from a gun.  While outright, violent images can be eye-opening for readers, the quiet power in some of Turner’s lines are that much more lasting.

From “Katyusha Rockets” (page 32), “Rockets often fall/in the night sky of the skull, down long avenues/of the brain’s myelin sheathing, over synapses/and the rough structures of thought, they fall/into the hippocampus, into the seat of memory–/where lovers and strangers and old friends/entertain themselves, unaware of the dangers/headed their way, or that I will need to search/among them.”  These poems not only pay tribute to soldiers on all sides, but the civilians, the heroes, and a soldier’s fears and his regrets.  Some poems are infused with deep sadness, while others are steeped in great pride.

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner and the title poem are a testament to war and all of its trappings.  Readers will enjoy the quiet power these poems hold and the deft hand with which Turner paints the humanity of both sides in war.  The collection also contains moments of observation that will have readers thinking about war in the greater context of our own “supposed” morality as espoused by the Bible and the Qur’an, noting in “Dreams From the Malaria Pills (Turner)” (page 46), “He knows the Qur’an and the Bible/have washed page by page to the shore,/their bindings stripped loose, their ink/blurred into the sea.//”

About the Poet:

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005) which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA “Best in the West” award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner’s poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name.

 

This is my 48th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 22nd book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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Ideal Cities by Erika Meitner

August 16, 2011 by

Ideal Cities by Erika Meitner, whom I interviewed in 2009, was published in 2010 by Harper Perennial as part of the National Poetry Series selected by Paul Guest. The collection is broken down into two sections: Rental Towns and Ideal Cities.  Rental towns appears to be at first glance about the transient nature of apartment or rental living, but on a deeper level its about the transient nature of our lives and how quickly we all want to grow up and become adults.  There zipping through memories and moments reminds us that our childhood moves too quickly and so innocence is gone before we realize it.  “The windows on the soon-to-be luxury/condos across the way say things/to the darkness I can’t hear.  Sometimes/they’re blocked by the train masticating/its way across town.  Now and then//” (from Vinyl-Sided Epiphany, page 5-6)

Each poem is ripe with stunning imagery, like in “January Towns” (page 38-9),  “. . . Sometimes the light/above the clouds winks out a full-size replica/of our lives.  We are crystals of frozen water;//”  Not only is life transient in nature as we move from one moment to the next, but it is also frozen in time for us to review at anytime in our memories.  A bit of us, as we were is frozen, captured.  We seek to capture those moments not only in our minds, but in photos and videos, and in some moments we see ourselves in the past and wonder who those people are.  From “Poem With/out a Face” (page 16-7), “Desire is serendipity,/is pity, is blind,is danger,is not/obligation, is poking the most/alien thing with a stick to see/if it stirs and clings, the way/”  Some memories are clearer than others, which is true even of those moments in our lives that we thought we’d remember forever through a clear, clean lens, only to find the lens is murky and obscured.

In the second section, “Ideal Cities,” Meitner’s poems are not about a utopia in the true sense of the word, like a world without crime, etc., but they are about the communities that reside in each city, with their diversity, quirkiness, and pain.  There are a great deal of images in these poems that pay homage to the sounds of cities, from construction equipment to the silence of social networking.  This section is smaller than the first, but tackles tougher subjects like the Holocaust, though both sections glance at pregnancy and birth.  From “Elegy With Construction Sounds, Water, Fish” (page 75-7), “There is music, and there is music./There is water from a plastic pitcher/hitting slate pavers, silenced by skin./There are valleys with houses tucked/into them and something trilling/”  From birth to death and city to the suburbs, Meitner’s focus is on the journey that life takes, even its most devastating parts.

Meitner’s poetry has a quickness that illustrates the transient nature of the modern world, and her poems beg the question of whether modernity is ideal or whether suburbia is ideal.  Readers will examine each of these poems and discover that the answer to that question lies within themselves.  The poet endorses neither one nor the other, but she does examine the old world versus the new world.  Ideal Cities by Erika Meitner is an enigmatic collection with moments on clarity and stunning imagery that highlights the transient nature of the modern world whether you live in the city or in suburbia.

