Poets and Poems: Linda Nemec Foster and “Bone Country”

One can visit Europe in lots of ways – cruise ship on the rivers, cruise ship on the ocean, bus, car, backpacking, bicycle, airplane, even on foot. I don’t know exactly how poet Linda Nemec Foster has visited Europe, and her 2024 collection Bone Country shows she’s at least visited in prose poetry.  

Bone Country is not a travelogue or tourist guide. Instead, it’s a deep dive into people, history, major upheavals, and small events. She watches a man with a spiked mohawk drink tea in Istanbul. An artist from Serbia insists he’s painted her face. She watches undercover policewomen and ghosts among the trees in Warsaw. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

10 – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

A Poem for the 250^th Anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – Andrew Benson Brown at The Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Good Night, World,” poem by Jacob Glatstein – Ruth Wisse at The Free Press.

 

Introducing Inspiration – New Annual Theme – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Hurt Hawks,” poem by Robinson Jeffers – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Bruce Lawder: Prose Poems, (Very) Short Fiction, or Both?

Poetic stories have been around ever since there were stories. The Epic of Gilgamesh, scholars say, was written sometime between 2150 and 1400 B.C. Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey sometime in the 9th or 8^th century B.C. Closer to our own time, John Milton wrote his epic poems in the 1600s, and in the 19^th century we had epic poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But our attention spans have grown shorter, as have our poems and our novels (a few contemporary Europeans notwithstanding). 

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Writing short, or writing short well, requires laser-like focus, concise words, and abandoning adverbs. In Dwarf Stories, his most recent poetry collection, Bruce Lawder does exactly that.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Journeys: What We Hold in Common – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Antenna,” poem by Mia Anderson – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Alistair Begg with Biblical Wisdom for Voting – Truth for Life.

 

“The Vanity of Human Wishes,” poem by Samuel Johnson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Or Did You Think Crushed Hopes Couldn’t Reawaken? – poem by Hedy Habra at Every Day Poems.

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.