Poets and Poems: Sarah Dickinson Snyder and “To Eve”

The Book of Genesis says that Eve was created from a rib of Adam, to provide a helpmate and companion. Many have pointed out that it was a rib that was used to create her, implying equality or, more pointedly, “equalness” in the eyes of God. The story of the fall is familiar – Eve is convinced by the serpent to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she convinces Adam, and they’re both thrown out of Eden. For their disobedience, Adam has to work the soil, and Eve gets pain in childbirth. And we know the names and stories of her first two sons, Cain and Abel, and the name of her third, Seth, whom she recognizes as a gift. 

Beyond those basic facts, there’s no further mention of Eve in the Bible. In To Eve: A Book-Length Poem, Sarah Dickinson Snyder doesn’t envision what Eve’s life was like so much as she considers Eve’s mind, her thoughts, her feelings, her hopes and dreams. And she uses Eve as a kind of lens to consider some of her own life and the life of women more generally. The poem is less an imagined biography and more of a reflection.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Ballad of Zebulon Pike – poem by M.D. Skeen at The Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Jordan,” poem by George Herbert – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Tina Kelley and "Field Guide to North American Words"

Poet Tina Kelley seems fascinated with words, unusual often obscure words. Have you met an aeolist (a person who claims to be inspired), or been blessed by one? Have you experienced a diapause (a period of suspended development? Have you discovered that you might, at least on occasion, be a prosopagnosic (one who suffers face blindness), or that you can practice steganography (a form of writing that obscures, like invisible ink)? 

In Field Guide to Noth American Words, Kelley takes those unusual words and others and creates poems, poems that are not obscure or unusual, vivid poems about life, birthdays, aging, hacked passwords, birthdays, the future (as seen through birds), an old doll in an attic, all those rooms that the hallways of unusual words can lead you to. Like any proper field guide, the words are arranged alphabetically.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Words – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Beachy Poem Challenge – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Here in This Room – poem by Larua Wifler at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Land of Childhood – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” poem by John Donne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Arlene Demaris and “Instructions for Use”

I’ve read poems that are filled with tenderness. I’ve read poems that have an edge. But I can’t think of a collection I’ve read that have both tenderness and an edge. 

That is, until I read Instructions for Use: Poems by Arlene Demaris. Not only does she write poems that are tender with understanding, she also drops any idea of rose-colored glasses and smacks you with often-shocking reality. And what you realize is that this is life, with the good and the bad mixing together into one lump of what it means to be human. Or as Demaris writes, we forget “how much of us is salt water, how much of us is music.”

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Brancusi’s Golden Bird,” poem by Mina Loy – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: One Fine July Day – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Lifetime Lease – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

“Song of Marion’s Men,” poem by Wiliam Cullen Byant – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Omaha Beach” and “Common Sense” – poems by Bradford Skow at Society of Classical Poets.

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.

Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution

We learned this back in elementary school. If one poet’s name sits atop the poetry of the American Revolution, that name is Philip Freneau (1752-1832). And like the new nation he was part of, he kept re-inventing himself.  

The Freneau family came from La Chappelle, France, in the Ardennes Forst and near the current Belgian border. The family was Huguenot, not exactly the best faith option in Catholic France. In 1707, Andre Freneau emigrated to New York in America and became part of the Huguenot colony there. He married and had five children. One of his sons, Pierre, became part of the family business married in 1748. His oldest child was born in 1752 and named Philip. Ten years later, the well-to-do family moved to New Jersey, although Philip remained in boarding school in New York. In 1768, aged 16, the boy entered Princeton University, set upon becoming a minister.

 

At Princeton, however, Pilip discovered writing. He’d read widely in the English poets and Latin classics, and he was already composing poetry. In his class at Princeton was a young man who became a lifelong friend – James Madison. Freneau, Madison, and others were beginning to get up in the spirit of the times, and it was an anti-British, increasingly independent spirit. (In 1770, the senior class voted to wear only clothes of American manufacture for commencement.)

