"Pirene's Fountain" has been one of my favorite online journals for years now. The editors are not only good judges of poetry but nice people as well. I feel fortunate to have been published in "PF" several times previously, but the new issue (April 2011) features a number of gratifying connections to my work.
Among the 100 or so poems in the issue from notable poets like CJ Sage, Lisa Zaran, Russell Ragsdale, Alex Grant, and Natalie Williams are 2 of my own, "Solitude" and "13 Ways of Flowers" and 8 of my haiku. Along with "Solitude," the editors have included 3 photos from my colleague and favorite photographer, Clayton Joe Young (his photos grace the cover of two of my books, "Paternity" and the forthcoming "Something Knows the Moment"). The photos in "PF" were the inspiration for "Solitude."
This issue of "PF" also includes two reviews of mine, one of Steven Roberts' "Another Word for Home," and another of Gary McDowell's "American Amen." There is also a review by Caleb Pletcher of "The Nature of Attraction," my most recent book, a collaboration with Pris Campbell. Finally, the editors have included my article on collaboration, "Six Degrees of Collaboration."
Here is a link to the entire issue: http://www.pirenesfountain.com/current_issue.html
I hope you'll visit and become a regular reader of "Pirene's Fountain."
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Review of Annalee Kwochka's "Seventeen"
REVIEW
by Scott Owens
(first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review)
SEVENTEEN
Poems by Annalee Kwochka
Running Poet Press
I wrote my first short story in twelve years the other day. I didn’t set out to write a story, but a scene that nearly materialized in real life refused to be dropped in my imagination, and as I began ‘disburdening” myself of it, it insisted on being prose. You may wonder what any of this had to do with a review of a book of poems (I know I would). The connection is that just as I’ve learned through 30 years of writing that the writer often has little choice in what or how they write, young Annalee Kwochka has already, at 17, learned that the writer has even less choice in deciding to write. “Mona Lisa Muse,” the opening poem of her precocious collection, Seventeen, makes that clear. “Poems,” she says, “are the fierce and ravishing aunt / whom you revere / but shrink from . . . . / Her knock is a tiny hammer on your skull, / so you’d better get that door, / . . . because this poem / has arrived.” So, too, has this poet.
The poems in Seventeen demonstrate Kwochka’s arrival in several ways, one of which is her versatility. From tankas, to ars poeticas, to typographical poems, to performances pieces, to dramatic monologues, Kwochka’s poems are consistently fresh, evocative, and surprising. Her “Window Seat at the City Bakery,” for example, masterfully uses spacing to control the reader’s pace and create impetus just where it should be. The way “Details” appears on a line of its own three times, and the way “forward” follows the push of white space after “To bear life,” and the way the parallelism of the last four lines create a satisfying sense of place (“Sitting somewhere on this planet, / This continent, this country, / This city, this street, / This seat by the window”), all work together to convey Kwochka’s own understanding of Mary Oliver’s imperative that, for the poet, paying attention is tantamount to prayer.
And Kwochka pays attention to the two things that are most important for a poet to pay attention to if her poems are going to be effective: imagery and language. We’ve already seen her attention to imagery, and in the wonderfully playful “Entry #1 from the Dictionary of Teenage Variations on the English Language, and an Example in Context,” we see her attention to language as she dissects the linguistic habits of mother-daughter communication.
Kwochka’s versatility is one not only of style but also of subject matter. She “pays attention” to nature in poems like “Window Seat” and “Green River Tanka,” to personal issues in poems like “Advanced Placement: Psychology” and “Burning,” to issues of relationships in poems like “Storms” and “Advents,” to social issues in poems like “Laws of Motion: Wake-Up Call” and “Laws of Motion: School Reform,” and to political issues in poems like “Seque for My sisters in Iraq” and “Exposition and Protest.”
It is through Kwochka’s willingness to explore, experience, and relate such a range of topics and influences that she is able to make statements that belie her youth, statements that express a greater understanding of the complexities of human existence than one would expect from one of her age, statements like this one from “Advent” that add a third dimension to Oliver’s equation of prayer and paying attention:
I need to love even though it hurts,
I need to love until it hurts
Because there is so much hurt here,
And loving is a better way to pray.
by Scott Owens
(first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review)
SEVENTEEN
Poems by Annalee Kwochka
Running Poet Press
I wrote my first short story in twelve years the other day. I didn’t set out to write a story, but a scene that nearly materialized in real life refused to be dropped in my imagination, and as I began ‘disburdening” myself of it, it insisted on being prose. You may wonder what any of this had to do with a review of a book of poems (I know I would). The connection is that just as I’ve learned through 30 years of writing that the writer often has little choice in what or how they write, young Annalee Kwochka has already, at 17, learned that the writer has even less choice in deciding to write. “Mona Lisa Muse,” the opening poem of her precocious collection, Seventeen, makes that clear. “Poems,” she says, “are the fierce and ravishing aunt / whom you revere / but shrink from . . . . / Her knock is a tiny hammer on your skull, / so you’d better get that door, / . . . because this poem / has arrived.” So, too, has this poet.
