Poets and Poems: Ollie Bowen and “On the Occasion of a Wedding”

The ancient Greeks taught the existence of three kinds of love. Eros was intimate love, including the kind caused by infatuation. Philia was brotherly (or sisterly), the kind felt toward a close or best friend. And agape was a more general love, bestowed freely on someone regardless of whether or not a relationship existed.

Poet Ollie Bowen embraces all three kinds of love in her debut poetry collection, On the Occasion of a Wedding. Dedicated to a couple as a wedding gift, the collection of 74 poems is drawn largely from her own marriage. And Bowen engages with the spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental ways two people can engage and express their love for one another. 

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

“Love Songs:” Claiming Sara Teasdale for St. Louis

My town of St. Louis claims Sara Teasdale as one of its own, but you wouldn’t know it from any sign, memorial, plaque or other designation. The city does not discriminate; T.S. Eliot is treated the same way, although he does have a plaque on the sidewalk in front of where his house once stood.

Teasdale was born in St. Louis in 1884. She lived in a house on Lindell Boulevard, today the northern boundary of Forest Park. In 1902, her family moved to Kingsbury Place, a few blocks north and what in St Louis was and is known as a “private street.” The city’s Central West End is filled with these private streets, built by developers for the wealthy. Homeowners on these streets today continue to be responsible for street repair, maintenance, and snow removal, and the homes and the streets have largely survived the vicissitudes of urban decay.

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

Photograph: Sara Teasdale in 1910.

Poets and Poems: Dave Malone and “You Know the Ones”

That kid in seventh grade who went overnight from scrawny and skinny to muscled jock claiming he had to shave twice a day. The girl in the pink sweater who moved through the crowded halls of eighth grade like she was parting the Red Sea. The furtive glance at the skinny girl in glasses rewarded with an equally furtive return glance. The physics teacher who was barely this side of crazy. The best friend in high school whom you planned the rest of your life with. And don’t forget the music – the best music ever, with nothing to match it before or since.

Dave Malone

This is the stuff that puts the form in our formative years. And this is the stuff of Dave Malone’s newest collection of poetry, You Know the Ones.

Malone doesn’t confine himself to those middle school and high school years. He knows what shapes us is also the landscape we’re born and raised in, and the people who are never more than a few feet away – the grandparents, the mothers, the fathers, the brothers and sisters, the extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins and the distant relatives whom we’re not sure are really relatives or not but it doesn’t matter because they’ve been part of the landscape forever.

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