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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: ,

Bone Key Elegies by Danielle Sellers

April 27, 2011 by

Danielle Sellers’ Bone Key Elegies is a collection of poems published by Main Street Rag Publishing as part of its Editor’s Select Poetry Series.  (You can check out my previous 32 Poems Magazine interview with the poet, here, and one of her poems in the 81st Virtual Poetry Circle).  Unlike eulogies that praise someone upon his or her death, elegies are a lament for the dead and are often mournful.  In this vein, Sellers excels at creating memorable elegies for her sister, a lost family, and happier memories.  However, many of these poems will deceive the reader at first, beginning with scenery or a happy moment in time before turning melancholy.  Sellers’ style echoes the turn of line expected in haiku or the final couplet of Shakespearean sonnets.

However, some poems, like “The Bridge Fishers” (page 16), are less full of despair than the other beginning poems in the collection and more mischievous, especially as the narrator drives away in a boat beneath a bridge where fisherman are waiting for their first bite from the fish, only to have the engine of the boat scare the fish away.  Sellers’ poems are filled with surprises:  some shocking, some full of dark humor, and some violent.  In “Welcome to my Father’s Showroom” (page 26), readers are given a quirky picture of the showroom as a sort of maze through which the father navigates or hides to peer at customers secretly, but in the final lines, ” . . . He watches them.  In case one should step out of/line, a shotgun leans against the metal filing cabinet.  On its shaft,/his hand-print is outlined in dust.” (please check out some sample poems).

What’s surprising is that each poem has its own depth of despair and melancholy, like an elegy is supposed to have, but the depth of that sorrow generally corresponds well to the connection the narrator has with each subject.  Losing a father can be very devastating to a daughter, but is it more or less devastating to a daughter who has seen her father cheat on her mother or leave her mother?  Losing a sister at a very young age can be tragic and life changing, but is it more or less life changing than if you were to lose a sister after having lived half your life with her by your side?  These are just some of the emotional questions tackled by Sellers’ poems, and Bone Key Elegies is an excellent examination of the various levels of melancholy and despair that individuals can experience at different intervals in their lives. It is clear that the poem about the death of a sister sets the tone for the entire collection, a tone that deepens and thins out in a see-saw of emotion.

Through rich language and vivid imagery from the Florida Keys, Sellers’ illustrates not only the brackish nature of woe, but also the desperate fight against that emotion — leaving readers breathless.

 

This is my 7th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 13th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

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

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

City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco

April 26, 2011 by

Richard Blanco‘s City of a Hundred Fires is a collection published by the University of Pittsburgh Press about the Cuban-American experience, which won the 1997 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.  (You can check out one of his poems in the 40th Virtual Poetry Circle and my take on a reading he did at the local Writer’s Center in 2009.)  The collection is broken down into two sections and each poem contains not only English, but also Spanish phrases, which readers may or may not know offhand.  Readers who are bilingual will have little trouble, though those who have a working knowledge of Spanish or don’t will be able to gather what Blanco is getting at from context clues.  Poems are either in traditional short narrative lines or in longer, more paragraph-like lines, but each tells a story, reveals a memory, and explores a bit of the Cuban-American experience.

“Crayons for Elena” on page 13 is one of the most poignant poems in the collection as it uses the box of 64 crayons to illustrate the differences in skin tones and cultures of the people the narrator encounters and the colors that represent elements from the narrator’s own culture, including pinatas and mangoes.  “. . . All these we wore down to/stubs, peeling the paper coating further and further, peeling and sharpening/until eventually we removed the color’s name.  This is for leaving the box in/the back seat of my father’s new copper Malibu, the melted collage, the butter/”  It seems that though these differences confuse the narrator and cause discomfort, eventually, these differences are forgotten and life moves beyond those variations and instead absorbs the similarities, “melting them into a collage.”

Blanco continues to straddle the Cuban culture — kept alive in family traditions such as Quinces balls — and his new home in American culture.  In a way, his traditional family culture seems foreign to the narrator as he assimilates to American traditions of turkey at Thanksgiving and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Unlike the older relatives talked about in the poems, the narrator does not kid himself that he will be returning to Cuba after the revolution; he knows that the dream of returning to the old country is just that — a dream.

