Ian Duhig’s poem “Unmaking” powerfully brings the boar and his slaughter, his unmaking, into being. I love the details even Wikipedia won’t give you about the boar’s bristles, about boar-hunting spears. I love the language, as well, thurifers and mast. Here’s the poem, which appeared in Poetry London 2010: Unmaking Boar-hunting spears have a cross-piece […]
Edward Byrne’s Seeded Light
Seeded Light by Edward Byrne Cincinnati, OH: Turning Point, 2010 102 pages, $18.00 Unceded The short, spare lines Edward Byrne wrote as a young poet selected by John Ashbery for his first book, Along the Dark Shore, have eased open into the long, iambic couplets of his latest, sixth collection. Turning from the heartaches and […]
I’ve been reading Phililp Levine’s work this week. I love this poem, called “An Ordinary Morning”
An Ordinary Morning A man is singing on the bus coming in from Toledo. His voice floats over the heads that bow and sway with each turn, jolt, and sudden slowing. A hoarse, quiet voice, it tells of love that it true, of love that endures a whole weekend. The driver answers in a tenor […]
Parables of Contemporary Life
Neverheless, hello by Christopher Goodrich ISBN 978-0943264-9-8 Bowling Green, KY: Steel Toe Books, 2009 Paper, 77 pp. Fables of Contemporary Life Among the countless poets, some are at ease in the Zen master’s chair, slyly distilling contemporary folklore, or offering odes of wry praise or comfort in grief. The thematic patterning of these books, and […]
A note on the work of Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio is one of the stars of poetry in the West. She is one of our own, and few write with her brilliance and verve. I have been reading all her books, and find a surprising range of emotional tone and subject. (I recommend her novel Little Beauties, published by Simon and Schuster in […]
Wheeling Motel by Franz Wright New York: Knopf, 2009 91 pp., cloth, $26.95. Lucifer at the Starlite by Kim Addonizio New York: W.W. Norton, 2009 89 pp., cloth, $23.95. Refrigerate After Opening The novelist Denis Johnson said of an earlier collection Franz Wright’s poems, “They’re like tiny jewels shaped by blunt, ruined fingers–miraculous gifts.” I […]