contemporary poetry

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

barbara — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

There is something quite redemptive about the 2010 edition of Ntozake Shange's experimental “choreo-poem,” For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf, which is published as a tie-in to Tyler Perry's underwhelming film adaptation, For Colored Girls. Shange's words restore the choreopoem's original libratory message without the gloss and A-list names in Tyler's bastardised version. Consisting of a series of twenty overlapping poems about rape, post-traumatic stress disorder, abortion, love, and liberation, among other topics, Shange brings to life and colour the unsung voices of Black American women that was once upon a time, in 1974, long overdue. The poems come with stage directions that guide the reader in an imaginary theatre bold with exuberance and pathos, or at least that was something I was persuaded to imagine.

Shange is clear in her preface of the latest edition that For colored girls is a battle hymn for all women of colour, one that was inspired by the pain that reverberated her apartment walls in Harlem, New York, and one that should resonate powerfully with women of colour today and presumably the world over. But as a woman of colour who isn't black, American, or born into a long heritage of effacement and eventual self-discovery—a heritage that goes back to the brutal history of imperialist expansion and culminates in a present struggle for identity—I sometimes felt distanced from these verses. Despite my desire to connect to the ostensible potency of Shange’s poems, at times they were challenging, unfamiliar, and remote.

But this is not to say that Shange has failed completely in reaching out to all women and girls of colour on her work's core issues, as For colored girls urges me to read beyond its contextual trajectories and instead traverse the annals of my girlhood and young adulthood to find the common threads of insecurity, racism, and uneasiness in my own skin that binds all women of colour. But with that said, one's own way of finding the striking chord in Shange's work should not be so imaginatively contrived or elusive, particularly as each poem is guided in detail how it should be experienced and appreciated. To read out loud with the same joy and pain requires the intertextual quality that lies outside Shange's poems—out there in Black American communities, tangible and alive—that is absent in my world.

Nonetheless, there are stand-outs in Shange's work. In her poem on abortion, Shange captures the inner horror and absurdity of undergoing a termination procedure for the first time alone: “eyes crawling up on me/eye rollin in my thighs/metal horses gnawin my womb/dead mice fall from my mouth.” Others are obvious demystification of rape: “a friend is hard press charges against/if you know him/you must have wanted it.” Perhaps the most powerful of all is “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff,” a defiant speech of reclaimed independence from lovers who leave and take with them a woman's dignity, self-esteem, and faith in love itself.

The simplicity of Shange's language and the mimicry of colloquialisms invite readers to rethink the highbrow nature of poetry, interpretative dance, and theatre. There are more tears than laughters of joy, and despite the coloured girls who are “movin to the ends of their own rainbows,” rainstorms of anguish are long while rainbows are fleeting and sometimes elusive. In other words, there is still a battle ahead for women of colour and the fruits of the struggle are shared in small moments, often beautiful in verse.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, March 11th 2011

Burning of the Three Fires

annette — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Jeanne Marie Beaumont

BOA Editions

Burning of the Three Fires marks the third collection of poems from Jeanne Marie Beaumont. Beaumont, who won a National Poetry Series award for her first book, experiments with form and examines the female condition in her latest collection. The result is a vibrant mix of poems that keep readers turning the pages and analyzing the words before them.

“Girl on a Scale,” though not atypical in form, vividly depicts an eating disorder. Beaumont utilizes imagery and diction seamlessly to convey the “ungrowing” of one who is suffering from body image and eating issues. As the speaker enters a dream-like world, filled with icicles that masticate air and saplings, she imagines her daughter standing at the edge of her bed in the form of a seabird. “But birds eat constantly,” she thinks, realizing it can’t be the same girl who lets “food fall away/from her mouth.” Some of the most striking lines that offer a realistic image of eating disorders are: “Not a gain again./Ungrown so thin she slipped/between the bars/and hunkered/inside her cage.” As the poem concludes, the speaker wakes up and sees “it was she in the bed,/toward her/the IV dripped dripped/like an early thaw.” It makes for a powerful ending to such a haunting poem.

