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The Tree It Was by Sandra Fuhringer

July 28, 2011 by

Sandra of Fresh Ink Books told me in 2009 that she would send me a copy of her poetry book, and it finally arrived this week.  It didn’t make the previous Mailbox Monday, but it will be in next week’s edition.  I was so happy to see my copy, which she signed to me, that I decided to read it right away.

The Tree It Was by Sandra Fuhringer is the 15th book in Marco Fraticelli’s Hexagram Series based on the ideographs of the I Ching and is published by King’s Road Press.  Her hexagram is The Source or The Well, “which represents the deep, inexhaustible, divinely centered source of nourishment and meaning for humanity.”  The Book of Changes is a divination system or later a cosmology system that espouses the dynamics of balance (i.e. yin and yang) and the inevitability of change.  Furhinger’s haiku certainly reflect change and the struggle with maintaining balance.

First, the expansive white space surrounding each haiku provides readers a moment of pause between haiku, allowing them to visualize each one’s images and absorb its meaning.   The collection begins with a haiku demonstrating the hidden strength in even those of us who are perceived as weak, pushing through even the most difficult circumstances.  In a way, the first haiku demonstrates that each of us has a well of strength from which we can draw at any time.

Fuhringer’s poems bring to light our embarrassments, our fears, and our pain with the shrill sounds of ambulances and the coloring of pictures by children.  Others have a surreal quality to them, like a patient on morphine or under other treatments that leave them dissociated from their bodies.  Not all of these poems worked as traditional haiku with surprising last lines, but a majority of the collection is near perfect.  About midway through the collection, the traditional form of haiku is modified as the poet seeks to draw immediate attention to juxtapositions within her words  — such as Hiroshima pulled downward from the “h” in kittyhawk.

From page 3 (one of my favorites for its startling imagery):

five tries to get a vein
the leaf’s purple
underside

The poet’s narrator is The Tree It Was, and you can’t help but think that the narrator is Sandra Fuhringer in her most raw moments.  Many poets have personal connections to their poems, but how many can say that their poems are an embodiment of their daily struggles while simultaneously providing the strength they need to continue fighting?  This slim chapbook is a testament to The Well of the I Ching, and Fuhringer should be applauded for broadening the spirit of the Book of Changes into Western culture.

Also reviewed by one of my favorite short form online literary magazines, LYNX (please scroll down the page in the link).

This is my 19th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 35th 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: , , ,

Curses and Wishes by Carl Adamshick

July 22, 2011 by

Curses and Wishes by Carl Adamshick uses an economy of words to address the harrowing moments of life and the happier moments.  His images are unique and playful, but his subjects are sometimes dark and eerie, like the barren tree with its barely there spinal column of vertebrae on the cover.  From “Even Though” (page 1-3), “I felt the deep bruise of a sentence/and wanted to eat/at the banquet of silence.”  Which are the curses and which are the wishes is left up to the reader, but some poems are clearly laments for those dying in the Holocaust (like the poem “The book of Nelly Sachs“) or lost by other means.

Adamshick clings to the moment, a snatch of time and draws out the undercurrent of meaning, creating a story from the unknown.  Unlike, Whitman, who used nature in his poems to extrapolate wider philosophical realities of transcendentalism, Adamshick’s poems combine industrial elements from street lights to chessboard pieces and cameras to evoke emotion and recognition in the reader, creating an Aha moment.  “The corner utility pole/holds a cone of light/to its mouth// and is screaming/at the pavement.// We are almost here/”  (page 38 from “Almost”)  However, like Whitman, there is a sense of moving beyond, gaining insight into humanity and stretching ourselves further.

Junkyard (page 7)

I never visit my younger self.
Any change I elicit
would be just that: change.
Something different in a world
of differences. A shifting
from memory to dream. Snow
falling in a barrel of rusted
engine parts becoming a day
of lightning and old fallen oak:
one life or another, mine or yours.
This is the last outpost before
things become what they are.
I was eleven when an older self,
the lord of my childhood, appeared
above the chair in my room
splendid and silent like a planet
rotating, spinning in its ellipses,
but, also, unmoving by the headboard
and the one pillow full of feathers.

There is a quiet power in these poems and this slim volume, which leave readers waiting to devour more from Adamshick.  Many of the poems are about change and what it means to be changed and keep moving onward and upward.  However, “Junkyard” raises another question about change — is change always beneficial and new or is it just a reincarnation of something that came before?  Can we really transcend the present and these bodies we inhabit?  Curses and Wishes by Carl Adamshick is a clear winner and would be an excellent candidate for the Indie Lit Awards.  Another one for the Best of List of 2011.

Copyright Jessie Sue Hibbs

About the Poet:

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Carl Adamshick grew up primarily in Harvard, Illinois.