At times, however, the narrator does experience moments of nostalgia, in which he remembers family events or moments.  There are other moments in which the voids left by an American culture that does not feel exactly like home are filled with reminders of a culture left behind whether those voids are filled with sake by a Japanese immigrant or by dark rum with lemon for a Cuban-immigrant.

Unlike in part one where the narrator delves into familial memories and the confusion of bridging two cultures, in the second part, the narrator has become more observant of how his home culture is mutilated and warped by the American idea of capitalism to create a caricature of Cuban life and culture, like in “El Jagua Resort” (page 43):  “where Canadians and Italians step out/drunk congas from megaphone instructions –/side-to-side, kick-then-kick, hand-to-hip;/caught in spells of tabaco, dark rum,/brown sugar, and the young mulatas/”  In a way, the little Havana created in America by the narrator’s parents’ generation is fading and being replaced, but the second part also illustrates more historical details of Cuba, the revolution, and other events.

For a slim volume of poems at 74 pages, City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco will knock you on your butt with its passion, anger, and disbelief.  But it also will drag you to your feet as it clings to hope and harmony.  Overall, Blanco has crafted a diverse collection of poems on the Cuban-American experience that delves below the surface struggles of bias and loneliness to the internal struggle of one narrator and how he copes with those struggles and more.

This is my 6th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 12th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

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

 

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

White Egrets by Derek Walcott

April 19, 2011 by

White Egrets by Derek Walcott is a collection of deeply suggestive and blatant poems about the natural cycle of birth, life, and death and coming to terms with the later as friends, lovers, and others pass away leaving the narrator behind on the journey of life.  Each poem uses nature imagery to paint a canvas of emotion as the narrator grapples with grief, joy, and memory.

Walcott’s poems are long and narrative in many cases, which is not a form or style that calls to every reader, but even the most picky reader can easily pick out the cues that will carry them throughout the multiple part poems.

For instance, in the title poem “White Egrets” section one, readers will notice the lines “in the drumming world that dampens your tired eyes/behind two clouding lenses, sunrise, sunset,/” that signal a decline in health.  In the second section, the theme carries on in the lines “into a green thicket of oblivion,/with the rising and setting of a hundred suns/” until it culminates through a series of images and narrations in section four with the lines “and of clouds.  Some friends, the few I have left,/are dying, but the egrets stalk through the rain/as if nothing mortal can affect them, or they lift/”  and finally in section eight, “the egrets soar together in noiseless flight/or tack, like a regatta, the sea-green grass,/they are seraphic souls, as Joseph was.//”  While the poem is dreary in theme, the subject of losing ones friends slowly over time to death, it also carries along elements of immortality and being left behind as a testament to those who have passed before us.

Many of Walcott’s poems are in memory of friends, family, and others as he dedicates poems or portions of poems to them, and each takes on a meditative and reflective state as he explores their relationship and his memories of their time together.  More than just mundane relationships to our friends and family, Walcott paints a picture of humanity’s infinite connections to the past, present, and future in an effort to demonstrate how deeply we are all interconnected.  In poem 46, “catalogue of a vicious talent that severs/itself from every attachment, a bitterness whose/poison is praised for its virulence.  This verse/” Walcott harshly discusses the consequences of severing attachments, which some may actually believe is a preferable way to live.

White Egrets is a collection readers would probably tackle on a poem-by-poem basis, rather than read at once — not because they are too hard to interpret but because they tackle themes and emotions that are heavy and can weigh down the reader or provide him or her with fodder for reflection on his or her own life.  From moments in history such as the debts owed because of the Holocaust to the election of President Obama, the poet reviews moments in history and how they impact individuals.  Overall, White Egrets is a emotional roller coaster ride of longer poems that are meditative, disruptive, and thought-provoking.

This is my 5th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.


 

This is my 11th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

This review is part of my celebration for National Poetry Month!

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

Haiku Mama by Kari Anne Roy

April 3, 2011 by

Haiku Mama by Kari Anne Roy is a slim volume of 17-syllable poems called haiku, which is a Japanese form of poetry.  Rather than celebrate the joys and beauty of nature, these haiku celebrate the joys and frustrations of new motherhood.

