Review: Quickening Fields - My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quickening Fields by Pattiann Rogers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

A wonderful collection of poems by Pattiann Rogers, who has the remarkable ability to write lush language that is also precise an clear. If it has a theme, this collection speaks to the unity of all being and indeed the unity of all things, animate and inanimate, and of all things with the voice of the poet.

I don't know how the wood thrush knows
how to match the pitch and fall of its cry
exactly to the pitch and fall the mountain ridge
makes against the evening sky....

Each round lobe of the three-leafed clover
fist perfectly into each green note
of the tree frog's treble,and each tree frog
swells its tremolo in cylindrical bunches
of three-tones rings....

What is it that I imitate? to what structure
do I meld? my stance, my cry and mumble
fitting exactly into the chinks
and snugness of some other? What is it
that makes its own body, that finds the steps
of its own motion against the outline
of my voice?

The collection ends with the poet imagining her own "Death Vision," something that we hope is not near even as Rogers begins her 8th decade. But even that is a vision of enfolding back into the unity in a new kind of being:

... all the deaths within deaths
that compose the body becoming as once
their own symbolic perception and praise
of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings,
strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills;
this one expression breaking, this same
expression healing.

These poems, written between 1980 and 2016, show the poet still speaking with sublime voice and vision. Read, sense, be.

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Heron Tree has published my poem, "Enlargement"

Heron Tree has published my poem, "Enlargement," which  you can read for free HERE along with 6 other poems of mine they have posted over the years. 

Thank you Editor Rebecca Resinski. 

Review: An Enemy of the People

An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

A century later, this play seems as relevant as ever. What power does a person of science and medicine have against the rich, the powerful, the mass of pubic opinion, the corrupt? Do facts and science matter? Are we willing to betray our principles for our short-term gain? To betray our health and the health of our children? Can we face an enemy we cannot see, a disease, when our imagination fails to believe it? Is the answer to the worst of democracy some aristocracy of "superior" people? In the end, is it really true "that the strongest man [sic] in the world is he who stands most alone"?

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Review: The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt

The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt by Amy Clampitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

As in any "Collected Poetry," the totality of the poems in this collection is somewhat uneven. That said, Amy Clampitt's work still ranks with the very best in English poetry over the last century. Her language is lush, her vocabulary rich (though sometimes verging the arcane and obscure), her poet's eye that of a naturalist, a scientist, as well as an artist. She has been compared with Wallace Stevens, and there are echoes and influences here. The intellect joined with the body in a dance. The senses all given their due. I have savored these poems for over two years and will savor going back and rereading. 

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My good friend, Pat Bradley, has a new thriller out. Bitter Yellow is a great read - available on Kindle

My good friend, Pat Bradley, has a new thriller out. Bitter Yellow is a great read taking place during the 1918 Flu Pandemic and going at a fast pace that doesn't stop until the last page. Available on Kindle HERE.