The title poem, “Burning of the Three Fires,” gives readers the opportunity to do more of their own interpreting. While “Rite (to Combat a Bad Mood)” offers eight mostly nonsensical tips and observations that are uplifting and really do combat a sour mood.

“Channeling Sylvia: 8-Ball (Interrogation)” is a verbatim transcript from a Magic 8-Ball conversation Beaumont had with Sylvia Plath. It is humorous and deviates from the typical poem in its question-and-answer structure.

Burning of the Three Fires shows that Beaumont isn’t afraid to exercise her craft by experimenting with new forms of poetry. Her work offers a refreshing blend of phrases and images that intrigue and inspire.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, October 27th 2010

Clamor

annette — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Elyse Fenton

Cleveland State University Poetry Center

Elyse Fenton’s first book of poems, Clamor, features some of the finest contemporary poetry on war. She captures both the battlefield and the homefront with an unwavering realism. Her imagery is fresh and her language rich.

Fenton opens her book with a definition of the word “clamor” which is quite striking. Laid side-by-side the three definitions—a noisy shouting, insistent public expression, and silence—are not only surprising to the reader, but also instantly establish the tone of the collection. These poems are about the chaos surrounding contradiction, expression, love and silence.

“Gratitude,” the first poem in Clamor, captures the aforementioned themes with perfectly selected diction and unsettling images. “Wreckage was still smoldering on the airport road / when they delivered that soldier—beyond recognition,” and “And I love you more for holding the last good flesh/of that soldier’s cock in your hands, for startling his warm blood/back to life,” are lines that depict the mix of the macabre and the emotion that those in, or dealing with, war witness. The soldiers and their loved ones back home are forced to live in “that moment just before we think/the end will never come and then/the moment when it does.”

One of the best lines in the collection is in “Your Plane Arrives from Iraq for the Last Time.” In this piece, the speaker is hypersensitive to the ongoings of objects around him or her, which leads to some superb and original descriptions, including “caesura of rotors” and “the road toward post/needle-pricked in brake lights.” The poem ends with: “And at the end/of the longest sentence I’ve ever known/your face in the window’s fogged aperture/stranded noun. Rorschach of stars. Beautiful thing.” With the paring down of the language in the phrase “beautiful thing” we are really given a sense of the speaker’s state of mind. After describing everything so vividly, we are left with a simple phrase that truly captures the speaker’s devotion and longing for the returning soldier.

Fenton’s use of language and mastery of craft dominant the entire collection and also helped her to win the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize, which was judged by D.A. Powell.

Anyone interested in war, particularly the invasion of Iraq, and its affect on those at home and overseas should pick up this collection. It is a testament to the passion and good that exists in this world, in spite of destruction.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, October 26th 2010

Thin Kimono

caitlin — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Michael Earl Craig

Wave Books

Michael Earl Craig wants you to know something: he's glad he's not a poet. He is a Certified Journeyman Farrier who says, “Every now and then I wonder if I fucked up with this horseshoeing thing, but then I talk with my friends in academia and, well, I’m okay with my choices.” So yes, he does write poetry, and may even author a volume or two, but he’s not a poet.

Thin Kimono is one of those volumes. Some of the pieces within read like slightly cracked, modern versions of William Carlos Williams’ prescription pad musings. Others read like skewerings of the absurdity of twenty-first century living, where plane rides and acupuncturist visits reveal that “people fall into two categories: Doonesbury or Far Side./ Well, or Andy Capp. Andy Capp type people./ They’re everywhere.” All are written in plain language that cobbles together a patchwork of ideas, concepts and images culled by Craig from ordinary encounters and events. While he contends that his readers can be dumb and still understand his poetry, Craig creates a complex, absurd world by isolating and examining the smallest details of daily life around him, presenting them together like a coveted, surreal menagerie.