These little poems, including the one featured in the 91st Virtual Poetry Circle, not only will make mothers chuckle, but they also contain a bit of truth that will have them nodding “yes, yes, yes.”

The poems are cute, quick reads for busy moms and the book contains illustrations on a number of pages, though readers may wish for more apt illustrations considering some of the topics addressed in the haiku.  For instance, one haiku discusses the typical technique of pretending the spoon or fork carrying the food is an airplane entering the hangar (aka the child’s mouth).  An illustration of the airplane and hangar method and its food-splattering results would pack even more of a punch.

However, this volume of poetry is not meant to be analyzed too closely, but merely taken for what it is . . . a way to decompress, laugh with another mother who has experienced the same thing, and look back on raising a child with some whimsy.  Haiku Mama by Kari Anne Roy is just the break a new mother needs.

About the Author and the book:

Quirk Books, an independent publisher, makes this volume of haiku poetry available from Kari Anne Roy, the perpetrator of Haiku of the Day blog.  Please check out her blog and her bio.

As part of the National Poetry Month 2011 blog tour, please stop by Rhapsody in Books for today’s tour stop and review of I Wanna Be Your Shoebox.

 

 

This is my 4th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 10th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, Quirk Classics, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews Tagged With: ,

The Rorschach Factory by Valerie Fox

March 8, 2011 by

The Rorschach Factory by Valerie Fox is a collection of poems that are left up to the interpretation of the reader in many cases.  Much like the inkblot test, these poems provide snippets of color, image, and story to provide an outline for readers, and those readers are then tasked with filling in the blanks and interpreting what is there.  Some poems seem to carry a personal history in many of the lines, while others are whimsical in their interpretations of pop culture and real-life relationships.

From “This Is Not My Cousin” (page 9):
This is not the sensational human
condition.  God is not in the picture
just me and trees and my cousin’s shadow.
We like how I am standing on the high place
a smiling paperdoll propped up on the edge
about to step back, waving to Columbus.

From “You’re No Axl Rose” (page 43):

You’re no Axl Rose but your sentences are
as complex as your hair, in an unintended,
wiry, I will live forever way, the way Axl
swings his hips and smokes just enough
to achieve his pristine scratchy scream.
You’re no James Dean but when you can afford
to drive a Porsche I’ll let you drive me
to the Acme to buy aspirin or milk.

Fox’s writing style leaves room for the imagination of the reader so that each new audience can take their own journey.  In other poems, there is a clear tone that shines through the lines, like in “The Temple” (page 37) where the narrator talks about her time with a poet who thought of himself as upper class, but of her as much lower.  The poet was slumming it with the narrator, but you can tell from turns of certain phrases that this view was not accurate:  “He’s my essay.//Soon enough/he ran out of money./I’m a poet, and I’d squirreled a bit of currency away./This became my motto-//’I got mine.'” (page 38)

Broken down into four sections — Out of Time, The One Who Leaves You, Accomplice, and Unrest — the narrator has set up a collection of poems that would appear to be drenched in despair and regret, but readers will be surprised by the not only whimsical poems but also the humor with which she highlights pop culture and elements of the ridiculous in intimate relationships.  Overall, The Rorschach Factory by Valerie Fox is a collection that you can read in one sitting, piecemeal, and revisit over and over, finding nuances to each poem that may not have been as prominent upon first reading.

About the Poet:

Dr. Fox’s most recent book is Bundles of Letters, Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press), written with Arlene Ang. Previous books of poems are The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books) and Amnesia, or, Ideas for Movies (Texture Press). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including Hanging Loose, The World, Feminist Studies, Siren, Phoebe, Watershed, sonaweb, and West Branch.

She was a founding co-editor of 6ix magazine (1990-2000), and currently edits Press 1, a journal featuring poetry, short fiction, opinion, and photography.  Very involved in collaborative writing, she and Arlene Ang have collaborated in the writing of poetry and fiction, publishing in magazines such as Admit 2, Origami Condom, Per Contra and Qarrtsiluni.  At Drexel, Dr. Fox teaches Freshman Writing, Creative Writing (poetry), and Readings in Poetry. She’s particularly interested in experimental poetics and online teaching/e-learning.