The poems in Seventeen demonstrate Kwochka’s arrival in several ways, one of which is her versatility. From tankas, to ars poeticas, to typographical poems, to performances pieces, to dramatic monologues, Kwochka’s poems are consistently fresh, evocative, and surprising. Her “Window Seat at the City Bakery,” for example, masterfully uses spacing to control the reader’s pace and create impetus just where it should be. The way “Details” appears on a line of its own three times, and the way “forward” follows the push of white space after “To bear life,” and the way the parallelism of the last four lines create a satisfying sense of place (“Sitting somewhere on this planet, / This continent, this country, / This city, this street, / This seat by the window”), all work together to convey Kwochka’s own understanding of Mary Oliver’s imperative that, for the poet, paying attention is tantamount to prayer.
And Kwochka pays attention to the two things that are most important for a poet to pay attention to if her poems are going to be effective: imagery and language. We’ve already seen her attention to imagery, and in the wonderfully playful “Entry #1 from the Dictionary of Teenage Variations on the English Language, and an Example in Context,” we see her attention to language as she dissects the linguistic habits of mother-daughter communication.
Kwochka’s versatility is one not only of style but also of subject matter. She “pays attention” to nature in poems like “Window Seat” and “Green River Tanka,” to personal issues in poems like “Advanced Placement: Psychology” and “Burning,” to issues of relationships in poems like “Storms” and “Advents,” to social issues in poems like “Laws of Motion: Wake-Up Call” and “Laws of Motion: School Reform,” and to political issues in poems like “Seque for My sisters in Iraq” and “Exposition and Protest.”
It is through Kwochka’s willingness to explore, experience, and relate such a range of topics and influences that she is able to make statements that belie her youth, statements that express a greater understanding of the complexities of human existence than one would expect from one of her age, statements like this one from “Advent” that add a third dimension to Oliver’s equation of prayer and paying attention:
I need to love even though it hurts,
I need to love until it hurts
Because there is so much hurt here,
And loving is a better way to pray.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Review of Stan Absher's "Night Weather"
REVIEW
by Scott Owens
First Published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Winter 2011
NIGHT WEATHER
by J.S. Absher; illustrations by Katie Nordt
Cynosura Press, 2010
ISBN: 9780615429540
Although I have published about 3 dozen haiku in respected haiku journals like Heron’s Nest, Notes from the Gean, and Shamrock, my only training in the form has been my own reading and a few exchanges with Alice Frampton, Lenard Moore, and Curtis Dunlap. So, when I received a review copy of Stan Absher’s new collection of mostly haiku entitled Night Weather, I thought about how particular some haiku purists can be and decided I wasn’t really qualified or courageous enough to make any sort of statement regarding the quality of a collection of haiku. As I read through the book, however, I realized that it contains plenty of elements about which I do feel qualified to speak. The most significant of these elements is simply how enjoyable the poems are. These quiet meditations on perception are evocative, soothing, and subtly thought-provoking.
Not surprisingly given that most of the poems are haiku or similar forms, the strongest feature of these poems is their imagery. Time and again, Absher presents images that are pleasantly familiar and enviably well-stated such that I find myself constantly thinking, “Yes, that’s it. He got it just right. Perhaps my favorite, being a planter of trees myself, is “sweetgum:”
in the riprap
cold saplings
burning red
This image of life, regeneration, and resistance reminds me both of Roethke’s famous poem, “Cuttings,” as well as my own experience planting saplings in a thick bed of mulch.
Absher demonstrates in all of these poems what is undoubtedly the poet’s most important skill: keen observation. Nowhere is that more apparent than in “Ripeness Is All,” which I quote in its entirety below:
Weighting the low branches, vermilion
splotched with apple green, it hands
in easy reach -- not quite ready
to pick, but turn his eye away one
moment, it will bruise with neglect.