But wait: Craig also wants you to know that he is not a surrealist. In “Poem,” he admonishes: “To those people who are always talking about ‘surrealism’/ can I suggest you open your fucking eyes?/ If you do this, you will see mothballs./ And a green nightgown.” However, I would argue that surrealism is nothing more than an intensely peculiar and personal interpretation of reality. Craig walks like an alien among us, with new eyes for the world and his craft, remote from the process and conventions that typify modern poetics. Sometimes this results in pieces that read like inside jokes – his more unsuccessful poems feel a little “you-had-to-be-there.”

The majority of the poems tantalize with their ability to look deeply into the archetypes and absurdity of this, our modern way of life. Craig himself winks at us in these successes: his “Advice for the Poet” is typical of his verse, tersely recommending: “Never aim your bicycle at a chicken./ Never set your glasses on an anvil.” However, his real advice seems to come from an Albert Einstein quote he uses twice in the volume: “‘Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.’“ In Craig’s poetry, something is hidden; meaning lurks in the periphery and skitters away when you look at it directly. He doesn’t truss up a take-home message for his readers but the hunt itself is invigorating. For someone who isn’t a poet, he sure does a mean imitation of one.

Written by: Jo Ristow, September 26th 2010

Thousand-Cricket Song

annette — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Catherine Strisik

Plain View Press

Thousand-Cricket Song is a compelling collection of poetry. My copy is smudged with fingerprints, creases, and other signs of wear from the use I've given it in only one month. I often read one poem at a time, and found myself needing time to consider new ideas or read up on history. The subject matter is heavy; poet Catherine Strisik spent time in Cambodia. She wrote her poetry based on her observations there.

Usually, her writing style is simple, straight-forward, and speaks for itself. These are the poems I love the most. At other times, she gets a bit too enthusiastic for details, offering long, sometimes muddled, prose. I say this with some restriction, though. It's difficult to blame someone for needing to paint a perfect picture from memory.

There's so much good in this book, that I need to restrict myself from naming too many titles. "The Woman At Pol Pot's Grave" is possibly the best of the best. "The New Holy Medicine" is so perfect that I want to hear it spoken over a musical background. Her poems concerning genocide, suicide, miscarriage, prostitution, and rape make me want to heal the entire human race. I was often surprised by and unprepared for these details. Words hit us hardest when they are based on truth.

Though Catherine covers the trauma and tragedy of Cambodia's history, she also embraces its beauty and relationships. Women, children, residents, and friends are sometimes weaved into parties and temples. Her poem "Seeing Hands," written about her intimate experience with a blind masseuse, is now counted with some of my most favorite poems of all time. Most importantly, she openly admits to being a complete outsider and awkward observer in "In The Nail Salon, Siem Reap." The author is obviously humbled in the company of genocide survivors.

Pick up a copy of this collection if you want to learn, grieve, and be blown away.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, September 24th 2010

Water the Moon

annette — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

By Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Marick Press

Socrates famously stated that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I respectfully submit that poets take the dross of everyday life and spin it into gold by focusing on those tiny details that can sometimes get lost in the dizzying mosaic of daily life. See the tiny lines on the woman’s face as she bends down to pick up her glove. Those lines are the map to her life story. Watch the play of light and dark that dance across the shade as dusk falls. Step back and look at your world as though you’ve never seen it before. As I read through the collection of poems in Water the Moon, I felt a sense of this altered perception or reality that, for me, is the mark of a gifted poet. Sze-Lorrain’s poems touch that chord in you that you feel when your heart creaks open just a little bit and the world is suddenly refreshed.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a global citizen in the true sense of the phrase. According to the book jacket copy, she “was born in Singapore and grew up in a hybrid of cultures.” Sze-Lorrain has studied in England, the U.S. and France where she received a PhD from the Sorbonne in Paris; she is fluent in English, French and Chinese. Sze-Lorrain’s poetry reflects the tug of war on one’s emotions that frequently accompanies living amongst and between cultures. In “Par Avion” she writes:

…His letter translated nothing but instructions. Confucian wisdom (One must not sit On a mat that is not straight), from father to daughter, two cultures apart…

Sze-Lorrain, who divides her time between New York City and Paris, France, also writes of France in a way that evokes nostalgia even for someone who has never been there.