About the Indie/Small Press:

Straw Gate Books published Valerie Fox’s The Rorschach Factory and was founded in 2005 by poet and co-founding editor of 6ix magazine (1990-2000) Phyllis Wat in Philadelphia, Pa.  Here’s a snippet of their mission:

“We are particularly interested in works by women and non-polemical writing with an underlying social content. We also feature new authors and authors whose work is underserved.”

This is my 3rd book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 9th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

Here’s a confession, I’ve had this book for a couple of years, and I believe it came from the author or her good friend Arlene Ang.  I’m just now getting around to it.  This is my 5th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.

Filed Under: Events, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, Independent and Small Press Month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews, Wish I'd Read That Challenge 2011 Tagged With: ,

Open Slowly by Dayle Furlong

February 3, 2011 by

Open Slowly by Dayle Furlong begins with poems steeped in Spring imagery and the unfolding blossoms of that season.  For instance, “She Seeks Beauty” is like a flower beginning as a bulb, growing, and releasing the beauty of its petals like a surprise ending.

She Seeks Beauty (page 11)

She seeks beauty everywhere
foraging for flowers in fog
as the metallic din of machinery bordering
the park clangs and disturbs — she dislikes
comments we make about the weight of bulbs
all they have to do is sit, look pretty, and breathe
in truth, they’re fibrous, sturdy, necessary for life.

She’s culpable as any, flesh covers bone
like a clenched fist
taut in sections, ample in others
the weight of water and salt,
breath noxious

she tells us flowers deceive like a woman
warns us to watch out for the men hiding behind them

they cast shadows on sun
etch their place
on earth, bodies pyramids
of accomplishment.

While we sit pretty and still, necessary.

However, there seems to be a sinister undercurrent or a blatant dark side that emerges in some of these poems, illuminating the truth that nature is not all beauty and peace, but also darkness and violence.  Furlong’s lines are not abstract mysteries, but the poems as a whole reveal a mystery or hidden truth that causes readers to rethink their initial impressions at the beginning of the poems.  In a way many of these poems discuss the impermanence of memory and the past, those people, places, and events that we think we will always remember, but that grow fuzzier with time and blur into nothingness.

From Lazy Eye (page 30)

like the faces I meet in the street —
the people in my life
mere puddles waiting to evaporate
right before my eyes.

There are three sections to Open Slowly:  Impossible Permanence; Tonic & Brevity; and Litany of Desire.  While the first section deals with the impermanence of memory and people and events, the second section wallows in that impermanence, dunking the reader fully into memories that are previous and filled with not only joy and passion, but regret.  Readers will note a reluctance in the narrator to leave the past behind and jump into the present.  It continues with the theme of opening blossoms in spring, clinging to the protection of the bulb but eager to emerge.

From Hooks (page 45)

Little fish on hooks
gulp and cry
worms will die
but you keep me dancing
on a line
not hanging exactly
but hoping for their return.

Protection melts away and the darkness emerges, taking hold of the reader and drawing blood and fear from within. Furlong’s nature images serve not only the light but the dark in these poems, easily turning poems upside down and inside out.  In the final section, there is a violence in the passion between the narrator and the men and the narrator and children, but not violence in the sense of harm, but in terms of emotion.  A passion rampant and uncontrollable.

Open Slowly by Dayle Furlong is a mesmerizing collection of poems that search for the beauty in everything, but does not always find it.  Rather than dwell on the darkness in nature — human nature — each poem pushes beyond those moments to seek out the light and the beauty that can come from it or in spite of it.

Copyright Liz Martin

About the Poet:

Dayle Furlong studied English Literature & Fine Arts at York University. Her poetry & fiction has appeared in Kiss Machine, The Puritan, Word & The Voice. She works as a literary publicist and has worked as a screenwriter’s assistant for the Showcase television series Slings & Arrows. Her debut collection of poetry, Open Slowly was published by Tightrope Books in spring 2008.  Check out her interview with Rob McLennan.