Adamshick currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner of many years, Jessie Sue Hibbs.

Curses and Wishes by Carl Adamshick won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and was published by independent press Louisiana State University Press.  It is Adamshick’s first poetry collection; please check out this Oregonian article about his win.  (I received this book as a member of the Academy of American Poets, but not for review.)

 

This is my 33rd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 18th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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

Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow: Living in an Elephant-Controlled 2010 Election Diorama by Jennifer C. Wolfe

June 16, 2011 by

Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow:  Living in an Elephant-Controlled 2010 Election Diorama by Jennifer C. Wolfe, published by BlazeVOX, is a satiric look at the government today following the Republican take over of the U.S. House of Representatives.  However, readers with staunch Republican beliefs who do not have a sense of humor about politics are NOT going to enjoy this volume and may even be angered by it.  On the other hand, Democrats will nod their heads in agreement, while Independents will nod, smirk, and disagree with certain aspects of these poems, which read more like prosaic diatribes.  More than anything, Wolfe has written a collection of poems to get the nation energized and talking politics, just in time for the upcoming 2012 elections (because you know that elections are now tackled at least 12 months in advance, if not more).

The Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas Pledge of Allegiance (page 42)

I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of our America,
And to the corporations, for which it stands,
One nation, under our thumb,
Poor invisible,
With liberty and justice, as dictated by the 5-4
Conservative majority of our Supreme Court.

As in the above poem, Wolfe twists well known moments and sayings from history and creates a new narrative to illustrate the “horrors” she sees happening in today’s government and society.  Vitriol drips from each line as she slices through the Republican rhetoric and policy to uncover the intentions of their decisions and desires.  Wolfe is clearly angered by the prominence of Fox News and Sarah Palin, but those are not her only targets.  George W. Bush, John Boehner, Tim Pawlenty, terrorism, and the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords garner equal attention from Wolfe’s sharp pen strokes.

She uses clear language, current events, rhyme, and repeating refrains to maintain the attention of the reader, especially as she nears the point in which she’s ready to slice political platforms to shreds.  There are no puzzles to unwind and the approach to politics is as aggressive as commentary from Bill O’Reilly.  From flip-flopping on Second Amendment issues to hidden agendas in policies, Wolfe calls attention to the rhetoric that covers up the truth.  For instance, why is China our ally if they continue to ship toxic toys, food, and other items to the United States?  Is it related to the fact that they own most of the national debt?

Overall Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow:  Living in an Elephant-Controlled 2010 Election Diorama by Jennifer C. Wolfe is a jumping off point for further conversation, but it will leave some readers wondering what the references refer to as they lose their immediate meaning and newer events replace those within these pages.  Luckily, the Internet will enable everyone to look up some of these references, though many will wonder if this is merely a collection by a leftist angered by the victory of the right in a political election and what it, if any, significance, it will have on the political arena.  Only time will tell how this collection impacts thinking and action into the future or if it will simply fade into the background like the many scandals among today’s political figureheads.  Taken in small chunks, readers will digest the barbs in these poems and hunger for the next course.

About the Poet:

Jennifer C. Wolfe grew up in Maplewood, Minn., and studied fiction writing and poetry at Century College in White Bear Lake. Mississippi. Wolfe has five previous publishing credentials: a poem “If” included within the Century College (White Bear Lake, MN) Spring 2008 Student Lounge literary magazine along with three poetry manuscripts, Kick the Stones: Everyday Hegemony, Empire, and Disillusionment published as an eBook by BlazeVOX Books, New York, October 2008, Yukon Rumination: Great Fun for All in the Land of Sarah Palin’s Joe Sixpack Alaska, published as an eBook by BlazeVOX Books, New York, June 2009, and Healing Optimism, and Polarization, published as an eBook by BlazeVOX Books, New York, February 2010, and two poems “St. Patrick’s Day” and “Roller Coaster,” published within the online edition of Scrambler Magazine, Issue 39, June 2010.

 

This is my 17th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 26th 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: , ,

Ordinary Miracles by Erica Jong

June 15, 2011 by

Ordinary Miracles by Erica Jong begins with an introduction by the poet herself in which she talks about how poems have become “the stepchild of American letters,” especially since the novel has become so popular.  She further goes on to discuss the duality of being a poet and a novelist and how it is often considered “promiscuous.”  She has thrown those adjectives aside to embrace her duality and to make the most of both genres, with the themes of one informing and flourishing in the other.  “I am always hoping that someone will recognize the poet and novelist as two aspects of the same soul — but alas, the genres are reviewed by two different groups of people, so no one ever seems to notice this in print,” she says.  (page xvi)  It’s funny that she would have this concern in the 1980s, and I wonder what she would think about blogs today that review both novels and poetry.