Carry this book with you on the train to the park and read it as you watch the world unfold in front of you. You’ll find that life seems to slow down and draw you in just a little bit more after reading Sze-Lorrain’s poetry.

Written by: Gita Tewari, September 20th 2010

Bar Book: Poems and Otherwise

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Julie Sheehan

W.W. Norton

Julie Sheehan’s third collection brims with a jumble of lyric verse, snippets of conversation, and wry prose reflection. The pieces take their titles from the outlandishly suggestive names of drinks: “Brandy Stinger,” for example, the opening poem, features the voice of an older woman boozily bemused by the plight of the modern (divorcing) woman: “All right one more, and that’s final. I don’t envy you/ your loose fits, your quick change.” The bartender, tracking the ebb and flow of the bar through the course of her day (sections are “Lunch Shift,” “Swing Shift,” and “Night Shift”), also tracks the course of a marriage through its grisly demise. One of the great delights of the collection is “On Pouring a Good Stout,” the book’s last piece, which should not be missed.

While the premise might strike the reader as initially cloying (“How to Make a Shirley Temple,” “Whiskey Sour,” “Jägermeister, Double Shot,” really?) I was immediately drawn in by the raw emotional timbre that sustained a lively chorus of competing voices in their shades of irony, passion, and indifference. The bartender’s increasing bitterness and vitriol is not given a solo stage, but is crowded, challenged, and occasionally ignored by a roomful of onlookers: friends, quirky patrons, husband and daughter all get to have their own say.

I am convinced, at the book’s end, that the metaphor of the bar is in fact brilliant. In the seemingly simple analogy, numerous facets of this woman’s experience are illuminated: she works, she mothers, she serves, she fights for and against a marriage. The metaphor suggests also both fuzzy intimacy of social bonding and the dangerous potential of overindulgence, the violence and vomit that spoils intimacy. Apt for teasing out a relationship gone awry.

What is perhaps most compelling about the collection—and the metaphor of the bar—is that it keenly appreciates the troubled role of traditional institutions. Marriage, the Church, Writing, as well as the ancient art of Mixing Drinks are all arenas in which the woman finds herself in a perplexing bind between loyalty and revolt. Some of the most compelling poems in the collection reflect on motherhood (“Malted Barley” juxtaposed with “Progress Report from Tiny Neglected Dears Day Care Center” is gorgeous); Shirley Temple is compared with the subversive prayer of Mary’s Magnificat, in which the privileged of the world topple; Religion is “Old Fashioned,” but the poems are both framed as, and interspersed by, prayers (the section “Prayers for the People” subverts church with realism and wit without losing affection for intercession); and the tradition of writing itself is emulated by the self-presenting poet, and subverted, as particularly in the scene in which famous poems are wrenched apart and used as ammunition in a confused and magical fight between the woman and her husband. In all these cases, the writer gracefully combines sober critique with affectionate appreciation.

The reader will cheerfully forgive some campy punning (“the mind of a bartender stays fluid”) for the delight of this biting, sophisticated, intoxicating book.

Written by: Elaine James, August 20th 2010

Saints & Cannibals

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Christine Hamm

Plain View Press

If I were to list my favorite poets, the count would be long and span a modest range of styles, but several rise clearly to the top. These poets—Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forché, Sylvia Plath, and Audre Lorde, to name a few—in no way shy away from subject matter women are traditionally taught to suppress or deny: the shocking, shadowy, and infinitely juicy reality of our lives. These poets instead dive face first into the truth—especially when it hurts—and in doing so shed light on the beauty to be found glimmering quietly in the fertile mud of actual experience.

