Poets and Poems: Tina Barry and "I Tell Henrietta"

I Tell Henrietta by Tina Barry may win my “most creative idea for a poetry collection” award for the year. 

It is a poetry collection, comprised of free verse and prose poems. 

 

It also might be a collection of micro-fictions. 

 

And it is a collection of arresting and often startling artwork by artist Kristin Flynn. The artwork might illustrate the poems, or the poem might explain the artwork. Maybe both. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Collected Poems of J.R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

Gather Ye – poem by Ryan Wilson at First Things Magazine. 

 

The Word within the World – James Matthew Wilson at Plough on four new poetry collections. 

 

“The Highwayman,” poem by Alfred Noyes – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Checkpoint – poem by Jeffrey Johnson at Every Day Poems.

 

Glass and Gardening: Interview with Poet Jules Jacob – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Poets and Poems: Tina Barry and "Beautiful Raft"

In 2014, poet Tina Barry and her husband moved from Brooklyn to High Falls, New York. She began to research the area and learned that in 1946 and 1947, the artist Marc Chagall had lived there with his partner, Virginia Haggard, and Haggard’s young daughter Jean McNeil. Barry knew who Chagall was, but who was Haggard?  

The answer to that question ultimately led to Barry’s Beautiful Raft, a collection of 58 prose poems constructed as a work of fiction, including a cast of eight characters. When they moved to High Falls, Chagall was 59 and Haggard was 28. They both left spouses, and Haggard brought her daughter with her. Soon she was pregnant with Chagall’s baby, who was named David McNeil (Haggard was still married to her husband John McNeil when the baby was born).

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

Poets and Poems: Tina Barry and “Mall Flower”

In Mall Flower, poet and writer Tina Barry mixes poems and short fiction to record a life – childhood, youth, and adulthood. This artful combination of two literary forms also suggests a question: is there a difference between the two?

These 35 poems and (very) short stories – almost all are less than a page – follow in roughly chronological order. From the beginning we know that this is the story of a child in a broken family abandoned by the father. The impact is large; a five-year-old girl is left devastated and looking for answers. By the time she’s 10, she knows that the brokenness has become the normal, but that doesn’t mean she can’t yearn for what was.

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