Erica Jong’s collection is broken into four parts: Fetal Heartbeat; The Breath Inside the Breath; The Heart, The Child, The World; Straw in the Fire.  From these section titles alone, readers can tell that the poems are likely to generate an arc from birth to death.

Jong’s narrator examines what it means to be a mother, the trepidation that comes with, and the joys that are discovered as the child enters the world and grows up questioning the world around them.  More than that, there is a circle of birth-life-death that Jong refers to and wonders about, working back from her advanced years to her childhood.  From “Poem for Molly’s Fortieth Birthday” (page 23-6), “Now,/I begin/unraveling/the sleeves/of care/that have/stitched up/this brow,/unraveling/the threads/that have kept/me scared,/as I pranced/over the world,/seemingly fearless,/working/without a net,/”

The second section tackles the trials of living, embarking on new aspects of our lives and the moment in which we straddle the past and future.  The indecision, the drawing back, the confusion, and the final moment the decision is made.  The narrator is on the precipice of decisions and movements through life.  From “This Element” (page 39), “Looking for a place/where we might turn off/the inner dialogue,/the monologue/of futures & regrets,/of pasts not past enough/& futures that may never come/to pass,/”

In the smallest of the sections — three — presents the grittiness of life — the love and loss and the pain and joy — but much of this is written bitterly or ironically.  Jong uses simple language and images to demonstrate these emotions without clearly carving out each situation that gave way to those emotions.  Her lines are short and clipped, drawing from that additional emotional power.  On page 55 from “Letter to my Lover After Seven Years,” “Now we have died/into the limbo of lost loves,/that wreckage of memories/tarnishing with time,/that litany of losses/which grows longer with the years,/as more of our friends/descend underground/& the list of our loved dead/outstrips the list of the living.//”

In the final part of the book, the anger, bitterness, and frankness are all that is left as the scars have bored into the narrator and the fluttery, flowery ideas of birth have been completely worn away, leaving only a bristly exterior and nearly empty interior.  In this way, the final section is not a closing of the circle, but it could be if the opening of the circle was ill-perceived.

Ordinary Miracles by Erica Jong takes a look at life from a female point of view — a poet who is derailed and tainted by love and childbirth, who thinks she may have been better off remaining untainted as a way to create the best work.  Whether this interpretation is correct is up to each reader, especially given that many of the poems also illustrate the hidden joys of childbirth and life — the hope that comes with each, a hope that things will be different.  However, readers may cringe at some of the word choices and language used in some of the poems to describe the anatomy of men and the act of sex.  The poet may have chosen the words to provide shock value, and make a point about perspective once relationships fail.  The collection examines the ordinary in an attempt to show readers how miraculous those moments are, but the effort falls short on some occasions.  Overall, the collection will have you talking with book clubs and friends for a long time as it raises issues about relationships and motherhood.

About the Poet (from her Website):

Erica Jong—novelist, poet, and essayist—has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 20 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue and the New York Times Book Review.

Erica Jong lives in New York City and Weston, CT with her husband, attorney Ken Burrows, and standard poodle, Belinda Barkowitz.  Her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer.

 

 

This is my 25th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This is my 16th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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

The Decadent Lovely by Amy Pence

June 2, 2011 by

The Decadent Lovely by Amy Pence, published by Main Street Rag, is a collection lush in mystery as it is in setting and pulsating with dramatic domesticity.  Broken into seven parts, Pence begins the collection with the “ugly and the ordinary” and moves to the end of the collection with the infinitesimal.  Her images call attention to the darkness of the narrator’s family as they witness the drunken stupors, like in “Landing Space, 1970” (page 5-6), “Cutting too:/the eyes of the sunflowers/the swell of them, pulpy,/like my stepfather’s,/roused too soon//from an alcoholic stupor/for the graveyard shift.  Was it too much/what they saw or not enough? . . . ”

Like the pleasant and the darker aspects of the family, Pence juxtaposes the landscape of New Orleans to that of Las Vegas, with the darker elements of family life up in neon lights.  But there is darkness in New Orleans, a past that cannot be escaped and a past that can be touched only through the voodoo of memory and self-assessment.  In “The Waiting Room” (page 40), “Maybe/she’ll talk of a version of her self/decades before the cancer:  the Rose Bowl court in the 50s/or her years in New Orleans, to relate, she’d say/to the woman waiting.  In that/hazy B&W film, my mother/was one of the Golddust Twins,/the flashier one, running headlong out of Ohio, constantly/misunderstood by husbands, children, lovers./Maybe the black woman would begin/to resent my mother as most did, would/see her as merely another shipwreck in Vegas,/unmade by her own addictions.  . . . ”  Readers will find the new perspective on these mundane scenes fresh and captivating, as the narrator reveals the truth behind the surface interactions of women in a waiting room.  Pence has a number of these moments in her poems.  However, there are poems that will require more time, reading them several times and greater reflection for each image and line — a process that could bog down some new readers of poetry.  That being said, the collection is worth the effort.