Christine Hamm is one such poet and needless to say, my list of favorites has grown after having (repeatedly) read Saints & Cannibals, Hamm’s second full-length collection. According to the poet’s website, “this book follows the story of three generations of women in America” and is told from the point of view of “historical and mythical saints and cannibals, including the Donner party, Hansel and Gretel, and a whole host of medieval female saints.”

Among the historical and mythical are more contemporary voices, all of whose stories are told in clean, vibrant free-verse. Fertility, corn, straw, cats, horses, and other animals figure prominently in the landscape of this collection. After reading each poem I was compelled to set the book down and let the precise and novel imagery sink in.

Beginning with “Up From the Root Cellar”: “Ruby plucks up a tomato, jams it against her teeth, tasting snow and rust” before shaking out her skirt, rinsing her hands and going to assist her mother as she “sprawls in the furrows... stockings dark with a wet rush” in labor with yet another baby. Ruby is dutiful but seems defined more by her internal experience than by her station or obligation in life.

Another character, whose story is told throughout the collection, is Claire, who in the poem “The Family Practice” doesn’t want to disappoint and so undergoes dentistry without Novocain. Yet “Claire was turning thirteen the way milk turns, becomes thicker, more complicated, fragrant;” will she continue to submit to what is expected of her?

We also find Joan of Arc working at the Gap, Oliver with his “urchin shirt/ rusty shoes, hat full/ of night and spiders,” and a suburban angel “with wings made of safety pins/ used tampons and bottlecaps.”

I found Saints & Cannibals to be deeply feminist as it speaks with an authentic and unapologetic honesty, telling stories that have the power to provoke an embrace of and ultimately sovereignty in our own experience.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, June 26th 2010

Find the Girl: Poems

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Lightsey Darst

Coffee House Press

Lightsey Darst’s first book of poetry, Find the Girl, offers a haunting look into the world of womanhood. She explores the missing and the murdered, the tragic (Helen of Troy, Atlantis), and the everyday girl who is discovering herself.

A number of Darst’s poems contain a true-crime slant, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In “Mary, Annie, Liz, Kate, Mary”—which are the names of Jack the Ripper’s victims—we are left to wonder “Whatever / became of the others.” The poem opens with “You left us nothing but names and dead faces, / the names men called you, faces / twisting away.” This stanza reveals how the victims in the Ripper case are usually treated—as unfortunate unknowns. But Darst gives us visuals of these women beyond the gruesome and grainy crime-scene photos. She describes their attire (“blue-trimmed coat” and “jay-feather hat”), and the fateful moments that led to their murders—“You followed a red trail to a narrow door.”

“JonBenet” not only explores the infamous unsolved case, but also relates back to the book’s title. “You didn’t want to be the girl anymore, wanted / to grow up, be what comes next, the lion” and “A girl is a woman / is a rack to be hung with gashed sky” are two examples of this quest for finding the girl—literally and figuratively—and understanding what it means to be female.

Find the Girl also examines sexuality, especially in its early, blossoming form. “A few things I learned about sex ed,” explores the puberty years: “Some girls had come in busty and without a chance. / We all had cravings, fingers, throbbing to music. / Then I didn’t know it was sex, would deny / when boyfriends asked me.” In “what’s the worst that can happen,” a girl grapples with sexuality and being called a slut, while in “House” a girl tries to understand rape. The girl asks “why / is it my part to allow / to have it in me / & open that store to others.”

Darst experiments with atypical forms in her poems, which sometimes adds ambiguity and causes disconnect. This detachment generally strengthens her poems and gives certain themes a more haunting quality. For instance, in “Didn’t you hear,” the reader gathers bits of information about a girl who went missing and her unknown abductor. We learn “in his cellar, above blackberry jelly, the highest jars / are flush with shorn-off women’s hair. (‘he eats them’).”