The exact moment never comes
when it falls easily to hand.
By day it holds the stem like
a hooked redeye, then over night
spikes itself on the stubble.
When is my time, he wonders,
when will I, trembling with plenty,
let go into the ripe void?
When will I steer
drunkenly into the blade?
This metaphoric representation of the ceaselessly anticipatory nature of human existence resonates not only with our own perceptions of the natural world but also with our unspoken impressions of life, and of course, with all the literary and personal associations we have with the concept of forbidden fruit. Such associative richness is what makes these poems, and all good haiku, and all good imagism, work. It is this quality above all others that make such poems enjoyable.
Organized around the theme of passing seasons, Absher’s poems have two vital lessons to teach us: pay attention; and be ready.
by Scott Owens
First Published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Winter 2011
NIGHT WEATHER
by J.S. Absher; illustrations by Katie Nordt
Cynosura Press, 2010
ISBN: 9780615429540
Although I have published about 3 dozen haiku in respected haiku journals like Heron’s Nest, Notes from the Gean, and Shamrock, my only training in the form has been my own reading and a few exchanges with Alice Frampton, Lenard Moore, and Curtis Dunlap. So, when I received a review copy of Stan Absher’s new collection of mostly haiku entitled Night Weather, I thought about how particular some haiku purists can be and decided I wasn’t really qualified or courageous enough to make any sort of statement regarding the quality of a collection of haiku. As I read through the book, however, I realized that it contains plenty of elements about which I do feel qualified to speak. The most significant of these elements is simply how enjoyable the poems are. These quiet meditations on perception are evocative, soothing, and subtly thought-provoking.
Not surprisingly given that most of the poems are haiku or similar forms, the strongest feature of these poems is their imagery. Time and again, Absher presents images that are pleasantly familiar and enviably well-stated such that I find myself constantly thinking, “Yes, that’s it. He got it just right. Perhaps my favorite, being a planter of trees myself, is “sweetgum:”
in the riprap
cold saplings
burning red
This image of life, regeneration, and resistance reminds me both of Roethke’s famous poem, “Cuttings,” as well as my own experience planting saplings in a thick bed of mulch.
Absher demonstrates in all of these poems what is undoubtedly the poet’s most important skill: keen observation. Nowhere is that more apparent than in “Ripeness Is All,” which I quote in its entirety below:
Weighting the low branches, vermilion
splotched with apple green, it hands
in easy reach -- not quite ready
to pick, but turn his eye away one
moment, it will bruise with neglect.
The exact moment never comes
when it falls easily to hand.
By day it holds the stem like
a hooked redeye, then over night
spikes itself on the stubble.
When is my time, he wonders,
when will I, trembling with plenty,
let go into the ripe void?
When will I steer
drunkenly into the blade?
This metaphoric representation of the ceaselessly anticipatory nature of human existence resonates not only with our own perceptions of the natural world but also with our unspoken impressions of life, and of course, with all the literary and personal associations we have with the concept of forbidden fruit. Such associative richness is what makes these poems, and all good haiku, and all good imagism, work. It is this quality above all others that make such poems enjoyable.
Organized around the theme of passing seasons, Absher’s poems have two vital lessons to teach us: pay attention; and be ready.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Review of Steven Sherrill's "Ersatz Anatomy"
REVIEW
by Scott Owens
first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review
ERSATZ ANATOMY
by Steven Sherrill
CW Books, 2010, 120 pages
ISBN: 9781936370153
The poems in Steven Sherrill’s Ersatz Anatomy use the words “want,” “need,” “desire,” “longing,” and “yearn” 74 times. Those words appear at least once in 36 of the volume’s 74 poems, clearly suggesting that desire is the primary subject of this poetic inquiry. As if to erase any doubt about that, Sherrill offers such individual titles as “Preamble to the Treatise of Desire,” “Footnote to the Preamble,” “Treatise on Desire,” “First Amendment to the Treatise on Desire,” “Retort to the Treatise,” “Passion,” and “The Want Bird.” Similarly, among the many memorable lines related to desire, Sherrill writes, “It is the topography of need we traverse” (“Geese at 9000 Feet”) and “I am punch drunk with want” (“Sweet Grief”).