Put Muse Here (page 22)

Dalí renders Dante’s Beatrice with
his beloved’s form, face obscured. Uses

grisaille, a netting & rivulet to dress her
ginger-crisp: a locust shell split. Then

there’s me: putting another face where the Dark
should be, like dreaming (an Emma Bovary),

of punctuation. The colon: two face one-upon-
one, the lock in the door, a figment well-oiled.

In the slash / my avarice: cut (an Emily Brontë)
window across which I rub my wrist.

Then there’s the period — the body’s
rush to an ending. The Thee (an Emily Dickinson)

through which the self moves —
finds the mouth, fills the face, enters in.

Sometimes cryptic, sometimes plain spoken, Pence crafts an inside look at family (those are her parents on the cover) and the happy dysfunction that can occur and often does.  Beyond that, she draws parallels between that dysfunction and the human condition, which we often attempt to control and fail to control.  The Decadent Lovely is a self indulgence worth wallowing in, if not to examine one’s own life but to understand that humans tend to be self-indulgent even though they espouse the shedding of ego.

 

This is my 15th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 23rd 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: , ,

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

May 31, 2011 by

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins, published in 2011 by Random House, is broken into four sections and includes a quote at the beginning from Alan Bennett‘s The Uncommon Reader, “It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.”

Collins’ mater-of-fact tone in these poems treats death and loss as an inevitability, which it is, but at the same time there is a reverence for the dead, dying, and living.  In terms of Bennett’s quote at the beginning, Collins’ phenomenal library is the library of life — the spinning of the dog as it lays down and its movement from one spot to another or the moments in marriage or shopping for a mattress.

From Thieves (page 16-7), “for I was a fellow thief/having stolen for myself this hour, lifting the wedge of it from my daily clock/so I could walk up a wooded hillside/and sit for a while on a rock the size of a car.//” or from Simple Arithmetic (page 32-3), “and gone are my notebook and my pencil/and there I go, too,/erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.//”, Collins demonstrates the fleeting nature of our time here, how it is borrowed, and how we must make the best of it before it is gone.

Collins’ poetry is accessible as he creates stories and narrations to engage the reader and teach them what he sees.  Like a horoscope, each poem sketches a future, but like horoscopes, the power to make them true or to change them lies in the person meant to live them.  In The Chairs That No One Sits In (page 49-50), “You see them on porches and on lawns/down by the lakeside/usually arranged in pairs implying a couple// . . . It may not be any of my business,/but let us suppose one day/that everyone who placed those vacant chairs//on a veranda or a dock sat down in them/if only for the sake of remembering/what it was they thought deserved//to be viewed from two chairs,/side by side with a table in between./The clouds are high and massive on that day.//”.

The Straightener (page 5-6)

Even as a boy I was a straightener.
On a long table near my window
I kept a lantern, a spyglass, and my tomahawk.

Never tomahawk, lantern, and spyglass.
Always lantern, spyglass, tomahawk.

You could never tell when you would need them,
but that was the order you would need them in.

On my desk: pencils at attention in a cup,
foreign coins stacked by size,

a photograph of my parents,
and under the heavy green blotter,
a note from a girl I was fond of.

These days I like to stack in pyramids
the cans of soup in the pantry
and I keep the white candles in rows like logs of wax.

And if I can avoid doing my taxes
or phoning my talkative aunt
on her eighty-something birthday,

I will use a ruler to measure the space
between the comb and brush on the dresser,
the distance between shakers of salt and pepper.

Today, for example, I will devote my time
to lining up my shoes in the closet,
pair by pair in chronological order

and lining up my shirts on the rack by color
to put off having to tell you, dear,
what I really think and what I now am bound to do.

There are quite a few references to Dante’s The Divine Comedy in these poems, reflecting the journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise.  There are slivers of light from paradise and there are moments of fiery hell, but most of these poems live in the present or the past, examining with understanding, reverence, and sometimes regret that the actions we take in this life cannot be undone.  But Collins also touches upon the tightrope we must walk in relationships with our loved ones.

Overall, Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins is a collection of reflections and predictions for the future, but beyond the attention paid to larger concerns of life, Collins reflects on the smaller moments in time and the joys, frustration, and satisfaction they bring.  A fascinating look at everyday life that makes each moment extraordinary, and a collection that should be added to every library.