Overall, Find the Girl is a unique and dynamic collection of poetry. As we try to understand what it means to be female, we get to peer into the world of other girls, be them famous or average.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, June 15th 2010

I Was the Jukebox

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Sandra Beasley

W.W. Norton

As a poet myself, it’s inspiring to come across a writer like Sandra Beasley. Not only is she highly talented, but she’s also a young, female poet who has already published two book-length collections and received national recognition and awards. In her latest collection, I Was the Jukebox, it’s easy to see why she’s so successful. From the first page to the ninetieth page Beasley blends refreshing imagery with unique diction. She mixes myth and modernity. She creates lines that float from the pages and haunt your thoughts.

“You Were You,” which features the title line, is a primary example of Beasley’s mastery. From “I wanted to dance. I wanted a scotch. / I wanted you to take your hands off her” to “I played Aretha, Marvin, the Reverend Al” you can hear the rhythm in her poetry and you can clearly visualize the speaker’s life as a jukebox.

In “I Don’t Fear Death,” Beasley examines what’s behind nature and life from a female perspective: “what I really believe is that / we keep growing: infinite corn, / husk yielding to green husk. / I look back on the miles / connecting me to Earth, think / I’d have never worn those shoes.”

“Japanese Water Bomb” explores a relationship from both a male and female point of view. The subject of fragility is paired with Beasley’s vivid descriptions and musings and culminates in an explosive ending. Lines like “How the difference between an igloo and a block / of ice is only the body sheltered beneath it” lead to the powerful last few lines “How the moment splits, / a mitosis of love and chronology: how he is / her present. How she has become his past.”

Unlike many poets, Beasley effectively gives her subjects a voice. I Was the Jukebox includes a series of poems that allow things like an eggplant, a platypus, and a piano to speak. These poems make you stop and think “Wow, music really does seem to ‘slide loose’ from a piano,” and “Why is it called a duckbilled platypus anyways?”

Poetry is supposed to accomplish all that Beasley’s poems accomplish—it should make you think of something in a new way, it should leave you breathless, and it should follow you long after you’re done reading.

Written by: Michelle Tooker, June 13th 2010

The Wave-Maker: Poems

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Spires

W.W. Norton

If Elizabeth Spires' poetry collection, The Wave-Maker, presents a single image, it is something deceptively simple, like the flick of a blouse hanging on a clothesline. Difficult subject matter such as death, aging, and the meaning of life are examined by peering in to closely examine the minutiae. Here, life is made up of the smallest of things: the snowy hill, the snail's shell of a home, and how everyone needs a "a place to be quiet in."

Spires's poems are spare and airy. In "Story of a Soul," light enters a room where the "journal is deliberately cryptic." Like the windows the speaker wipes clean, this collection's poems are streamlined until they "everything is immaculate." The smallest of details are made mystical: the courage of a snail teaches something the speaker is not quite sure of, a white room suggests existence or lack thereof, and the tenacious bamboo in the midst of a thirsty backyard is in need of the speaker's hand. The Wave-Maker is bold because it asks what will happen once we leave. It is brave because it heeds to the present as much as it hints or recounts the past.

One of the best poems in the book focuses on the popular computer game The Sims. Spires retells the game as "explained by a child." Deceivingly simple statements make for a sharp poem full of meaning. Spires writes how "you design the people" and "adults don't have to have jobs they can cheat: / push the rosebud & money appears." Clear cut definitions of concepts like 'family' and 'love' shake readers into considering what is real or true. Spires writes, "a family is anyone who lives in the house with you," and "If you have Free Will you can starve or drown yourself / then you wander around as a ghost." Such details are chilling when considering the realities we form for ourselves.

Sadly, some of the lean lines seem brittle, as if the marrow has been sucked clean along with the flesh. All of the watching and observation sometimes results in a stagnant feeling. A line like "Foolish or true, the rose blooms only for you" seems too basic and loud for such a smart poet, and the poems' questions seem too obvious for such a subtle collection.

