Two Poems from A.R. Ammons’ Brink Road “. . . as for writing, why, it’s like walking, you aren’t working but you aren’t doing nothing:” –A.R. Ammons (“Summer Place”) The poem “Play” is another of A.R. Ammons’ gems, this one from his book Brink Road (1996), which follows his more famous book Garbage, written in […]
Blog Tour
Thanks to Ann E. Michael for inviting me to go on the Blog Tour. I’ve enjoyed the poems in Ann’s book Water-Rites every since I picked up a copy at AWP in Boston in 2013. That’s also where Ann and I met and began our correspondence. So here is the magical mystery tour of my […]
Poetic Reveries on the Human Condition
My full review of Brock-Broido’s Stay, Illusion is now on Poetry Flash. In her new book Stay, Illusion (Knopf, 2013), Brock-Broido’s gorgeous jottings, reveries on the human condition in the early 21st Century by a woman in mid-life––the poet seeks to find and offer to other solace in a heart-breaking world. Living as she does […]
New Age Poetry and Play
These comments first appeared in Critical Flame, 13 May, 2013 The New Arcanaby John Amen and Daniel Y HarrisSoftcover, $14.95NYQ Books, 2013 The New Age poetry and play of this collaboration call to mind Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness, in which Young brings New York School surrealism into new relief. He talks of a […]
West Coast Poets – History and Timeline
Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line: Poets & Poetry 1940-2005 Volumes I and II By Jack Foley (Oakland: Pantograph Press, 2011) Review By Zara Raab Jack Kerouac coined the phrased “Beat Generation” in […]
Zen Poetry from a life of travel and Buddhist practice by Elaine Starkman
Hearing Beyond Sound: New and Collected Poems y Elaine M. Starkman Many of the poems in this collection draw on Starkman’s travels to Israel and Europe, and on her lifelong commitment to Zen practice. Fog is universal, but nowhere does it have quite the presence it has in the San Francisco Bay area, where Elaine Starkman, […]