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

Illustration: Philip Freneau.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Dust – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Metastatic – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

Orphan Lamb – poem by David Whyte.

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s Ambivalent War on AI – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

“Chicago,” poem by Carl Sandburg – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“The Battle of Blenheim,” poem by Robert Southey – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Reading Moby Dick – Chris Arnade Walks the World.

Poets and Poems: Bradford Skow and “American Independence in Verse”

Before the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, there was at least some 15 years of growing American disenchantment with Britain. The roots of the American Revolution lie in the French and Indian War (1756-1763), but it’s often said that the American Declaration of Independence has its roots in the Magna Carta.  

Fortunately, the historical landscape is littered with documentation of what was happening in the American colonies: statements, declarations, letters, newspaper reports, speeches, and more. The 15 years before the Declaration was a ferment of ideas, debates, and arguments that grew with every new event, every new action by the British government.

 

What is striking about all this is what a literate ferment it was. Menand women argued literately on both sides of the governance and independence question. You can read only some of these documents before you realize how articulate and passionate they are.

 

And poetic.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

4^th Sunday of Each Month – poem by J.A. Gilbert at Frivolous Quill.

 

New Video! – Brookhaven | Civil War Novel – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Seeing Slant in the Company of Others – Eric Malczewski at Front Porch Republic.

 

“The Men That Don’t Fit In,” poem by Robert Service – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Crème Brulee -- poem by Toby Alfier at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: David Livewell and “Pass and Stow”

It was the title that attracted me to David Livewell’s new poetry collection, Pass and Stow: Poems. It sounded like something related to transportation or hauling freight. It turned out to be people’s last names. 

As Livewell explains, John Pass and John Stow worked in the foundry in Philadelphia that recast the Liberty Bell in 1753. The foundry was in the same neighborhood where Livewell grew up in the 1970s. In his words, the two men “serve as reminders about the city’s layered past and what outward and inward repair can achieve.”

 

In the collection, Livewell applies the idea of layered past and repair to tell a story through poetry. And he is a grand storyteller. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

10 Things Poets & Writers Can Do in the Small Moments – TS Poetry at The Write to Poetry.

 

“The Fairies,” poem by William Allingham – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“A tailor-bird’s song of triumph,” from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Redcar Collector,” a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free to download today at Amazon.com. 

Poets and Poems: Fanny Howe and "This Poor Book"

Fanny Howe (1940-2025) was the author of some 13 poetry collections, five novels, and numerous short stories and essays. Her collection Second Childhood: Poems (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and she received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2009.  

Shortly before her death in 2025, Howe completed another manuscript, This Poor Book: A Poem. It is and isn’t a poem. It is and isn’t a poetry collection. It is and isn’t a memoir, an autobiography, a poetic essay. It is one of the most unusual works I’ve read.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Bringing Characters to Life – 1 – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Erin Murphy and "Swoon"

I’ve read a considerable number of poetry collections subtitled “New and Selected Poems” or “Collected Poems.” But it was only reading “Swoon: New & Selected Poems” by Erin Murphy that I realized that such a collection could also be a biography. 

Murphy has assembled poems from 11 previously published collections plus a few new ones. The result is a collective story of a life, from childhood memories, through young adulthood, the arrival of children, changes in relationships, the deaths of friends, the music enjoyed, travel, vacations, worries about physical appearance, observations about celebrities. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The chain ferry – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Emily Dickinson, buttercups, and death – Padraig O Tuana at Poetry Unbound.

 

“The Waste Land,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Uncharted – poem by Bethany Lee at Every Day Poems.

 

Crossing the Trestle – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Diana Lockward and “The Color Wheel”

I don’t recall where I read it, but some blogger or publication or Substack posted a poetry prompt: write about a color without ever mentioning the name of it. It’s both easier and harder than it looks. To make it more difficult, try writing a poem about a color with mentioning the color or an associated feeling or emotion. 