The Wave-Maker shows there is no beginning or end to the world. Instead, the wind comes or it does not. Meaning is brief and subjective. Spires's poems are careful waves that will wash over the reader, carrying him or her into poetry-centered meditation. We are all pallbearers, and we are all heroes. We can understand that we are all "a shell / a monument / a memory."

Written by: Lisa Bower, April 15th 2010

Arc and Hue

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Tara Betts

Willow Books

It is deeply satisfying to encounter poetry like Tara Betts’. The widely published poet, author, and Rutgers University creative writing professor bears witness to the true grit of life, including poverty and appearance-based assumptions and experiences that categorize one as other, even among an already marginalized population. These experiences, and the enduring human spirit, are what give color and shape to each life, and it is this thematic material that Betts portrays in her debut collection, Arc & Hue.

Rich in vivid images and musicality, this collection is an authentic portal into the very pulse of life. With the use of repetitive forms like sestina and canzone and the smooth lyrical flow of her free verse, Betts’ poems are imbued with hope, strength, and beauty amid trauma, violence, and the isolation of otherness.

From the weight of death and violence to the vibrancy of moments both ordinary and momentous (lynching, hair care, Hurricane Katrina, lovemaking, pestilence in the slums), each poem is consistently resonant and haunting. Betts can be humorous and playful with form, yet still communicate something substantial, as she demonstrates in “A Survey on Enjoying Verse” and “Neruda’s Email to Slam Poets.” The anxiety and desire of an urban pulse throbs in the strong, sensual language of “Block Party Speculation” and the grief of domestic violence and miscarriage are washed with the power of loving someone new when the narrator stands in the shower with both loss and renewal in “When I First Listened to Billie.”

Arc & Hue crossing my path further fuels my hope that one can indeed maintain awareness of and connection to the world beyond ourselves through the work of poets and artists. A visit to the writer’s blog clued me in to her extensive publishing history—from erotica to live theater to an upcoming young adult novel and a second collection of poetry. Betts is also active in literacy and girls’ empowerment projects, and she has performed her work around the world.

Written by: Matsya Siosal, March 27th 2010

The Bride of E

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Mary Jo Bang

Greywolf Press

Mary Jo Bang’s amazing new collection of poetry, The Bride Of E, is vivid with haunting images. The poems in the first part of the book follow their lead from the alphabet, beginning with “ABC Plus E: Cosmic Aloneness Is The Bride Of Existence.” This disturbingly truthful poem is anything but simple. It mirrors the loneliness one can feel even in large crowds. This is just one example of the rich, thought-provoking poetry within this slim volume.

The poem “For Freud” begins with an exquisite sentence: “I didn’t mean to imply a girl is nothing more than a jewel box.” Volumes could be written on this statement alone. For a woman who grew up in a generation that expected women to be jewel boxes, “For Freud” is validation of a war fought to shed clinging expectations of society that all girls should marry a "good man" and become a mother. A new breed of independent women emerged from this battleground.

The Bride Of E is Mary Jo Bang’s examination into lived life. Some stanzas shine light into the dark shadowy corners of forgotten longings:

The bells are ringing, indicating/An original longing has been transformed/Into a pitch too high to hear.

This language encourages the reader to observe their surroundings with an artist’s eye.

Bang reveals our diverse world by splicing together images of college kids partying at a club, highbrow literary references, and even descriptions of a time to come. While there are hints of traditional romance, the poet has no problem throwing in a fragment of information technology or an impression of violence. The underlying message found in these poems is philosophy on a large plasma screen.

The second part of The Bride Of E consists of five prose poems that lend a hopeful note to the brutal honesty of part one. This is a collection I will take off my shelf to re-read and experience the life lessons waiting inside the cover.

