Poetic Voices: Ian Seed and Stephen Pollock

As I’ve gotten older, things that might have been simply interesting or intriguing, but I didn’t have much time for, have become more significant, sometimes surprisingly so. I “discovered” the importance of art; we now spend considerable vacation and free time at art museums. I read more about art; I buy exhibition catalogs and even read them.  

It’s true as well for family history. As I move, or inch, closer to the end of my life, where I and my parents came from has become more important. I discovered genealogical resources online, constructed charts showing my forebears, and tracked down family stories to see if what my father had passed on from his father was true. It’s how I discovered my great-great-grandmother was a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of The Courtship of Miles Standish fame (yes, they were real people). And it was how I discovered a treasured memory my father had of his grandfather in the Civil War was, well, mostly fiction (my grandfather may have been a wonderful spinner of tall tales).

 

British poet Ian Seed and American poet Stephen Pollock grapple with some of these same themes of grief, death, and the concerns of older selves.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

On Longevity – poem by Paul Wittenberger.

 

Poetry as a Means of Grace – Jim Orrick at Christ Over All. 

 

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelly – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Lately, when I awake desolate – poem by Laurie Klein at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats – Rabbit Room Poetry. 

Poetic Voices: River Dixon and Thomas Colquith

New collections by two very different poets, River Dixon and Thomas Colquith, deal with a number of subject and ideas, but I found myself pairing them together with how they explore the similar and related themes of regret and loss. To be sure, they deal with different types of regret and loss, and they deal with them in very different ways – Dixon with a what-might-have-been approach and Colquith with a more hopeful understanding. But both express a depth of feeling, and sometimes raw emotion and pain, that are gripping and almost riveting. 

The differences between the two poets are obvious. Dixon writes in free verse; Colquith is more formalist but employs free verse as well. Dixon’s poems tend to be shorter and almost journalistic, pared down to essentials. Colquith’s poems also tell stories but add more description and detail. Dixon often forgoes punctuation; Colquith does not. Dixon sometimes writes poems in all lower-case; Colquith is more conventional with capitalization. 

 

The similarities between the two are in the themes and the emotions their poems evoke.

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

Poetic Voices: Scott Owens and David Chorlton

Poets Scott Owens and David Chorlton might rightfully be called “poets of the land.” But the lands they immerse themselves in, reflect upon, make sense of, and help others understand.

For Owens, in his collection For One Who Knows How to Own Land, it is the land of memory and childhood, the growing up on a family farm. This is the land that has the contour molded by the human hand, or many human hands.

The land Owens describes is the land that has a history, human as well as natural. It’s the land where boys take their BB guns, and where cows have to be milked in the dark, early hours. It’s the land filled with sounds of whippoorwills and grasshoppers, the cackling of hens, and kitchen sounds of breakfast being made before the farmer heads to the fields. It is a land confined by fence and barbed wire, utilized by machines to produce crops.

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

Poetic Voices: Lucia Cherciu and Sarah Nichols

Poets have been writing about exile at least as far back as Ovid’s exile to the Romanian coast of the Black Sea by the Emperor Caesar Augustus in 8 A.D. “Our native soil draws all of us,” he wrote in one poem, “by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget.” Exile is about both the present moment and memory, and about both simultaneously.

Two recent collections of poems explore the idea of exile, but they do it in very different ways.

Lucia Cherciu is a professor of English at the State University of New York in Dutchess/Poughkeepsie. She was born in Romania, and in fact has had two collections of poetry published there -- The Abandonment of Language (2009) and Gifted Laughter (2010), both by Editura Vinea Press in Bucharest. She writes in both English and Romanian, and her first book of poetry in English, Edible Flowers, was published in 2015.

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

Poetic Voices: Relationships – Dinah Dietrich and Diane Lockward

We live in a world where relationships, so difficult to establish and understand, can often break. Relationships can fracture, but remain in place, such as with parents and even spouses, or they can disintegrate into separation – friends, lovers, colleagues, co-workers. Pressures and expectations can undermine even the best of relationships.

Two poets have published recent collections that explore these ideas about relationships. They approach their subjects from different perspectives, but both understand the real place and sense of shared responsibility of the individuals involved.

Dinah Dietrich’s Paper Cranes is a small collection of some 21 poems.

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

Poetic Voices: Chelsea Rathburn and Kristina Marie Darling

Poetry and grief are no strangers; one can find expressions of grief in poetic form going back to Homer and Virgil, Beowulf and Dante. Tennyson wrote the book-length poem In Memoriam A.H.H. over the course of 17 years to express his grief at the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam.

Two recent collections by Chelsea Rathburn and Kristina Marie Darling both deal with grief, but is a grief different from that over physical death. These poems are expressions of grief at the end of relationships.

Chelsea Rathburn even puts “grief” in her collection’s  title, A Raft of Grief. And she notes the double meaning of “raft” – both as a symbol of surviving as well as signifying a large amount. The poems address the end of relationships (or perhaps the singular “relationship”) or departures, what happens immediately after, and new beginnings.

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

Poetic Voices: Shelley Puhak and Jennifer Sweeney

If I were asked what might be the largest genre of poetry, I would likely answer “the poetry of longing.” I could likely classify a lot of poetry that’s been written as the expression of longing for what might be, for what might have been, for what is, for what can never be, for opportunities both lost and realized, even for getting what one wants (or doesn’t).

This rumination on poetry and longing started while I was reading The Road Not Taken: Finding America in thePoem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong by David Orr (more on that soon). Orr is writing about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” which has an interesting genesis and an even more fascinating history. Part is partially has to do with longing, longing for the choices we do and don’t make.

Two recent collections of poetry seemed to underscore this idea of poetry and longing: Guinevere in Baltimore by Shelley Puhak and Little Spells by Jennifer Sweeny. The two collections are about as different as you can imagine, but the idea of longing permeates both.

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