Early in this book I mentioned how common, almost ubiquitous, the I point of view has become in poetry. So often our poems are outlets for the personal, the private, the spoken secret. Even when it is an outright fiction, a first-person poem can feel as raw as a diary entry. Literary essays are a …
I wanna hear a poem about revolution about fists raised high and hips twisting in a rumble like a rhumba I wanna follow the footsteps of Che and hear the truth about the day the CIA killed Lumumba -from Steve Coleman, “I Wanna Hear a Poem” I’m waiting just offstage, two hours after the plane …
What Things Are Made Of Poems by Charles Harper Webb University of Pittsburgh Press: Pitt Poetry Series, 2013 $15.95 Webb’s title implies a certain amount of realism, an engineer’s approach, and his poems certainly follow through with this idea, though frequently with a philosophical bent. His weapon of choice is humor. The collection opens …
Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” makes me proud to be a person who tries to write poems. Language, colour, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonyme of the cause. But poetry …
Night Moves by Stephanie Barber Publishing Genius Press, 2013 $10.00 We’re a nation of critics and deciders—folks hired for their opinions rather than physical labor. One of the pleasures of nonobjective painting is that the role of the critic in defining contemporary art becomes obsolete. The artist—photographer Linda Conner in the Seventies, or painter …
Or can she only be taught to appreciate poetry? In other words, are all poets actually self-taught? And are writing workshops essentially useless–either “warm and fuzzy” or “butcher block”? If you read the exchange here, and can manage to overlook the bad manners, you may find yourself pondering the questions the disputants bring up, questions …
The Beds Poems by Martha Rhodes Autumn House Press, 2012 $14.95 In her fourth collection of poems, Martha Rhodes examines illness, love, the infidelity of the body, and “The pleasures and inconveniences of being detested.” This, the title of the twelfth poem in her collection The Beds, begins with frailty, meanders through the doctor’s …
the army drafts me back to the war I’m the oldest corporal in the 4th Infantry I curse my neighbors who are all my father the barracks is French I beg my wife not to leave me the Red Alert siren turns to an alarm Phoebe is surprised I would ask —– Allowing for a …