Written by: Ann Hite, March 9th 2010

Names: Poems

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Marilyn Hacker

WW Norton

Marilyn Hacker is a poet after the heart of not just poetry readers but poetry writers. I was immediately enthralled by the rich language of this National Book Award winner—for Presentation Piece in 1974—a language pulsating with raw indignation at injustice and celebration of what are life’s quotidian and banal joys: the small pleasures of winter light, sips of Sunday coffee, and the company of friends. Her virtuoso use of wordplay strums the memories of one’s mind as only a writer of her caliber can, and I found myself by frenetic turns maddened and boisterous with the giggles started by the internal dialogue that she shares. Racy descriptions of five minutes after “she came” give way to descriptions of tanks, uniforms, guys, and testosterone.

Hacker is well known as one of the “New Formalism” poets shunning the free form poetic license that is currently en vogue. In particular, she is considered an expert of French poetic forms such as the villanelle. An example would be her 1986 sonnet verse novel Love, Death and the Changing of Seasons, and Names is now her most recent example. It includes poetic forms of ancient Islamic origin (ghazals), gloses that not only note but also illuminate the works of fellow poets such as Anna Akhmatova and Emmanuel Moses and letters in sonnet form to contemporaries.

A favorite is one of the ghazals entitled “dar al-harb,” or “house of war,” and it includes this critique of American power:

I might wish, like any citizen to celebrate my country but millions have reason to fear and hate my country… As English is my only mother tongue it’s in English I must excoriate my country. _ _The good ideas of Marx or Benjamin Franklin don’t excuse the gulags, or vindicate my country. _ _Who trained the interrogators, brought the bulldozers? _the paper trails indicate my country. _

Hacker’s vivisection of American foreign policy is truly something to behold and questions the continuing presence in the national political landscape of the U.S. of exceptionalism. Americans cannot continue to proclaim a special destiny so long as we are nation that many fear as such a dichotomy of perspectives is corrosive.

The plain, clear sight of this author’s poetry was refreshing and removed some of that intellectual ennui which can sometimes preclude one from appreciate the daily wonders that allow each of us to experience the joie de vie.

Written by: Brandon Copeland, February 13th 2010

Unrest: Poems

admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Joanna Rawson

Graywolf Press

The poems in Joanna Rawson’s recent collection, Unrest, have the quality of things scrawled in the harsh fluorescent light of insomnia. The lines scurry in jagged lengths, infesting the broad pages with buzzing images of immigrants suffocating in a boxcar, feverish babies, a suicide bomber, and war. This pervasive sleepless quality doesn’t preclude craft, though: each line is balanced, as is the book, despite its overwhelming intimacy of terror.

Rawson, a former journalist, used interviews as some of the material for the fifteen poems in the book. The poems based on real events are stark but not trite, woven of fragments of stories and shards of imagery. “Requiescat” is constructed of those elements, but an elevated degree of hope occurs when a cellist continues playing long after the audience is annihilated. The cellist returns day after day, until suddenly “We’re talking now about years into the terror.” After twenty-two performances, “as if to oppose utter mortalness itself, he lay down in the heat’s siege/sawing at the animal guts of that instrument./By then no one else could hear it.” Here, the cellist’s refusal to allow mortal silence to fall over the rubble is tragic and lovely.

The poems offer few other moments of respite, and fear is alternately elicited through treatments of violence and war, and sick children and domestic unease. A sole moment of near-serenity occurs in “Return Trip by Night”:

Low-slung rain reddened at dawn and made of the whole air a wild vow.

Hush. It was exactly then—

then that the puncture wounds we’d put for so long into wherever of ourselves was left started to green at the edges, turn into history and heal.

The shaking eases up by late autumn, and then the pallor, as the blue asters open.

In this poem, tragedy retreats in a shadow, allowing quiet, sleep. Yet the scars of trauma and tendency toward restlessness are still evident, and when the neighbors break bottles in the alley, “the noise is a fury.”

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, December 27th 2009