 

This is my 14th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 13th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.  I’ve wanted to read this since I learned Collins would have a new book this year.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2011, reviews, Wish I'd Read That Challenge 2011 Tagged With: ,

Monster by David Livingstone Clink

May 20, 2011 by

Monster by David Livingstone Clink, published by small publisher Tightrope Books, is a collection broken into five parts and is dedicated to those who “dreamed of monsters under the bed.”  What an appropriate dedication, as there is an undercurrent of menace to some of these poems.  Beyond the shapeshifters, the aliens, and the other monsters that go bump in the night, Clink is drawing out the mischief and the darkness within each of us.  While we are human, there is a baser nature beneath the civility that he calls attention to, warning us to remain wary and yet accepting of that nature.

In “Pantoum for a Recent Kill” (page 36), the narrator highlights the need of humanity to categorize even dead bodies, to shape them within a context, providing them meaning even if no meaning exists.  While we want to examine these corpses (whether they are literal or figurative) in great detail and pose them as we see fit, we also shy away from the pleasure of it and of acknowledging this darker desire to get involved on our basest level.  “In putting an end to something braver than us/cut the corpse into small pieces.  Bury it deep/and turn away with relief that this isn’t you.//”  Additionally, readers may notice a slight disdain in the lines chosen by Clink; the narrator seems to be sarcastic about the actions of the denier who “buries it deep.”  Perhaps Clink is discussing the corpses of our past selves or the past selves mentioned throughout history and lore, but no matter which corpses he is referring to, it is clear that he wants to break through the fear of self-examination.

Above Us (page 50)
-after Julia Hartwig’s ‘Above Us’

Running until they are tired, out of space,
boys cast shadows in the dwindling light

of a vast square, the soccer ball bouncing,
ending this day with awe and consolation.

This completes another cycle in dying–
the boys turn home, talk excitedly,

the soccer ball having its own language
that had to be kicked out of it to be heard.

Moving through the parts of the collection, readers will note a progression in the narration from the fantastical to the more concrete, but even in these different poems the undercurrent of menace and darkness continues.  However, the narration changes from a questioning of its existence to a denial of its existence to an acceptance.  From “The Airships Take Us, Even as We Blow Out the Last Candle” (page 27), “The darkness did not come on like a tarantula./It was always here./It is penetrated by man-made machines/muscling into the night,/by two young women on a downtown bus/with blue streaks in their hair, whispering,/Calvary, and, Hosanna.//”

Through playful language and use of creative poetic forms (from pantoum to cross-reading — “Weathered Remains” on page 24 being one of the best cross-reading poems in the collection), Clink will make readers take pause to rethink each line and their own preconceptions about their humanity, while at the same time celebrating what makes us human in the darkness.  Overall, Clink’s use of language and poetic form in Monster creates a surreal malaise that readers will swim in, searching for an exit but enticed to stay to uncover the dark truth about themselves.  A dark truth that is worth knowing so that they can move beyond it to a more mindful life.  Another winner in poetry for the year.

David Clink; Copyright Geoff George

About the Poet:

His first book of poetry was released from Tightrope Books in the Spring of 2008. It is called “Eating Fruit Out of Season.”

David is a member of The League of Canadian Poets.  Check out his Website, Poetry Machine.

 

 

 

This is my 20th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 


This is my 13th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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

Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager

May 13, 2011 by

Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager, published by small press Cherry Grove Collections, is a collection that gives voice to the thoughts, the events, and the split seconds before tragedy or fateful decisions are made that are only heard in silence.  The silence is a voice, quick to speak and die out without stalking across the stage and declaring itself.  Secrets are revealed in these poems, like the undiscovered joy “Deborah Sampson” (page 11) — a woman who enlisted as a man in the Army during the Revolutionary War — felt posing as a man and disappearing from her real self.  Or in “The Moment Before the Moment” (page 19), where the narrator comes across the hidden beauty of a sunrise before the actual sun rises above the horizon.  Each poem illuminates the in-between, the edge, the precipice before the collision of events or moments in time.

The Space Coast (page 14; click the poem title and scroll the page to see this poem and others in the collection)

An Airedale rolling through green frost,
cabbage palms pointing their accusing leaves
at whom, petulant waves breaking at my feet.
I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights
scoured sand. What was ever found
but women in skirts folded around the men
they loved that Friday? No one found me.
And how could that have been, here, where
even botanical names were recorded
and small roads mapped in red?
Night, the sky is black paper pecked with pinholes.
Tortoises push eggs into warm sand.
Was it too late to have come here?
Everything’s discovered. Everything’s spoken for.
The air smells of salt. My lover’s body.
Perhaps it is too late. I want to run
the beach’s length, because it never ends.
The barren beach. Airedales grow
fins on their hard heads, drowned surfers
resurface, and those little girls
who would not be called back to safety are found.