Such an emphasis on desire should not be surprising. After all, what emotion is more human than desire, and what desire stronger than the desire for knowledge, for certainty, for God. The earliest stories of human being(s) (Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Gilgamesh, for example) make it clear that the defining characteristic of human existence is desire. Those stories tend to cast desire in a rather ambivalent light. Specifically they propose that desire to be with or like God is good and desire for all else is bad, at least in any measure exceeding the very relative term “moderation.” Of course, the fact that human beings can only know God in very nebulous forms (burning bushes, pillars of cloud, thunder and lightning), heightens the sense of desire and redirects it towards things that might approximate religious rapture. It is no semantic accident that the word most often used for both religious and sexual fulfillment is the same--ecstasy--a fact not lost on the speaker of these poems.
Unable to achieve either fulfillment of the one desire that defines humanity or lasting fulfillment of desire in general, the nature of human existence is to live in uncertainty, to be subject to an “unknowable you,” our “doubt” to whom we “remain devout” “with true pause” (“Latter-Day Sonnet”). The real question then becomes not whether one experiences desire or doubt, both of which are inevitable, but what one does in such a state, whether one denies it; or better, manages to exist in a state of uncertainty without “any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats’ negative capability would suggest; or better yet, relishes that state, explores it, as the speaker of these poems does, inventing a capability that is neither negative nor positive but decidedly human: “Beyond hunger more hunger / Learn to eat the emptiness” (“Footnote to the Preamble”). The speaker of these poems understands that no teleological approach to human existence holds any satisfactory answers, and that the absence of such answers is inherently unsatisfying as well. What we are left with is the constantly difficult proposition that the journey is its own reward.
Sherrill signed my copy of Ersatz Anatomy, “For Scott, who shared my journey for many good years.” Nothing could be more appropriate. When we were both younger we took many journeys together, walking every set of railroad tracks and every creek leading from Charlotte, NC, just to see what we could see, hiking nearby wooded or mountain trails, climbing Crowder’s Mountain, working through classes taught by Robert Waters Grey, Robin Hemley, and Chris Davis at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. And of course, all of this was part of our mutual journeys towards becoming writers and men.
I’ve seen Sherrill only once since we parted ways some 18 years ago. In the interim we have both been married, divorced, and remarried, have both raised children of our own, and have both pursued with some success our careers in teaching and writing. Through all that, however, one thing has never changed: Sherrill is still at his best when on a journey, in this case, the kind of journey afforded him in a long poem where thought, perception, emotion, and reflection all interweave to (re)create an experience as authentic as any I’ve read. The poem “At the Shore of the Great Lake Michigan I Come Upon the Feet of Egon Schiele in the Moonlight” is a thematic and stylistic paragon of all that Sherrill undertakes in this book.
The poem begins innocently enough: “On the bluff above, a caveat -- Beach Closed. No Entry After Dark.” From that, few would guess that what would follow would be a refreshing meditation on the nature of religion, faith, and humanism. “It is well after dark and I am here” the speaker defiantly proclaims in the same stanza, and we follow him as he descends to the dark beach and discovers a piece of driftwood that strikes his imagination as “the feet of Egon Schiele.” A series of religious, historical, and personal associations then leads him to the poem’s final remarkable epiphany:
The nature of faith is, more or less, . . .
any goddamned thing I want it to be. Here I write the doctrines.
I am the Apostle and the acolyte . . . I am the deacon and the fold.
This is my church, my church, and I believe
in the feet of Egon Schiele
in the moonlight.
This epiphany of how art, beauty, identity, and hope are all found in the interaction of nature and human memory, of philosophy, science, and religion, clarify the humanistic and aesthetic understanding that is at the thematic and emotional center of all of these poems.
As “At the Shore of the Great Lake Michigan” illustrates, there is nothing easy about reading Steven Sherrill’s poetry. The poems are full of remarkable, often surreal imagery and surprising shifts in perspective, moving by an associative logic that challenges the most imaginative reader to keep up. Sherrill is not only negatively capable but very comfortable with contraries: faith and heresy; Apollonian control and Dionysian wildness; aesthetic smugness and endearing humility. None of that is easy, but anything that explores human nature without flinching at its complexity, with such unblinking honesty, can be cathartic and enlightening, and in any event, a hell of a lot of fun.
by Scott Owens
first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review
ERSATZ ANATOMY
by Steven Sherrill
CW Books, 2010, 120 pages
ISBN: 9781936370153
The poems in Steven Sherrill’s Ersatz Anatomy use the words “want,” “need,” “desire,” “longing,” and “yearn” 74 times. Those words appear at least once in 36 of the volume’s 74 poems, clearly suggesting that desire is the primary subject of this poetic inquiry. As if to erase any doubt about that, Sherrill offers such individual titles as “Preamble to the Treatise of Desire,” “Footnote to the Preamble,” “Treatise on Desire,” “First Amendment to the Treatise on Desire,” “Retort to the Treatise,” “Passion,” and “The Want Bird.” Similarly, among the many memorable lines related to desire, Sherrill writes, “It is the topography of need we traverse” (“Geese at 9000 Feet”) and “I am punch drunk with want” (“Sweet Grief”).