This is my 3rd book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.


This is my 5th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

This is also my 2nd book for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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

Kaleidoscope: An Asian Journey of Colors by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

January 14, 2011 by

Kaleidoscope:  An Asian Journey of Colors by Sweta Srivastava Vikram, who also wrote Because All Is Not Lost (check out my review), is a departure from her previous collection that deals primarily with grief.  Kaleidoscope focuses on colors and their relationship to Hindu women from birth to death including how red is worn as a bride, etc.

In this slim chapbook, Vikram tackles larger philosophical and cultural issues attached to a variety of colors prevalent in Hindu society.  She sketches out poetic memories and weaves in colors that demonstrate the emotional journey or right of passage in the moment described.

From “Innocence Comes in Pink” (page 3)

I am six today, and my limbs feel all grown up.
My tonsils are ready to be evicted from their home.
. . .
The color of my soft lungs untainted
by worldly pleasures resonates
with the wardrobe of my best friend, Barbie
and the hope of my favorite animal, Babe the pig.

Many of these poems are very vivid and pull readers into the moment.  Each line, each color, and each description is tied to a deeper familial history or tradition.  Vikram provides an in-depth examination of Hindu culture in a way that is easy to grasp and exposes the similarities between all cultures.  Further into the collection, there is a bit of defiance in her words as the color beige takes over in old age and she fights to remain red, youthful.  Overall, Kaleidoscope:  An Asian Journey of Colors is an even stronger chapbook poetry collection that Because All Is Not Lost because it deals more than with just emotion and healing.  Sweta Srivastava Vikram is a gifted poet, who has a work of fiction due out this year which I’m looking forward to, and she clearly is eager to highlight the differences in culture and the similarities between cultures at the same time — a fine line that she walks well.

About the Author:

Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an author, poet, writer, and blogger. Born in India, Sweta spent her formative years between the steel city of Rourkela, the blue waters of North Africa, and the green hills of Mussoorie before arriving in bustling New York. Growing up between three continents, six cities, and five schools, what remained constant in Sweta’s life was her relationship with words.

Please check out her interview on Page Readers.  Also, if you missed an earlier Virtual Poetry Circle in which I featured a poem from this collection, you should join the discussion.

This is my 1st book for the South Asian Reading Challenge.

This is also my 1st book for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

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

2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge

December 20, 2010 by

I’ve given this a lot of thought since the BBAW awards.  I’m going to host my very first poetry reading challenge.

I’ve been a participant in a few poetry reading challenges, but it always seems as though the participants are people who already read poetry and like it.

So I’m challenging every reader and all your friends to join the year-long 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge!

My poetry reading challenge is meant to be easy and to challenge everyone to read just 1 book of poetry, whether its contemporary or classic doesn’t matter, as long as you read one.  You can even wait until midway through the challenge and join the read-a-long of a poetry book that I’ll be selecting.

It also doesn’t matter if you like all the poems or not or whether you understand every phrase or line.  This is the challenge in which you Give Poetry a Chance!

If you want to sign up, please leave a link in Mr. Linky and snag the button.

You can tell me how many books you plan to read in the comments if you like.

But remember that as long as you read 1 book, you’ve completed the challenge.  You can’t fail if you just give poetry a try.

If you need direction or suggestions, you can check out my previous reviews or leave a comment about the type of prose writing you enjoy and I can try to match you with a book or poet.

Ok, rules:

1.  2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge will run from Jan. 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2011.

2.  Read 1+ books during the year and post a review.

3.  Leave a link to your review in the Mr. Linky.

***Don’t forget to grab the button.***


Filed Under: challenges, Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge, poetry

The Brontës by Pamela Norris

December 15, 2010 by

The Brontës by Pamela Norris is a collection of selected poems from not only the Bronte sisters, but also certain poems from their brother Patrick Branwell Brontë.  According to the introduction, Patrick Bronte was a good poet, but did not reach the level of sophistication of his sisters.  Emily Brontë, according to Norris, is the most accomplished of the poets in terms of grasping meter and other components of poetry.  Anne Brontë is the most accessible, and readers often find it easier to emotionally connect with the poet.  Charlotte Brontë‘s poems often resemble her novels with their passionate women and abrasive men, but Norris says her narrative style can often overwhelm the poem and obscure its meaning.