At times, the images seem thrown together haphazardly, but readers must let themselves go, meditate on the words in the context of the moment presented, before the “truth” is revealed.  What is not said explicitly about certain moments can be as violent as the moment that remains unspoken — what happens between walking through a park after dark following a mother’s rejection and when the narrator wakes up with his pants around his ankles in “Rohypnol” (page 34).  What this style shows is that there are numerous ways to tell a story and to uncover “truth,” and it does not always have to be explicit or harrowing, though there are moments of violence on the surface of some poems.

Ager spends a great deal of time exploring the hidden spaces in our minds, our secret desires and thoughts, and even the thoughts we didn’t know we had.  Like a mother who has no husband or children to take care of for the evening in “Alone” (page 38), and all she can think of is the next task on the list or when the next task will come for her.  But beyond that, her personification of inanimate object, such as a telephone, can convey those unspoken desires in a way that a mere narrative involving a man and a woman cannot.

Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager is a personification of silent whispers in dark corners, where the secrets and mysteries of ourselves lie in wait — wanting to be revealed and not.  Readers will take a journey into these recesses and uncover their own hidden secrets, smile at the camaraderie these poems produce, and search for more.  One of the best collections I’ve read this year.

About the Poet:

Deborah Ager’s poems appear in New England Review, The Georgia Review, Quarterly West, New South and in the anthologies No Tell Motel and Best New Poets. She’s received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and she received a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

She is founding editor and publisher of 32 Poems Magazine. Many poems first appearing in 32 Poems have been honored in the Best American Poetry and Best New Poets anthologies and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Ager codirects the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Reading Series in Washington, DC and teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.

 

This is my 12th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 19th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This is my 11th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.  I’ve wanted to read this since the poet sent it to me for review, but life got in the way.

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

Lit Windowpane by Suzanne Frischkorn

May 12, 2011 by

Suzanne Frischkorn’s Lit Windowpane is a slim collection of poems, published by small press Main Street Rag, that examines what humanity has done to the environment and yet at the same time praises the unfettered beauty of nature.  Like the men in the tavern of “The Mermaid Takes Issue With the Fable” (page 3), humans have “blackened” the Earth and “laughed” along the way as we’ve entertained ourselves without a single moment’s pause about what our actions have caused — and in some cases irreparably damaged.

Many of these poems are like gazing through a lit windowpane at the wildness of nature, watching it from afar and not interacting or obstructing it — enabling it to just be.  Frischkorn’s lines are short, yet powerful in that readers immediately picture the scene and the action.  Upon further reflection, they come to see the message beneath the lines — from preserving nature to decrying the harm that has come to nature at the hands of humanity.

Youth Drowns in Housatonic River (page 4)

He swam across
+++ the inlet near Beard’s Island,

and I was lying in my river bed
+++ watching light ripple the surface.

I saw him swim a straight line
+++ through the sun. I had no choice

but to eat fish from the river,
+++ and the soil, it finds its way into

my skin. I am the river and the river
+++ is contaminated. The river is dying

and I am dying. His body was lean
+++ and strong, yet the cold shut down

his circulation. His arms. His legs.
+++ Please tell his mother I brushed

the hair from his forehead and sang
+++ sweet songs until the divers came

a day later. Tell her, he swam a straight line.

In “Youth Drowns in Housatonic River,” the narrator not only becomes the river, but also tells the tale of a drowning youth and the interconnectedness of humans and their environment. “The river is dying/and I am dying,” shows this connection, as do the lines in which the narrator is eating fish from the contaminated river.  Frischkorn’s images grown up and out, twisting around the reader, weaving a scene that gets under the skin and causes readers to rethink their own actions toward the environment.  A perfect example of this is her poem “‘A Stone, A Leaf, An Unfound Door,’ T. Wolfe.”  The narrator talks about being reincarnated as a stone, a leaf, and unfound door, and through each scene readers see how easily a stone or a leaf can be treasured one moment and either discarded or forgotten in the next moment.

Overall, Lit Windowpane by Suzanne Frischkorn is a collection that seeks to quietly raise awareness among its readers, while cultivating a new appreciation for the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

About the Poet:

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Girl on a Bridge (2010), and Lit Windowpane (2008) both from Main Street Rag Publishing. In addition she is the author of five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo (2008).

Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Ecotone, Indiana Review, Margie, Verse Daily, and other publications. She has new poems forthcoming, or in the current issues of Barn Owl Review, Copper Nickel, North American Review, PALABRA, Printer’s Devil Review, and Puerto del Sol.

From 2001 to 2005 she served as an editor for Samsära Quarterly and is currently an Assistant Editor for Anti-.

A 2009 Emerging Writers Fellow of The Writer’s Center, her honors also include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook, Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.

 

This is my 11th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 18th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This is my 10th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.  I’ve wanted to read this since the poet sent it to me for review, but life got in the way.