Such an emphasis on desire should not be surprising. After all, what emotion is more human than desire, and what desire stronger than the desire for knowledge, for certainty, for God. The earliest stories of human being(s) (Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Gilgamesh, for example) make it clear that the defining characteristic of human existence is desire. Those stories tend to cast desire in a rather ambivalent light. Specifically they propose that desire to be with or like God is good and desire for all else is bad, at least in any measure exceeding the very relative term “moderation.” Of course, the fact that human beings can only know God in very nebulous forms (burning bushes, pillars of cloud, thunder and lightning), heightens the sense of desire and redirects it towards things that might approximate religious rapture. It is no semantic accident that the word most often used for both religious and sexual fulfillment is the same--ecstasy--a fact not lost on the speaker of these poems.
Unable to achieve either fulfillment of the one desire that defines humanity or lasting fulfillment of desire in general, the nature of human existence is to live in uncertainty, to be subject to an “unknowable you,” our “doubt” to whom we “remain devout” “with true pause” (“Latter-Day Sonnet”). The real question then becomes not whether one experiences desire or doubt, both of which are inevitable, but what one does in such a state, whether one denies it; or better, manages to exist in a state of uncertainty without “any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats’ negative capability would suggest; or better yet, relishes that state, explores it, as the speaker of these poems does, inventing a capability that is neither negative nor positive but decidedly human: “Beyond hunger more hunger / Learn to eat the emptiness” (“Footnote to the Preamble”). The speaker of these poems understands that no teleological approach to human existence holds any satisfactory answers, and that the absence of such answers is inherently unsatisfying as well. What we are left with is the constantly difficult proposition that the journey is its own reward.
Sherrill signed my copy of Ersatz Anatomy, “For Scott, who shared my journey for many good years.” Nothing could be more appropriate. When we were both younger we took many journeys together, walking every set of railroad tracks and every creek leading from Charlotte, NC, just to see what we could see, hiking nearby wooded or mountain trails, climbing Crowder’s Mountain, working through classes taught by Robert Waters Grey, Robin Hemley, and Chris Davis at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. And of course, all of this was part of our mutual journeys towards becoming writers and men.
I’ve seen Sherrill only once since we parted ways some 18 years ago. In the interim we have both been married, divorced, and remarried, have both raised children of our own, and have both pursued with some success our careers in teaching and writing. Through all that, however, one thing has never changed: Sherrill is still at his best when on a journey, in this case, the kind of journey afforded him in a long poem where thought, perception, emotion, and reflection all interweave to (re)create an experience as authentic as any I’ve read. The poem “At the Shore of the Great Lake Michigan I Come Upon the Feet of Egon Schiele in the Moonlight” is a thematic and stylistic paragon of all that Sherrill undertakes in this book.
The poem begins innocently enough: “On the bluff above, a caveat -- Beach Closed. No Entry After Dark.” From that, few would guess that what would follow would be a refreshing meditation on the nature of religion, faith, and humanism. “It is well after dark and I am here” the speaker defiantly proclaims in the same stanza, and we follow him as he descends to the dark beach and discovers a piece of driftwood that strikes his imagination as “the feet of Egon Schiele.” A series of religious, historical, and personal associations then leads him to the poem’s final remarkable epiphany:
The nature of faith is, more or less, . . .
any goddamned thing I want it to be. Here I write the doctrines.
I am the Apostle and the acolyte . . . I am the deacon and the fold.
This is my church, my church, and I believe
in the feet of Egon Schiele
in the moonlight.
This epiphany of how art, beauty, identity, and hope are all found in the interaction of nature and human memory, of philosophy, science, and religion, clarify the humanistic and aesthetic understanding that is at the thematic and emotional center of all of these poems.
