Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and "O Lucky Day"

I’m still trying to make my mind up about whether Patricia Clark writes meditative poems or poetic meditations in her new collection, O Lucky Day. I could call it in either direction, and I suspect it won’t make much difference. Let’s say Clark’s poems contain more than a small element of meditation and let it go at that. 

She writes an open letter to her husband after a quarrel, calling it “Oxygen.” She describes bathing in the forest, and it becomes almost a uniting of skins, plants, and trees. She considers juneberry leaves as gold coins and dives into the wrecked landscape of Fukushima, or how common, everyday objects (a hat, a cigar box) evoke her grandfather. And she asks for a new face to cover her face, because “I’ve looked at myself too long.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Married to the Land – poem by David Whyte.

 

Burial at Sea – poem by Eric Fosbergh at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry Prompt: The Phoenix – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“On a Raging Storm” and “Oceanic Flux” – poems by Jeff Kemper at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“The Silent Slain,” poem by Archibald MacLeish – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Imagine It – poem by Elizabeth Herron at Every Day Poems.

 

Poetic Voices: Kelly Hansen Maher and Heather Derr-Smith

In new collections, poets Kelly Hansen Maher and Heather Derr-Smith write about lives as women, Hansen Maher speaking to the pain of repeated miscarriages and Derr-Smith exploring relationships and female sexuality. Oddly enough (for me, not the poets), as I read these collections, I found myself considering recurring images of end-times.

Perhaps this isn’t so odd: miscarriages are about endings, accompanied by heartbreak and pain; and what Derr-Smith describes suggests, in part, the pain land loss of endings that can be accompanied by violence. Of course, my images of end-times could be nothing more than reflections of my own anxieties about the presidential election.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poetic Voices: Molly Fisk and Miriam Bird Greenberg

Strong, vivid imagery is a hallmark of good poetry, and indeed all good writing. Two poets with recent collections demonstrate the value of imagery in developing a theme and creating a story.

Molly Fisk’s The More Difficult Beauty is filled with poems that use strong imagery. Whether she’s writing about women turning 40, the Truckee River, Junior Mints and other candy, or Joe’s Taco Lounge in Mill Valley, the images she uses are strong and striking, and also advance the story she’s telling.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

How to Write a Poetry Review

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

We had considerable conversation, and a little controversy, around my post two weeks ago, “The 6 Most Overused Words in Poetry Reviews.” I didn’t realize just how hot a topic poetry reviews happens to be.

A common question arose: “OK, so you have six overused words in poetry reviews and three more than are contenders for the list of most overused. Just how do you go about writing a poetry review?”

I consider poetry and book reviews highly subjective endeavors. It is someone’s opinion, after all, of someone else’s creative work. There’s no textbook approach I could cite that would meet all conditions and situations.

But I can explain how I do poetry reviews myself.

And you can blame Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974).

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

The 6 Most Overused Words in Poetry Reviews

I read a lot of poetry, and I read and write a lot of poetry reviews. I have a rule about reading poetry reviews, however: if I’m reviewing a book of poetry, I don’t read anyone else’s review until after I’ve written my own.

Poetry reviews come in all shapes and sizes, from the blurbs on the front and back covers of poetry books to the extended, in-depth and often footnoted reviews in Poetry Magazine and American Poets. Typically, reviews of poetry books are by other poets, most likely because most of the people reading poetry books these days tend to be other poets. (This is a corollary to my poetry theorem that only three people in the United States make a living from writing poetry, and two of them are Billy Collins.)

If you regularly read poetry reviews, after a while you begin to notice something. It’s not that all poetry reviews tend to sound alike. They don’t; they are as diverse as the people writing them and the poets the reviewers are writing about.

But reviews do tend to have something in common.

Certain words.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poets and Poems: The Great Indian Poetry Collective

Quick question: what do you know about poetry and poets from India?

My own quick answer: Not much. My reading and understanding of poetry is generally limited to Western culture – poets writing in English, primarily, or translations of French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish writers – all still within the Western / Western European cultural context. My experience with Asian poets has been limited to a few Japanese and Chinese writers, mostly pre-20^th century.

I suspect I’m not alone. I suspect I’m the kind of reader that is one of the targets of The Great Indian Poetry Collective.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.