An exercise like that does make you immediately aware of the importance color can have in poetry and even in everyday conversation. We feel blue. We see red. We’re in the pink. That potato salad made me feel green. His mood was black. 

 

Poet, editor, and publisher Diana Lockward says she’s long had an attraction to poems that use color. Over the years, she kept a folder of poems that did exactly that. And then, she had an idea – an anthology of poems that make strategic use of color. She put out a call for submissions. 

 

And poets responded. At least 117 of them did, and likely more, each by a different poet. And The Color Wheel: Poems was born. And the result is, well, more diverse and colorful than you might expect.

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

Some Thursday Readings

“The Ballad of the Dead Ladies,” poem by Dante Gabirel Rossetti – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“The Cottage on the Ridge” and “The Garden Hermit’s Confession” – poems at Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“And if I Did, What Then?”, poem by George Gascoigne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Joanne Esser and "Nothing Is Stationary"

Something happens when you read a poetry collection, while you watch soft rainfall outside the kitchen window, raindrops making tiny splashes in the birdbath. The birds have taken cover somewhere. So have the squirrels, especially the one who likes to dig up the zinnias. The young rabbit who finds the rose bush – with all its thorns! – delicious is missing. And you find yourself slipping into reflection.  

If the poetry collection is one like Nothing Is Stationary, the new publication by Joanne Esser, your reflections are not only sharpened but also take you down paths you didn’t expect to go. Esser is realizing that most of her life is behind her, and she’s thinking about where she came from and where she is. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Sowers – poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

 

Mr. Pope – Poem by Allen Tate at Academy of American Poets.

 

“Dover Beach,” poem by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dark Green, Forest Green – poem by Linda Nemec Foster at Every Day Poems.

 

Stern Shoots Marilyn – poem by Mauren Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“Sheep,” poem by W.H. Davies – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient an Modern.

 

Poets and Poems: Angela Alaimo O’Donnell and “The View from Childhood”

We all have childhood and family stories, good ones, bad ones, and usually some of each. Childhood shapes us, helping us be the adults we eventually become. We learn things, directly and indirectly, by living in the families we have. 

In The View from Childhood: Poems, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell takes both a candid and loving look at her Italian Catholic immigrant family. It’s a loving look, one that includes thankfulness to her elder siblings for introducing her to serious poetry (she says she originally wanted to be an opera singer). But like all families, there are things you don’t want to learn and prefer not to see. But they’re there, and you learn to come to terms with them. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Orthodoxy – poem by Scott Cairns at The Rabbit Room.

 

Praise Song for My Mother – Andrea Potos at Every Day Poems.

 

The Charge of the Light Brigade – poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: Ayala Zarfijian and “A Corner in the World”

“The war endures in you,” writes poet Ayala Zarfjian, “It lingers in your capillaries, / in your arteries, / in your veins. / The war is a river that bridges the past to the present.”  The war she’s speaking about is World War II and the part of the war that made it unlike any other – the Holocaust. If you’re Jewish, the Holocaust is not something that’s ever over. 

That’s the theme that threads through every poem in Zarfjian’s collection A Corner in the World. She wrote the poems specifically for her father, who survived the Holocaust while most of the family perished. Zarfjian has written them so that the stories they tell, and the people they’re about, will not be forgotten, that the Holocaust itself will not be written off as someone’s crazy conspiracy theory but the real destruction of people, millions of people, that tragically, horribly happened.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

An Overness – poem by Anna Friedrich at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Eve Letter: Home Economics – poem by Kathryn Weld at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Vogue exploring – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Poets and Poems: Julia Alvarez and :Visitations

Have you ever read a poetry collection that catapults you back three decades? 

Another lifetime ago (35 years, to be exact), I wrote book reviews for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was an offshoot from a graduate seminar on the Latin American novel. I had more than liked the assigned readings; I’d discovered a world that went beyond the one Latin American novel I’d previously read, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

At the time I started writing book reviews, publishing was in the midst of a Latin American boomlet, an echo of the original “boom” in the 1960s and 1970s. After an introductory conversation, the newspaper’s book editor began routing any book relating to Latin America, Spain, and Hispanic culture in the United States. 

