Review: Did You Know?

Did You Know? by Elizabeth S. Wolf
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First, the content: This seems a heartfelt and honest autobiography of a difficult life, often without self-pity. Wolf's relationships with her parents, other family members, ex-husband, college professors and administrators, health care professionals, and bureaucracies in general are fraught--but she seems to exhibit little malice but much (probably appropriate) anger.

Second, the poetics: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads argued for a more natural language in poetry than what had come before, a poetry that was a form of heightened but still common speech. The Modernists found 19th Century poetry post-Wordsworth still too stilted and artificial. Post-post-Modernists have continued this journey away from "poetic speech," often going to the other extreme of writing what seems prose with broken lines or even casual conversation strung out across the page. This style is one of today's orthodoxies, and Wolf's work falls here.

If you heard someone read from this chapbook, you would think it a transcript of a woman mulling over her life. That is fine, as far as it goes.

But I read poetry for language that is a selection, or a distillation of normal speech and writing, a "making new" from what is too trite, too used up. Yes, this means there is "artifice." But art is artifice and artifact. Does it ring true in that artifice, speaking in ways that we normally do not but without feeling false? Given this aesthetic preference on my part, you may discount this review if you disagree.

But consider "The Next Night My Mother Called" from Wolf's collection:

"I can't talk to my parents,"
she said. "I am so mad.
My mother came over with a hot lunch
and I didn't open the door."

"Good for you," I said. "You talk
to who you want,
when you want.
It's your house.
It's you life,"

"Life sucks," said my mother.
"Also true," I replied.

Wolf's collection allows her to face and deal with much trauma. It has value. But it does not reward second reading as the best poetry does.


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Review: The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality

The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality by Nancy Isenberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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How to Honor the Fallen on Memorial Day

How should we best honor the fallen warriors this and every Memorial Day?

We could decorate their graves as was done on many a Decoration Day from the Civil War on until the day was renamed. Sales and barbecues are fine. But the seas of white monuments should makes us pause from our holiday activities.

We can thank those who put themselves in harm's way for us with something more heartfelt than a perfunctory "Thank you for your service." Maybe even improve their housing, health care. Perhaps make VA hospitals and educational benefits less bureaucratic.

My Uncle Thomas Kon was the son of Polish immigrants who chose to be Americans. He died over Belgium in his B-17. We could honor him and many other immigrants and children of immigrants who serve by recognizing they are American by choice, not just by happenstance of birth.

How should we best honor the fallen warriors this and every Memorial Day? Maybe by recognizing that we are all Americans, that our heritage is best remembered as the ideas and ideals we struggle always to live up to, and that our political disagreements should not erase the mutual respect we feel for each other as citizens. The fallen served to protect those ideals and the rights of citizenship from enemies of both.


Perhaps the best way to honor the fallen this and every Memorial Day is to be the citizens we can be as we reach out across these graves to our political foes and together say, "We will strive to live in ways that better honor the fallen and the ideas and ideal they died for every day of our lives." That doesn't seem like near enough given their ultimate sacrifices. But it might suffice.

Review: The Hands of Day

The Hands of Day by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another fine translation by William O'Daly of the late work of Pablo Neruda. One can certainly hear echoes of Walt Whitman in these poems, a poet Neruda read and admired. There are many fine poems in the collection, but an overall unity is sometimes disturbed by a few poems that seem here just to vent spleen against those who have wronged the poet. Don't let that stop you from reading and spending some time here.

Neruda's language within even many shorter poems goes from the prosaic commonplace to sudden surreal juxtapositions. The end result is to make words new. As Neruda desired of all art,

Strike a blow of fire with your guitar,
raise it, as it burbs:
it is your flag.


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Register now for my Creative Writing Class this Fall at Germanna Community College

The Voices Project will publish two of my poems online

The Voices Project will publish two of my poems online.

"The Grace of Firstfall Last" will be published on July 24, 2019.

"Mermaids" will be posted on October 16, 2019.

Thank you Editor Denise Powell.

The American Journal of Poetry will publish my poem "Bequest" in Issue 7 due July 1, 2019.

The American Journal of Poetry will publish my poem "Bequest" in Issue 7 due July 1, 2019. This poem is part of an unpublished collection inspired by Arthur Rimbaud.

Editor Robert Nazarene calls the poem "devastating" and "an earthquake." I am honored and gratified that he and the Journal find it "perfect" for publication.

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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I am honored to have my Rebecca Lard Award-winning poem "First and Last" along with five other of my poems as a special feature in Poetry Quarterly

I am honored to have my Rebecca Lard Award-winning "First and Last" along with five other of my poems as a special feature in Poetry Quarterly. Thank you Editor Glenn Lyvers.

Copes may be purchased from Prolific Press:

POETRY QUARTERLY

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POETRY QUARTERLY SPRING 2019

$24.95

Our Spring 2019 Prize Winner issue includes a special feature by David Anthony Sam, including a fine sampling of Sam’s poetry, along with the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award Winning poem. Also in this issue, world-class poetry by Nate Alaska, Duane Anderson, Pat Anthony, Donny Barilla, Michele Baron, Roxanne Bogart, Marcus Benjamin Ray Bradley, Sarah Cannavo, Eleanor Cantor, Len Carber, Suzanne Cottrell, Julie A. Dickson, Ralph DiGennaro, John Elliott, Elisabeth Eriksen, Lynette G. Esposito, Isaac Eustice, Mary Crane Fahey, Amy Fletcher, Richard Fox, MacGregor Frank, Annette Gagliardi, Louis Gallo, Richard Grannis-Vu, Stephen Gretzer, Max Gutmann, Matthew Harris, Tim Heerdink, Heather Hill-Vasquez, Cynthia Hilts, Ellen Hirning Schmidt, D. R. James, Jeanne Julian, Martin Knabe, Esthru Kusru, Jody Larson, Melissa Laussmann, Bruce Levine, Patricia Anne Lind, Chad W. Lutz, Michael Lyle, Laura McGinnis, Lynda McKinney Lambert, Sydney McQuoid, Stephen Mead, Joshua Medsker, Alan Meyrowitz, Caroline Parkman Barr, Simon Perchik, Karen Poppy, Samuel Prestridge, Mary Rogers Knowles, Patricia Rossi, Donna Roy, Denise Segal Umans, Derek Devereaux Smith, Heather Teague, Jesse Thompson, Doug Van Hooser, JR Vork, Penny Wilson and Rod Zink.

Cutthroat - A Journal of the Arts has accepted my poem "The Politics of Prayer" for publication in their upcoming issue #25.

Cutthroat - A Journal of the Arts has accepted my poem "The Politics of Prayer" for publication in their upcoming issue #25. 

Thank you Crosswinds Poetry Journal for including my poem "An Old Chaos (Sunday Morning)" in their Volume IV - 2019 issue.

Thank you Crosswinds Poetry Journal for including my poem "An Old Chaos (Sunday Morning)" in their Volume IV - 2019 issue.

This issue also includes "Residential" which was an honorable mention written by my dear friend Allan Peterson. Congratulations Allan and the other winners and honorees.