As “At the Shore of the Great Lake Michigan” illustrates, there is nothing easy about reading Steven Sherrill’s poetry. The poems are full of remarkable, often surreal imagery and surprising shifts in perspective, moving by an associative logic that challenges the most imaginative reader to keep up. Sherrill is not only negatively capable but very comfortable with contraries: faith and heresy; Apollonian control and Dionysian wildness; aesthetic smugness and endearing humility. None of that is easy, but anything that explores human nature without flinching at its complexity, with such unblinking honesty, can be cathartic and enlightening, and in any event, a hell of a lot of fun.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Review of Al Maginnes' "Greatest Hits"
REVIEW
by Scott Owens
First Published in The Pilot and Wild Goose Poetry Review
AL MAGINNES: GREATEST HITS
by Al Maginnes
Pudding House, 2010
ISBN: 1589989317
I admire Al Maginnes, his optimism, his zest for life and passion for all things human, his empathy, his lyricism, his long but still seamless and uncluttered lines, his fluid syntax, his spot-on metaphors and conceits, his ability to tell a good story and reveal the significance of it with a subtlety that lets the reader experience the poem’s cathartic and epiphanous moment as if it were their own, and now his ability to be his own best editor. In his new book of poems, Al Maginnes: Greatest Hits, Maginnes selects from 23 years worth of poetry only 12 to be included as “greatest hits.” I’ve written half as long as Maginnes and don’t think I could do that. Somehow I’m sure all the poems I didn’t select would turn against me. The amazing thing about Maginnes’ selections, however, is that he got it right. I’ve read most of Maginnes’ work over the years, and if I had to choose just 12 to keep, it would be these.
Another of the more admirable qualities of Maginnes’ poems is their ability to capture the full sense of some vital human abstraction -- to be the kind of poem that leaves a reader nodding his head, if not saying, “Ah, yes,” in recognition and appreciation. It seems almost silly to single out poems from a collection of only 12, but singling out poems as illustration of one’s points is what a reviewer does. So, four poems in particular from this collection stand out for their embodiment of longing, regret, and perspective.
The first of these is “Sharks in Kansas,” a remarkable poem of romantic longing that imaginatively revisits the road not taken. The speaker of the poem tells us:
. . . For two years, she
and I tracked each other’s moves,
both of us in love with other people
and happy most days, but curious
about the quick flame of sun
on water we had seen in each other.
and later
When she said “Florida. Paleontology,”
I did not move to wrap her in the thoughtless hug
I might have offered someone else, but said
“Arkansas” and “poetry.” When she asked, “So, when
will I see you again?” we both knew the answer.
And all of this buried longing is sparked through a wonderful associative logic brought about by a news story concerning the discovery of fossilized shark remains in Kansas, which the speaker describes in a delightful conceit for that longing:
There are sharks, sharks in Kansas, still
swimming in water that has turned to stone,
bent in the memory of tides
to the exact angle I once saw her arm bend
across her lover’s shoulder . . . .
Another poem rich in associative logic is “Elegy with Clifford Brown Playing Trumpet.” This beautiful revelation of perspective about the importance of the “white space” or “negative space,” the absences, loss, and ultimately, mortality that give meaning to all human endeavor begins with a mystery the speaker is reading and ends in greater appreciation of the contributions of both musician Clifford Brown and poet Larry Levis and in a deepened understanding of the limitation as motivation. My favorite moment in the poem is the breathless unfolding of something as unimaginable to us all as death. The speaker tells us that somewhere in the laments of Larry Levis
lurked the hand that will come one day to touch us,
perhaps right when we are in the middle of things,
& lead us into a puzzle of streets
that we only understand slowly we will not
find our way out of, although that matters
less & less as the blacktop buckles and thins
to cobblestones, then to dirt, as we walk out of our shoes
until we are walking on nothing and then
we are not walking at all & the way back
to all we have left undone is forgotten.
The third truly remarkable poem is one of Maginnes’ best narrative reflections, and it also about perspective. In fact, “To the One Who Stole My Lawnmower” might be called a parable of perspective. The speaker of the poem reveals that not only has his lawnmower been stolen but that he knows the person who has stolen it and is aware of that person’s situation as well. The reader follows the speaker through all the usual stages: anger, guilt, blame-shifting, acceptance, and understanding to conclude:
. . . the truth is
the loss of my lawnmower has become a story
and, like most stories, gets told for laughs.
But I can laugh even when, like today,
I sweat like a rented mule, forcing
the motorless contraption I use to cut grass now
through high weeds, because my life is not yours.