Also check out the poem from this collection that was under discussion in the 109th Virtual Poetry Circle.

© Photo by Steve Trost, 2009

About the Poet:

Erika Meitner was born and raised in Queens and Long Island, New York. She attended Dartmouth College (for an A.B. in Creative Writing in 1996), Hebrew University on a Reynolds Scholarship, and the University of Virginia, where she received her M.F.A. in 2001 as a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Meitner is a first-generation American: her father is from Haifa, Israel; her mother was born in Stuttgart, Germany, which is where her maternal grandparents settled after surviving Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Mauthausen concentration camps

She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program, and is also simultaneously completing her doctorate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she was the Morgenstern Fellow in Jewish Studies.

 

This is my 21st book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 43rd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

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Flies by Michael Dickman

August 4, 2011 by

Michael Dickman‘s Flies, published in 2011 and a possible candidate for the Indie Lit Awards if it is nominated in September, won the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award, which is the only award for a second book of poetry.  The collection is a dark look at family, but also takes a stark look at death and loss.  However, there are lighter moments in the book, like in “Emily Dickinson to the Rescue” (page 21) that was highlighted in the Virtual Poetry Circle.

Beneath the whimsical wordplay and imagery of playgrounds and imaginary friends, there is a deep sense of unrest and yet acceptance of how things have turned out, though the narrator has many regrets.  In “Imaginary Playground” (page 27), the narrator is playing alone with his imaginary friends, but as the scene fills in, it is clear that where there once were trees and places to play, there is concrete and change.  The narrator is nostalgic for those moments, even if they were solitary moments with imaginary friends — wishing there was a way to return to the innocence of childhood and the creativity that period imbued.  “The swing sets/aren’t really/there// . . . On the blacktop/we lie down in each other’s arms/and outline our bodies/in chalk// . . . There are no hiding places anymore//” (page 27-9)

The reading of “Flies” (page 50-4) is slightly different from the printed version in Flies.

Each poem strives to revisit a memory or a loved one and shine a light on their current state, whether that is rotting beneath the ground or in the sky as a star, but these juxtapositions serve to show readers that it is not crystal clear what happens after we die.   The flies come and haunt those that remain behind with memories, regrets, and happiness, but those that die . . . vanish, never to be haunted by the past or present again. The recurring image of flies transforms from something that is friendly to something that is annoying and horrifying.

Translations (page 64-6)

My mother was led into the world
by her teeth

Pulled
like a bull
into the 
heather

She only ever wanted to be a mother her whole life and nothing else
      not even a human being!

One body turned into 
another body

Pulled by the golden voices of children

A bull 
out of hell

Called out
her teeth out in front of her
her children
pulling


*


First I walk my mother out
into the field
by a leash
by a lifetime
she walks me out
our coats
shimmering

I brush her hair

Wave the flies away from her eyes

They are my eyes

Who will ride my mother
when we aren't around
anymore?

Turned from one thing into another until you are a bull standing in
     a field

The field
just beginning
to whistle us


*


I am led by the mouth
out into the 
yellow

Light turning
to water in the early evening
the insects dying
in the cold and 
returning
in the morning

I put on my horse-head

Led by a bit

A lead

My leader is tall and the hair on her forearms is gold

We lower your eyes
into the tall grass
and eat

Dickman is relentless in his long poems with their ever-changing images that repeat and twist. Readers are exposed to the ways in which memories are recalled bit-by-bit and slapped together and rearranged until a full, clear image is presented. At first these lines are confusing, and some readers may step back from the lines, but only by pressing onward will they see the full impact of the memories he taps. Flies by Michael Dickman is a captivating collection that may require greater attention, but the sharp imagery and twists-and-turns will keep readers riveted even as the poems and memories expand over several pages. On a side note, the book cover is very indicative of the memory recall the poet experiences — it is haphazard and vivid.

About the Poet:

Michael Dickman was born and raised in the working-class neighborhood of Lents in Portland, Oregon. His first book, The End of the West, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2009. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and Field, among others. Dickman is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Lannan Foundation. He has worked for years as a cook and has been active recently in the Writers in the Schools program.

This is my 20th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

This is my 37th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

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