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

The Baghdad Blues by Sinan Antoon

May 10, 2011 by

Published in 2007 by small press Harbor Mountain Press, The Baghdad Blues by Sinan Antoon is a collection of poems that straddles the line between war and peace with war.  The narrator uncovers the emptiness of loss beneath the hard exterior of those consumed by the act of war, while at the same time drawing line in the sand to call out the enemy.  Each line is carefully selected for its subtle power, which can only be unleashed by an unexpected turn in the poem or in a stanza.

From “Wrinkles; on the wind’s forehead” (page 23-8)

3

the wind was tired
from carrying the coffins
and leaned
against a palm tree . . .

6

My heart is a stork
perched on a distant dome
in Baghdad
it’s nest made of bones . . .

12

the Tigris and Euphrates
are two strings
in death’s lute
and we are songs
or fingers strumming

The collection is divided into four parts, with Phantasmagoria II containing the most poems. Phantasmagoria, according to Wikipedia, “was a form of theater which used a modified magic lantern to project frightening images such as skeletons, demons, and ghosts onto walls, smoke, or semi-transparent screens, frequently using rear projection. The projector was mobile, allowing the projected image to move and change size on the screen, and multiple projecting devices allowed for quick switching of different images.”  “A Photograph” is the most illustrative of phantasmagoria in that as the narrator unfolds the image of a photograph seen in the New York Times of a young boy in Baghdad, the true horror of the event comes to life and leaps off the page through the carefully chosen, yet sparse language used by Antoon.

Unlike other poets who discuss war in vivid and disturbing imagery, Antoon focuses on the impact of war on mothers, sons, and lovers as well as an entire nation and culture.  His use of slanted images and subtle transitions sets his verse apart from other “war” poets in that it creates an ironic atmosphere as the narrator speaks of blind bravery and courage, while at the same time stripping away worries of death by setting up orderly ways in which people will be taken care of once they have died.  There is a great sense of loss in many of these poems, but there is that faint hope that love will conquer all — whether it is the love of a mother for her son or the romantic love between men and women or the love of culture.

The Baghdad Blues by Sinan Antoon is a slim volume at 42 pages that will stick with readers long after they have read each poem.  Returning to these poems, readers will uncover the irony of Antoon’s words, but also the truth behind them.  Coping with the horrible sights and sounds that surround them, Iraqis must learn to preserve their sense of self amid chaos and find direction within the confines of their circumstances.

About the Poet:

Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi-born poet, novelist, filmmaker and assistant professor at New York University. His novel I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody and his collection of poems The Baghdad Blues are written with great sophistication and a haunting sense of irony, according to The Electronic Intifada.

Read more about him at NYU Gallatin.

 

This is my 10th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 17th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 8th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge. I’ve wanted to read this volume ever since I picked it up at the last Split This Rock Poetry Festival in March 2010.

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

The Poets Laureate Anthology Edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

April 29, 2011 by

The Library of Congress recently collaborated with Elizabeth Hun Schmidt to collect a select group of poems from the 43 U.S. Poets Laureate in The Poets Laureate Anthology, which lays out the poems in reverse chronological order (click for a list of the poets laureate) from the current laureate W.S. Merwin through the first poet laureate Joseph Auslander.  The table of contents also points out that poems in brackets listed for each laureate are considered their signature poems.  The collection contains a foreword by former poet laureate Billy Collins and an introduction by the editor, Elizabeth Hun Schmidt.

In the foreword, Billy Collins reveals the ceremony or lack thereof that comes with the office of U.S. Poet Laureate, noting that there is no formal naming ceremony, simply a phone call from the Librarian of Congress who selects the latest laureate.  The post does come with an office in the Jefferson Building, but each laureate approaches the appointment differently, though former laureate Howard Nemerov explained that the laureate spends more time explaining the duties he or she performs than actually accomplishing much.

Elizabeth Hun Schmidt’s introduction discusses the placement of the poet laureate’s office in a remote wing of the Library of Congress near the rooms used by U.S. House teenage pages, “You might think our country wants to both flaunt and to hide the fact that the only official job in the arts in the United States is for a poet” (page xiv of The Poets Laureate Anthology, published by W.W. Norton in association with the Library of Congress).  The office of Poet Laureate actually receives mail, and appointed laureates often travel the country exposing new people and communities to poetry, but only Robert Frost was asked to read at a presidential inauguration.

It is clear that some laureates were more active than others, engaging the community either through “brown-bag lunches,” educational projects, or through Websites and lectures.  Billy Collins is the most well-known for his work on Poetry 180, but Ted Kooser also began a project to garner a wider audience for poetry — American Life in Poetry.  Readers will applaud these poets for their commitment to a wider audience, including students, to erase the wall between readers and poetry.  Other laureates focused more on helping amateur poets hone their craft.  But each approached the office as differently as they tackle their verses, and it is this variety that makes the anthology unique, resembling a history of U.S. poetry.