The final poem that stands out for me differs from most of Maginnes’ work in that the lines are shorter and essentially syllabic, as opposed to his usual predominately tetrameter or pentameter lines, but “Legend” retains Maginnes’ characteristic syntactical mastery and his knack for embodying a common and vital human emotion--specifically, in this case, regret. The poem is about a lost opportunity to see and hear the folk singer Carolyn Hester in person, and the speaker concludes
Even if all she had done
was chant the famous names
of her dead husband or her
new god, even if she denied
completely or insisted
upon being defined by
her past, even if time has
done to her what it has done
to all of us, I should have gone.
In typical Al Maginnes fashion, the poems collected in his Greatest Hits achieve what is poetry’s most important task, the deepening of our experience of the world as human beings. This thin volume is a wonderful introduction to Maginnes’ lifework for those who have only now discovered it. It is also a perfectly representative selection of all that makes Maginnes’ work important for those who have been fans for years. Ultimately, it should be a standard part of any poetry lover’s bookshelf.
by Scott Owens
First Published in The Pilot and Wild Goose Poetry Review
AL MAGINNES: GREATEST HITS
by Al Maginnes
Pudding House, 2010
ISBN: 1589989317
I admire Al Maginnes, his optimism, his zest for life and passion for all things human, his empathy, his lyricism, his long but still seamless and uncluttered lines, his fluid syntax, his spot-on metaphors and conceits, his ability to tell a good story and reveal the significance of it with a subtlety that lets the reader experience the poem’s cathartic and epiphanous moment as if it were their own, and now his ability to be his own best editor. In his new book of poems, Al Maginnes: Greatest Hits, Maginnes selects from 23 years worth of poetry only 12 to be included as “greatest hits.” I’ve written half as long as Maginnes and don’t think I could do that. Somehow I’m sure all the poems I didn’t select would turn against me. The amazing thing about Maginnes’ selections, however, is that he got it right. I’ve read most of Maginnes’ work over the years, and if I had to choose just 12 to keep, it would be these.
Another of the more admirable qualities of Maginnes’ poems is their ability to capture the full sense of some vital human abstraction -- to be the kind of poem that leaves a reader nodding his head, if not saying, “Ah, yes,” in recognition and appreciation. It seems almost silly to single out poems from a collection of only 12, but singling out poems as illustration of one’s points is what a reviewer does. So, four poems in particular from this collection stand out for their embodiment of longing, regret, and perspective.
The first of these is “Sharks in Kansas,” a remarkable poem of romantic longing that imaginatively revisits the road not taken. The speaker of the poem tells us:
. . . For two years, she
and I tracked each other’s moves,
both of us in love with other people
and happy most days, but curious
about the quick flame of sun
on water we had seen in each other.
and later
When she said “Florida. Paleontology,”
I did not move to wrap her in the thoughtless hug
I might have offered someone else, but said
“Arkansas” and “poetry.” When she asked, “So, when
will I see you again?” we both knew the answer.
And all of this buried longing is sparked through a wonderful associative logic brought about by a news story concerning the discovery of fossilized shark remains in Kansas, which the speaker describes in a delightful conceit for that longing:
There are sharks, sharks in Kansas, still
swimming in water that has turned to stone,
bent in the memory of tides
to the exact angle I once saw her arm bend
across her lover’s shoulder . . . .
Another poem rich in associative logic is “Elegy with Clifford Brown Playing Trumpet.” This beautiful revelation of perspective about the importance of the “white space” or “negative space,” the absences, loss, and ultimately, mortality that give meaning to all human endeavor begins with a mystery the speaker is reading and ends in greater appreciation of the contributions of both musician Clifford Brown and poet Larry Levis and in a deepened understanding of the limitation as motivation. My favorite moment in the poem is the breathless unfolding of something as unimaginable to us all as death. The speaker tells us that somewhere in the laments of Larry Levis
lurked the hand that will come one day to touch us,
perhaps right when we are in the middle of things,
& lead us into a puzzle of streets
that we only understand slowly we will not
find our way out of, although that matters
less & less as the blacktop buckles and thins
to cobblestones, then to dirt, as we walk out of our shoes
until we are walking on nothing and then
we are not walking at all & the way back
to all we have left undone is forgotten.
The third truly remarkable poem is one of Maginnes’ best narrative reflections, and it also about perspective. In fact, “To the One Who Stole My Lawnmower” might be called a parable of perspective. The speaker of the poem reveals that not only has his lawnmower been stolen but that he knows the person who has stolen it and is aware of that person’s situation as well. The reader follows the speaker through all the usual stages: anger, guilt, blame-shifting, acceptance, and understanding to conclude:
. . . the truth is
the loss of my lawnmower has become a story
and, like most stories, gets told for laughs.