The collection begins with a selection of poems from Charlotte, and many of these poems are bogged down in narrative, poetic prose, but the meaning of the poems are not completely obscured.  In fact, the selection of poems offer a sense of longing and despair topped with a current of optimism and rays of hope.  In “Mementos,”  Charlotte alludes to the precious nature of material objects, which even though tied to loved ones, are now moldy and dusty — long forgotten.

“Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things;
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith,
And worn till the receiver’s death,
Now stored with cameos, china, shells,
In this old closet’s dusty cells.

I scarcely think.  for ten long years.
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears,
The growth of green and antique mould.”  (page 7, “Mementos”)

However, while Charlotte tells a unique story in each poem there is an emotional detachment even though the images and story tackle harsh topics and delve into questions of mortality and loss.  Charlotte’s poems about her deceased sisters, Anne and Emily, are more emotionally present, though the loss of Anne seems more substantial to her.

The next set of poems are from Patrick Brontë.  His poems weave a sense of loneliness, and not just a passing sadness and solitude, but a loneliness that weighs down the narrator.  From “Memory,” “Winds have blown, but all unknown;/ Nothing could arouse a tone/ In that heart which like a stone/ Senselessly has lain.” to “Oh, All Our Cares,” “But here this lonely little spot,/ Retires among its trees,/ By all unknown and noticed not,/” there is an emptiness in Patrick’s poems that is deeper than that in expressed by his sisters.  Camaraderie between the sisters must have been tough for a brother to penetrate, and to seek help from his sisters with his writing may have been a bridge he was unwilling to cross.  Regardless, his poems are no more poignant and enlightening about the human condition than those of his sisters.

Emily Brontë’s poetry is possibly the most well known of the siblings work, and her poems tend to be well crafted, adhering to style elements known for the forms she has chosen.  Her rhyme schemes are cleaner than her siblings, but her style is often dense and fantastical.  She blurs the lines between reality and a fantasy world she creates.  In some ways, readers may find that her poems are hard to decipher if they get too bogged down in the details she throws into each line.

“Will the day be bright or cloudy?” (page 39)

Will the day be bright or cloudy?
Sweetly has its dawn begun,
But the heaven may shake with thunder
Ere the setting of the sun.

Lady, watch Apollo’s journey,
Thus thy firstborn’s course shall be —
If his beams through summer vapours
Warm the earth all placidly,
Her days shall pass like a pleasant dream in sweet tranquility.

If it darken, if a shadow
Quench his rays and summon rain,
Flowers may open, buds may blossom,
Bud and flower alike are vain;
Her days shall pass like a mournful story in care and tears and pain.

If the wind be fresh and free,
The wide skies clear and cloudless blue,
The woods and fields and golden flowers
Sparkling in sunshine and in dew,
Her days shall pass in Glory’s light the world’s drear desert through.

Anne Brontë’s poetry is more childlike in its reverie with nature and the memories and emotions those things can arouse in the narrator.  Her poems are immediate and easy to comprehend; readers can connect with her more easily than her siblings’ poems.  However, her poems do not differ from theirs in subject matter; she tackles not only loneliness, longing, and emptiness, but also happy moments encapsulated in time and memories.  From “The Bluebell,” “Yet I recall, not long ago,/ A bright and sunny day:/ ‘Twas when I led a toilsome life/ So many leagues away.”  (page 74), and from “The Captive Dove,” “Poor restless dove, I pity thee;/ And when I hear thy plaintive moan,/ I mourn for thy captivity,/ And in thy woes I forget mine own.”  (page 80).

Overall, The Brontës by Pamela Norris is an excellent selection of poems that displays the diversity of the Brontës and their similarities.  Norris’ introduction can help readers understand the dynamics of the family, but the poems often speak for themselves about the depths of their loneliness and desolation.  However, some members of the family were more desolate than others and others coped by relying on fantasy and memories of happier times.