Collins, like many readers, approached this anthology as a way to familiarize themselves with poetry piece-by-piece, dipping back into it over the course of their lives.  Anthologies are often created with this purpose in mind, and many are crafted to provide a reference for the best selections of a certain genre.  In this case, it’s poetry.  Each anecdotal comment from the laureates and their biographical snippets provide a backdrop for the poems that follow, but which, if any, of these poems were written while the laureates were in office is unclear.  Readers may have found it interesting to see which laureates wrote poems during their tenure and to read those poems for themselves.

Overall, The Poets Laureate Anthology edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt is a collection worth adding to anyone’s library shelves.  Whether looking for poems by a particular laureate or searching for a particular poem, the anthology provides a broad look at each poet’s efforts to define their moments, their lives, and humanity.  Reaching into history or dealing in the present, these laureates earned the title and executed the office with aplomb, and this anthology celebrates their accomplishments.  Readers looking to dip into poetry will enjoy this volume as much as those who dive deep into verse on a regular basis because it offers something for everyone.

 

 

This is my 9th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.


 

This is my 15th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 


***This is a part of the National Poetry Month 2011 Blog Tour.

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

City of Regret by Andrew Kozma

April 28, 2011 by

City of Regret by Andrew Kozma is broken into five parts and each section is named for some element of the city — entrances, walls, living spaces, alleys, and exits.  (You can check out my 32 Poems Magazine interview with the poet, here. And please visit Saturday’s Virtual Poetry Circle –link will be live April 30 — for a look at one of his poems).

As a prologue to the collection, Kozma begins with the poem “Dis” (page 1), which is a fictional city in Dante’s The Divine Comedy containing the lower circles of hell.  Like Dante, Kozma goes on a journey through hell, but the poet is traveling through these circles to find his father who has died and with whom he has unfinished business as he says in the final lines:  “When a ravine splits the sky, Earth’s muddy light/unearths my father.  We have much to talk about.//”  This poem sets the tone for the remainder of the collection with its melancholy and mournful tone.

In the first section — entrances — Kozma uses individual poems to explore the various ways people and other beings meet, greet, avoid, and rush toward death.  In “That We May Find Ourselves at Death” (page 8), he echoes the lines of Emily Dickinson, who could not stop for death, when he asks where you go when you are late for death?  He questions how death is confronted when it has already happened and there is no way to turn back the clock.  But in other poems — such as “Night Meeting” (page 6) — the poet evokes violent images of a dead squirrel’s body pulsating with ants to demonstrate not only the sudden impact and violence of death, but the messy aftermath that often follows.  However, death need not always be violent and unexpected, it can come silently . . . gradually like in ” Your Sketch of the Church in Mourning” (page 13):  ” . . . You step with silence,/walking out, and walk slowly.  Navigate the marble floor/softly, or you will not hear the dead/call after you.//”

The poems in the second section — walls — all seem to personify the denial that comes with the stages of grief.  In “Blood Perimeter” (page 25), the narrator speaks of embracing the grief like one would embrace rust, an illustration of how tough it is to come to terms with grief.  In many cases, the poems speak of vanishing moments and people, events that are baffling yet make sense when impermanence of relationships and life are examined and understood.  Kozma uses rhyme and repetition in these poems to ensure the narrator’s meaning is not lost among the vivid images like that of the Acropolis or the hunting dogs.

In the third section — living spaces — the stage of acceptance is discovered beyond the walls of denial, but acceptance is not as tame as the word suggests.  Accepting death means letting go of the person you lose to death and in a way the narrator suggests that you have to rip free from the notion that they are still present by figuratively setting it afire, like in “Quarantine” (page 31).  These living memories and moments of joy and anger with loved ones often resurface during the grieving process, and it is these fragments that will ease the pain of acceptance, but they also become painful.  In “The Butcher” (page 38), accepting the loss and remembering the lost one is like slitting the wrist and letting the blood flow — tortuous but necessary to purge the immediate pain of grief.  Kozma’s images in this section are both violent and jarring, but effective.

In the final sections of the collection — alleys and exits — Kozma’s poems become darker, more melancholy as the loss sets in and becomes consuming.  Whether the darkness in these poems is tied to the narrator’s lack of faith in an afterlife or merely the deep emotional scarring of grief is unclear.  However, there are tinges of hope that death brings about a renewal as the ashes of a cremated body are returned to nature.

Overall, City of Regret by Andrew Kozma is a deeply moving homage to a deceased father and acts as a guide through the journey of grief.  While a different journey than the one taken by Dante in The Divine Comedy, Kozma’s journey does take the poems’ narrator through hell and more.  This collection is deeply evocative and will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.

 

This is my 8th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 14th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

***This is a part of the National Poetry Month 2011 Blog Tour.

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