Review: The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo by Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Embrace" by Carolyn Kreiter Foronda imagines the voices of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the poet's reading of their letters and journals as well as her own imagination. Many of the selections are two poems interlaced so that you may read them separately or together as a third poem. While this device works more often than not, as in the "Two Fridas" poems, there are places with it stumbles such as in "Deer Running."

Overall, this collection is emotionally powerful without slipping too far into the maudlin. The language is generally fresh and eloquent. In a number of cases animals or inanimate objects are personified and given a speaking voice with mixed success. (I find it difficult to suspend disbelief in listening to a crematorium oven speaking.)

"The Embrace" sides with Frida Kahlo in this tortured relationship, a sympathy it is easy to agree with. The collection is powerful and beautiful especially when it gives Kahlo a living voice agin.

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Review: The Lost Words

The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A children's book.
A book for adults to read to children.
A set of spells to enchant adults.
A book of beautiful art for heart's sake.
A book of lost words for what may become lost worlds.
A spellbook that helps children spell and say the words for wild and free.
A book for children to save themselves from what we have helped them lose.
A book for children to chant to adults..
before it the words for wild things
are too gone to be remembered.

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Review: The Heights of Macchu Picchu

The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A mythopoetic and somewhat surrealistic set of 12 cantos by Pablo Neruda, "The Heights" by one of the finest poets of the 20th Century transcends the personal/lyrical in an eloquence of vision. Neruda uses Macchu Picchu (Intentionally writing two Cs in the first word) to place himself in a larger world of history and time.

I love nearly everything I read by Neruda, but I wish that I could read Spanish better than I do so I could give a more informed review as to the quality of this translation. Nonetheless, Tomas Morin gives a workmanlike English version that is worth reading.

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Clementine Unbound will publish my poem "Now Is Not the Time to Talk about Guns" online beginning August 20.

Clementine Unbound will publish my poem "Now Is Not the Time to Talk about Guns" online beginning August 20.

This is the second of my poems published by Clementine. Thank you Editor GF Boyer.

Review: The Wanderer shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.

The Wanderer by Christine Gosnay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Christine Gosnay's chapbook "The Wanderer" contains some of the finest poetry I have read from a poet of the new century so far. Gosnay is not afraid to use imagery from nature, but she does it in a fresh way.

Yellow heat strafes
the hand-deep water
where the shade-eyed darner makes its notch.

At the same time, she also revivifies the commonplace of living.

It means that when I pull nothing out from the soft center
where my stomach, pale and useful, longs,

pulling as if at a doll's string to say ache
in a bright, unrecognizable voice,

I move my ind by the hand from the dark blue room
where it is thinking-feeling

toward the edge of the blank graph...

Her poems are collages of experiences, images, and thoughts that still maintain an overall unity of feeling and thinking. Unlike many collections, "The Wanderer" does not falter or contain poems that show obvious need for more rewriting. There is a consistency of tone and craft throughout.

Gosnay's work here shows a poet in prime and vital voice worth reading and rereading.

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Congrats to Allan Peterson - reading from his new collection -June 11 at City Lights

My friend, Allan Peterson, is reading from his new collection, This Luminous: New and Selected Poem, at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco on Jun 11. Stop by if you are in the area.