This is my 1st, and probably, only book for the 2010 All About the Brontës Challenge.

This is my 60th book for the 2010 New Authors Reading Challenge.

This is my 15th book for the Clover Bee & Reverie Poetry Challenge.

Filed Under: 2010 All About the Brontes Challenge, 2010 Clover Bee and Reverie Poetry Challenge, New Authors Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2010, reviews Tagged With: ,

Tipping Point by Fred Marchant

November 19, 2010 by

Tipping Point by Fred Marchant is a collection of poetry broken down into five parts and published by Word Works after winning the 1993 Washington Prize.  Readers may wonder what a former Marine Corps Lieutenant and one of the first honorably discharged conscientious objectors would have to say about the Vietnam War, especially having only served two years.  This collection is a journey through the memories of childhood, adulthood, and military service, and beyond.

From Vietnam Era:

“. . . The papers
+++++ you heaved you imagined
grenades, and that the porches they
+++++ landed on the burst into flame,” (page 21)

Hard slaps and punches to his mother’s face from his father, feeling outcast in school being overweight, and a number of other adolescent anxieties scream from the pages.  But the most poignant lines of loss and anguish and even anger occur in his poems of the Vietnam War.  However, many of these poems are about inner turmoil and dealing with that struggle on a daily basis.

From Elephants Walking:

“On the news there was the familiar footage:
+++++ a Phantom run
ending in a hypnotic burst of lit yellow napalm.
+++++ I knew the war
was wrong, but that was why, I claimed, I should go,
+++++ to sing the song
of high lament, to get it into the books.”  (page 28)

From Tipping Point:

“and trousers which were not
+++++ supposed to rip, but breathe,
+++++++++++ and breathe they do — not so much
of death — but rather the long
++++++ living with it, sleeping in it,
+++++++++++ not ever washing your body free of it.”  (page 35-6)

Whether Marchant is discussing family history, struggles with illness, or his service in the Vietnam War, images leap off the page, billowing the smells of sweat into readers noses and making them squirm in discomfort. It is this discomfort the poet wishes for readers to feel as the narrators struggle with their own moral discomfort and struggle to come to terms with their decisions and situations beyond their control. Overall, Tipping Point by Fred Marchant reveals the dilemmas each of us deals with regarding personal, social, and political events, but it also teaches that individuals have a “tipping point” when principles must be take precedence or be set aside.

© Leslie Bowen

About the Author:

Fred Marchant is the author of Tipping Point, which won the Washington Prize in poetry. He is a professor of English and the director of creative writing at Suffolk University in Boston, and he is a teaching affiliate of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

This is my 14th book for the Clover Bee & Reverie Poetry Challenge.

This is my 12th book for the 2010 Vietnam War Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: 2010 Clover Bee and Reverie Poetry Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2010, reviews, Vietnam War Challenge 2010 Tagged With: ,

2010 Green Books Campaign: Crazy Love by Pamela Uschuk

November 10, 2010 by

Created by Susan Newman

Welcome to the 2010 Green Books Campaign, sponsored by Eco-Libris!  The campaign is in its second year and aims to promote “green” books being published today. Last year for the first campaign, I read Saffron Dreams by Shaila Abdullah.

Crazy Love by Pamela Uschuk is just one of 200 books you’ll see reviewed or highlighted throughout the day on over 200 blogs.  Those books range from nonfiction and historical to poetry and fiction — and everything in between.  Crazy Love, a collection of poems, is printed with 50 percent recycled fiber.  The publisher, Wings Press, says, “Wings Press is committed to treating the planet itself as a partner.  Thus the press uses as much recycled material as possible, from the paper on which the books are printed to the boxes in which they are shipped.”

Pamela Uschuk uses melodious language in Crazy Love to drawn in her readers, sucking them into the depths of each poem and churning them in a tumbler.  The collection is broken down into four sections and each appears to deal with a different aspect of love whether it’s the passion of “Crazy Love” or the eternal connection of love in “Hit and Run.”

