Poets and Poems: Christy Lee Barnes and “Commodore Rookery”

We just finished watching our youngest son’s wife navigate the first two stages of motherhood – pregnancy and childhood. She was a trooper, and I spent a lot of time in simple, quiet awe. And now our and her families have been blessed with fraternal twin boys. 

Poets have addressed motherhood probably ever since poetry first existed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (”Mother and Poet”) and Christina Rossetti (“To My Mother”) come to mind, but even Edgar Allen Poe wrote “To My Mother.” Other poets who’ve written about mothers or motherhood include Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, Louisa May Alcott, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, William Blake, and Sara Teasdale.

 

Christy Lee Barnes navigates the territory of motherhood in her 16-poem chapbook, Commodore Rookery.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

10 Things Poets & Writers Can Do with the Small Moments – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Always, there is this fear of others falling – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Book – poem by Robert Cording at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Gleanings – poem by Scott Edward Anderson at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: Joshua Hren and “Last Things, First Things, and Other Lost Causes”

Sometimes you don’t need a flood of news or events or ideas to remind you that bad things exist in this world. Sometimes just a few drops will do.  

The chapbook Last Things, First Things, and Other Lost Causes by Joshua Hren is short, including only 26 poems. And I have to say that when I started reading the collection, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I should have paid closer attention to the title. But I had read his short story collection, In the Wine Press, dark stories, to be sure, but well written and each offering some hope. 

 

The poems in the chapbook smacked me upside the head. The words that come to mind include disquieting, disturbing, and troubling. The poems are about the state of the culture, the state of the world, and the state of the individual. It’s a small collection about the need for humanity’s redemption. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

New Verse Review – the first edition of a new poetry journal.

 

The Tyger – poem by William Blake at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Golden Ages of English Literature – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry Prompt: My Poem is an Oasis – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“To an Athlete Dying Young,” poem by A.E. Housman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Pure Absence – poem by David Whyte.

Poets and Poems: Peter A and "Art of Insomnia"

In Art of Insomnia, the poet Peter A, and that’s the name he goes by, as in Peter A Writer, has created a chapbook of some 22 poems that are introspective and yet outward-focused. That’s a trick to pull off. Introspective poets tend to dwell on the self. Peter A casts himself in the context of others, both other people and other relationships. 

And the relationship that occupies the center in this collection is that of Peter A and his wife. 

 

The poems suggest that it is something far deeper than a broken relationship. Instead, they tell a story of the pain of physical separation, of loss, and perhaps even of death. 

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

Poets and Poems: Sarah Thomson and “Before It’s Too Late”

The chapbook Before It’s Too Late by U.K. poet Sarah Thomson is her first collection of poetry (what Americans call chapbooks are called “pamphlets” in the U.K.). Its 20 poems represent a range of poetic forms – pantoum, villanelle, free verse, triolet, and others. Thomson is a poet embarking upon a publication journey, and she’s trying different forms and different ideas. 

If there is a centering them in this collection, it is the idea of impermanence and fragility, whether in relationships, physical location, or a truce during war. In “At the Cinema,” two people sitting in chairs at the beach are likened to indistinct shadows in the sun. In “Lament of a Sperm Whale, the title animal dreams in “the toxic plastic sea.” The man who wants his England back in “In search of England” isn’t quite sure who the enemy is, or whom he wants his England back from. 

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

Poets and Poems: Matt Duggan and "The Kingdom"

Memory, and memories, can become tangled in the reality of current experience. The backyards or gardens of the homes we grew up in somehow shrink over the years. Beloved teachers age and retire. Images and scenes from vacations or holidays rarely remain how we remember them. Even books and poems seem to change over time, becoming sometimes less and sometimes more impactful and profound. 

A high school English teacher once told me class that you needed to read Don Quixote by Cervantes three times – once in youth, once in middle age, and once in old age, because, she said, the book would change. I’ve read it twice – in youth and middle age – and discovered she was absolutely correct. Reading it at 40 was not the same as reading it at 17.

Poet Matt Duggan is no stranger to how memory gets tangled. His latest chapbook, The Kingdom, is about, among other things, returning to what’s past, and wondering if the past never really was. Too often it’s not what we remember it to be. And we feel a loss.

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

Poets and Poems: Michael Glaser and “The Threshold of Light”

The Threshold of Light by poet Michael Glaser reminds me why I like chapbooks as much as I do. A chapbook is a small collection, often a third of a size or less of a regular collection. It’s a sampling of a poet’s work, often drawn from individual poems already published. It can be as simple as 8 ½ by 11 sheets of paper folded and center-stitched with a slightly heavier paper cover, or it can be an artistically designed format, like this one by Glaser is.

The 21 poems included all relate to light in some way – dawn, the beginning of the day, a morning walk, how light changes in different geographies, how light is muffled by fog. But light is also a metaphor, and Glaser uses it in similar but also slightly different ways. Light can represent awareness, knowledge, beginnings, wisdom, energy, life, and grace. In fact, in this collection, he seems to use it mostly as a metaphor for awareness and grace.

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

Poets and Poems: Matt Duggan and “A Season in Another World”

AIn his new chapbook A Season in Another World, British poet Matt Duggan takes on a journey. The 21 poems in the collection use words as a kind of travel guide, whether it is to look through the window of time, or arriving in Venice and its Island of the Dead, or wandering through a dark forest. These are poems steeped in legend, myth, fable, and fairy tale; where else does a dark forest “leak bare light” but in a fairy tale?

Duggan has been previously inspired in his poetry by myth and legend. His 2011 collection Underworld: The Modern Orpheus was a retelling of the legend of the musician and poet who could charm all and also served as one of Jason’s Argonauts, looking for the golden fleece. The poems of A Season in Another World are less concentrated on one theme or character but display a strong sense of connection with myth.

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