 

One of the books I reviewed was How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by writer and poet Julia Alvarez. It’s a story about four sisters in the Dominican Republic whose father is forced to flee the Trujillo regime. Her parents return to New York City, becoming with their children people of two cultures. It’s a novel, but it’s drawn from Alvarez’s own family history.

 

Thirty-five years later, I picked up her new poetry collection, Visitations: Poems. And, suddenly, I was back in 1991, reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Shakespeare,” poem by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Blue sky – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Properties of a Good Greyhound,” poem by Dame Juliana Berners – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Fred Chappell at "Ever After"

I came to the writing of Fred Chappell (1936-2024) through his novels. A friend at work, who’d grown up in the mountains of West Virginia, recommended I read I Am One of You Forever. It’s set where most of Chappell’s novels are set – the mountains of western North Carolina. And it’s a wonder. Over the years, I read several of his other novels and story collections. Superficially, Chappell might sound like North Carolina’s answer to Kentucky’s Wendell Berry. Even though they’re approximate contemporaries writing about family, heritage, and place, they’re very different kinds of writers. 

 

It was only in 2015 that I discovered how Chappell had first made his name – through poetry. I happened across a used copy of his 2000 collection, River: A Poem. It’s one poem with 11 divisions, and it tells a story, the story of his grandparents. It’s aptly named; reading it is like wading through a river of memory and family history. 

 

As it turns out that River is one of some 18 collections of poetry that Chappell published between 1971 and 2009. In fact, he published more poetry volumes than works of fiction. In 2024, the year of his death, LSU Press published his last collection, Ever After: Poems.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Fray Alonso in La Florida, A.D. 1587 – Coldy Ilardo at Power & Glory.

 

Morning sticks – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Alice in the Looking Glass,” poem by A.E. Stallings – Joseph Bottum and Adam Roberts at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Apple of Granada – Hedy Habra at Every Day Poems. 

Around Three in the After – Laura Wifler at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Baruch November and “The Broken Heart is the Master Key”

More than 40 years ago, I discovered the stories and novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991). I don’t remember how I came across his work, but I found myself reading stories about a culture that had largely vanished, not long before I was born. 

My understanding, if I had one of the Yiddish culture, had been shaped by a play that became a movie, Fiddler on the Roof, the story of Tevye, his wife Golda, and their daughters as they navigate the forces of modernism and anti-Semitism changing their lives. It’s set in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia, around the turn of the 20^th century. And then I read Singer’s stories, which not only provided a richer context than the movie but also made the culture seem more real. As much as I enjoyed the movie, it was Singer’s stories that showed the reality without the Hollywood framing.

 

As I started reading The Broken Heart is the Master Key: Poems by Baruch November, I was almost catapulted back to Singer’s stories. November’s poems aren’t about a culture that had almost disappeared; instead, they reflect the echoes of that culture, two generations after Nazi Germany destroyed it in Poland, eastern Europe, and western Russia. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Doubly – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

How to Write a Found Poem – The Many Tools to Discover Treasure – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“A Psalm of Life,” poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“In Time of Plague,” poem by Thomas Nash – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Due to the Loss of Field Roast Artisan Grain Sausage – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

Poets and Poems: Sr. Sharon Hunter and “Light Before the Sun”

In her 2021 poetry collection, To Shatter Glass, Sr. Sharon Hunter explored childhood and memory, an interior pilgrimage toward understanding and forgiveness. Her new collection, Light Before the Sun, continues that pilgrimage, but it goes beyond, toward something that is more like acceptance and resolution.  

