New collections by two very different poets, River Dixon and Thomas Colquith, deal with a number of subject and ideas, but I found myself pairing them together with how they explore the similar and related themes of regret and loss. To be sure, they deal with different types of regret and loss, and they deal with them in very different ways – Dixon with a what-might-have-been approach and Colquith with a more hopeful understanding. But both express a depth of feeling, and sometimes raw emotion and pain, that are gripping and almost riveting.
The differences between the two poets are obvious. Dixon writes in free verse; Colquith is more formalist but employs free verse as well. Dixon’s poems tend to be shorter and almost journalistic, pared down to essentials. Colquith’s poems also tell stories but add more description and detail. Dixon often forgoes punctuation; Colquith does not. Dixon sometimes writes poems in all lower-case; Colquith is more conventional with capitalization.
The similarities between the two are in the themes and the emotions their poems evoke.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
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