From “The Horseman of the Cross and Vulnerable Word:” (page 3)

I was young and fell in love
with your wounds, your tongue,
half-song, half-glands,
strong as the Calvinist hands
that whacked and fed your swampy youth.
I was young and drank vermouth
while you fell to your knees

Beautifully, Uschuk demonstrates human love through bird and nature imagery, but she also draws parallels between the destructive nature of grasshoppers on crops to that of humans on the overall environment.  There is a light and dark side to love and when love is too intense it can be destructive.

Feeling the Kitchen (page 25)

Talk about exfoliation.  This archaeology will
take weeks.  First comes the ripping, then
total destruction.
+++++++ Wrenching out
nails with screeching crow bars,
we pry huge sheets of cheap paneling
from the old walls to reveal
the smoky history of paint, and under
+++++++ that, a century of wallpapers shed
like snake skins embossing rough sandstone.

Who chose the bottom pattern tattooed
with blue and red flowers or the pink sky
spackled with gold stars, tiny and multitudinous as fleas?
Beneath everything, the harsh ash-smeared
plaster is the logic that holds.

Like an argument that spirals out of control,
my husband and I cannot stop tearing.
+++++++++++ The white celotex ceiling
we’ve despised for years must go, so
with our bare fingers, we yank it
crashing, with its load of coal soot, onto our heads.

When the ceiling lies at our feet, what is there
but more dingy ochre paint, stars
blurred dusty as the distant Pleiades, a silver filigree
some wife may have chosen to mimic moonlight
bathing her spinning head while she sweated
over meals and dishes, waddled with her pregnant belly
between woodstove and table, where
her silver miner sat to slurp her rich soup.

Day after day, I mount the rickety ladder
to avoid my computer, where I should compose
poems that shake their fists at stars or hold
the fevered heads of children in distant warring lands.

It is comforting this peeling back,
the scraper prying up paint chips
the size of communion wafers
while I balance on precarious steps abrading,
the motion repetitive as prayer.

Where all the sweet conformity of yellow
+++++++ once soothed our kitchen, strange maps
of foreign planets bloom, a diasphora of galaxies
blasted into the variegated watershed of hearts
we can never really know.

Perhaps, this simple work is poetry, to strip
chaotic layers revealing the buried patterns
of our stories, charting
love’s labyrinth, the way betrayal,
faith and fear spin us
in their webs, awful and light.

In this poem, Uschuk reminds us of the gems beneath the surface, like those that hover beneath the surface of words and phrases in stories and poems. The editing process fine tunes and refines the lines to reveal those underlying truths. Many of the poems read like folklore and myths from Native American stories. Overall, Crazy Love by Pamela Uschuk is a collection of poems that explores love and human connection and reminds us that we need to reconnect with nature and the planet, as well as one another.

About the Author:

Pamela Uschuk’s work has appeared in over 200 journals and antholgies worldwide, including Poetry, Parnassus Review, Ploughshares, Nimrod, Agni Review, Calyx, and others. Her work has been translated into nearly a dozen languages, including Spanish, Russian, Czech, Swedish, Albanian, and Korean.

Her Wings Press titles include Finding Peaches in the Desert (book and CD), (out of print), Scattered Risks and , which won the American Book Award (Sept. 2010).

Among her other awards are the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women, the Struga International Poetry Prize, and the ASCENT, IRIS and King’s English prizes.

Uschuk also writes and publishes nonfiction articles and has been a regular contributor to journals such as PARABOLA and INSIDE/OUTSIDE. In 2005 she gave up her position as Director of the Salem College Center for Women Writers in North Carolina to become Editor In Chief of Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts and to conduct poetry workshops at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. In 2006, Uschuk was a featured writer at the Prague Summer Writers Workshops, the Meacham Writers Conference and the Southwest Writers Institute. She makes her home in Tucson, Arizona, and outside of Bayfield, Colorado, with her husband, poet William Root.

To check out the rest of the Green Books, please visit the campaign Web site beginning at 1 p.m. EST. I’m a rebel, what can I say!

This is my 54th book for the 2010 New Authors Reading Challenge.

This is my 13th book for the Clover Bee & Reverie Poetry Challenge.

Filed Under: 2010 Clover Bee and Reverie Poetry Challenge, Green Books Campaign, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2010, review copy Tagged With: ,