“Life is a stained-glass window,” she writes, using the metaphor to suggest light, color, and brokenness. She will be looking back before she looks forward, and she will the brokenness and dysfunction of the relationships that shaped a childhood, but she will also see the beauty and the purpose within it. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“After the Winter,” poem by Claude McKay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Threads – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Epigram on Rough Roads,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: D.S. Martin and “The Role of the Moon”

Like many literary terms, “metaphysical poetry” was not something that the designated poets themselves invented. Instead, in the decades after they flourished, it was John Dryden (1631-1700) and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who popularized the description. They did not mean it as a compliment. Instead, they saw this group of 16^th century poets as writers who abandoned the rules of poetry and created something unnatural. It wasn’t until the 20^th century, led by figures like T.S. Eliot, that the metaphysical poets were seen as something important and creative in and of themselves. 

The five poets usually labeled as “metaphysical” were John Donne (1572-1631), Henry Vaughn (1621-1695), George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Richard Crashaw (1613-1649). Sometimes a sixth is added, that of John Milton (1608-1674), but Milton doesn’t quite fit what the other five were about. One of Donne’s short poems has entered the collective consciousness, with its famous lines of “No man is an island” and “For whom the bell tolls.” 

 

Using conversational, everyday language, the metaphysical poets wrestled with big ideas. They often abandoned meter to delve deeper into what they were writing about. Three of them – Vaughn, Marvell, and Crashaw – lived and wrote through the tumultuous decades of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Crashaw was an exile who died in poverty. 

 

Poet, writer, and editor D.S. Martin finds the metaphysical poets to be inspirational and creative. And he’s published a poetry collection, The Role of the Moon, to pay tribute. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

It is a gift – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Butchering,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Song of Myself,” poem by Walt Whitman – Every Day Poems.

 

Poets and Poems: Catherine Lawton and “Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle”

Faith poetry has a long history, extending back at least to the Psalms of the Old Testament of the Bible and likely even earlier. What’s almost curious, but understandable, is how contemporary poetry has separated, largely if not entirely, into secular and religious streams. It’s a mirror of the culture at large, but not everyone mimics that mirror. 

But not every poet has followed that divergence. Some take a more holistic approach, integrating all of life in their poetry. One of those poets is Catherine Lawton. 

 

Lawton is an author, essayist, and a poet. She’s published numerous books, including fiction, memoirs, non-fiction works like Write and Publish Organically, and poetry collections such as Glimpses of Glory. Her newest poetry collection, Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle, reinforce her recurring poetic theme of life and faith as a collective whole

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

At the typewriter – poem by Amelia Friedline at Innocence Abroad.

 

“The Scholars,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Hair on Fire at the Church Lady’s Brunch – Renee Emerson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Ars Poetica – poem by Megan Willome at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: Emily Bright and “This Ground Beneath Our Feet”

As I read Emily Bright’s new collection of poetry, it was the word “ground” in the title that kept coming to mind. “Ground” has a double meaning. It can be the physical ground we stand and walk upon and that our homes occupy, and it can be the historical, genealogical, emotional, psychological, and social realities that gives shape to and hold our lives in place. While This Ground Beneath Our Feet includes both, it is the second kind that Bright really focuses on.  

The collection, appropriately enough, uses the metaphor of a growing tree to organize the poems into four sections. The poems of “Roots” draw from her family history – colonists traveling to a new land, the ocean passage itself, and clearing the land in their new homes. The poems of “Ground” move to both the physical landscape as well what the land produces. These are not confined solely to space; one poem describes interplanetary space travel but still manages to be about ground. The poems of “Branches” move closer to her own contemporary life, and “Seeds” describes not only scenes of childhood but also cultural seeds, like reading poetry in a prison environment.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Puzzle of Minor Poetry – Robert Shaw at Portico Quarterly.

 

“Telling the Bees,” poem by Lizette Woodwoth Reese – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Spring-tine, night-time, rabbits and raccoons – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“The King Wavers,” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Clerihews,” poem by E.C. Bentley – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Happy Birthday Every Day Poems – Celebrating 15 Years! – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.