As full of “luxuriant ornamentation”[1] as a Frederik Chopin Mazurka or Nocturne, Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s eight-poem sequence from her 1985 book, The Lamplit Answer, is both tribute to Chopin’s music and mimicry of his aesthetic. With her strong poetic personality and unmistakable verse topography, it’s no surprise Schnackenberg is drawn to Chopin’s own singular and distinctive […]
Chana Bloch in Conversation – July 11, 2011
Saddened to hear of the death of the poet Chana Bloch earlier this year, I have been rereading her poems, some of which I reviewed in Poet Lore (“Chana Bloch’s New World,” a review of Blood Honey). In remembrance of her and her poems, both original and translations, I am reposting an interview I did […]
Getting down and walking the poem
“Rhyme, along with other intelligible repetitions of sounds, is often the symptom or indication that the poem is quickening.” —Susan Stewart, The Poet’s Freedom Modernist poetry especially in America places a high value, perhaps the supreme value, on originality. Influenced by the highly expressive visual arts of early and mid-century, some poets began to […]
Satire on the Menu
The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement By Diane Lockward Wind Publications, 2016 The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement begins with quotes from Byron (“The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity),” and, rather more unusually, from the Stanford Law Review (“. . . . carrots are often inefficient),” discussing the relative merits of incentives and […]
Learning Poems by Heart
Why are some poems easier to learn by heart than others? It cannot be simply a matter of simplicity and regular rhythms and rhyming, for sometimes the latter are the hardest of all to master. I found this out a few years ago when I set out to learn Robert Lowell’s poem “Mr. Edward and […]