But I can laugh even when, like today,
I sweat like a rented mule, forcing
the motorless contraption I use to cut grass now
through high weeds, because my life is not yours.
The final poem that stands out for me differs from most of Maginnes’ work in that the lines are shorter and essentially syllabic, as opposed to his usual predominately tetrameter or pentameter lines, but “Legend” retains Maginnes’ characteristic syntactical mastery and his knack for embodying a common and vital human emotion--specifically, in this case, regret. The poem is about a lost opportunity to see and hear the folk singer Carolyn Hester in person, and the speaker concludes
Even if all she had done
was chant the famous names
of her dead husband or her
new god, even if she denied
completely or insisted
upon being defined by
her past, even if time has
done to her what it has done
to all of us, I should have gone.
In typical Al Maginnes fashion, the poems collected in his Greatest Hits achieve what is poetry’s most important task, the deepening of our experience of the world as human beings. This thin volume is a wonderful introduction to Maginnes’ lifework for those who have only now discovered it. It is also a perfectly representative selection of all that makes Maginnes’ work important for those who have been fans for years. Ultimately, it should be a standard part of any poetry lover’s bookshelf.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Review of Connie Post's "Trip Wires"
REVIEW
by Scott Owens
First Published in Wild Goose Poetry Review
TRIP WIRES
by Connie Post
Finishing Line Press, 2010
ISBN: 1599246252
Good poems often remind us of what we already know and help us look at the essential points of our lives more deeply. Because they often look at things with brutal honesty, good poems also have the ability to scare us. Such is the case with Connie Post’s new book, Trip Wires, in which the best poems are also the most terrifying in their focus on loss and absence. The poem “It Won’t Be Long,” for example, makes clear why no matter how well prepared we think we are for loss, it is never as we expect. Made aware of the pending reality of a loved one’s loss to cancer, the speaker prepares herself:
I find myself on this transient road
. . . . . . . . . .
thinking I might know
what it will be like
when you are gone
. . . . . . . . . .
but when the phone rings
and all the purple vases crash to the floor
I realize I should have known
. . . . . . . . . .
the resounding difference between
the end of dusk
and total darkness
The understated devastation expressed in the concluding contrast of expectation and reality is one of the more harrowing moments I’ve read in poetry in quite some time, and it makes clear that preparation and imagination can never negate the absence that results from loss.
Another sort of devastation is addressed when the speaker of “Undoing a Poem” imagines going backwards to the nothing that existed in the place a poem now exists before the poem was, or perhaps all poems were, written.
Start from the end and peel back meaning
word by word, line by line
undress each stanza
. . . . . . . . . .
until you are alone in a room
. . . . . . . . . .
fall to your knees
grope the fallible floor . . .
until you fall back onto one rusty nail
then bleed backwards into the placenta
to the place where you found yourself
absent of all language
again
Again, it is absence, in this case the imagined absence of language, that sends a shiver up the readers’ spine.
Perhaps what is most revelatory and frightening about these poems is that they suggest we live amidst loss and absence all the time, not just when someone dies, or when words fail, but every day. The very lifestyles we have chosen to subject ourselves to are fraught with felt but unrecognized, and unaddressed absence. The poem, “One Monthly Donation,” for example, speaks of “the endemic solitude / built by a steady and proportioned life” and suggests “you plow steadily into the tyranny of your days // your needs surround you like a well built fence // enclose the backyards of self made urgencies.”
Poet and critic, Edwin Honig, has commented that, “In a large, mobile industrial society people tend to become indifferent about their ability to think or feel for themselves.” Isolated by the busyness of our daily lives, we need poems like those found in Trip Wires to remind us to be humble, to recognize that we don’t have it all under control, that, in fact, control is largely beside the point and that we are surrounded by the trip wires of loneliness and desolation. We need poems like these to shake us out of our comfort and complacency, to scare us into remembering the primacy of connection with self and others.
by Scott Owens
First Published in Wild Goose Poetry Review
TRIP WIRES
by Connie Post
Finishing Line Press, 2010
ISBN: 1599246252
Good poems often remind us of what we already know and help us look at the essential points of our lives more deeply. Because they often look at things with brutal honesty, good poems also have the ability to scare us. Such is the case with Connie Post’s new book, Trip Wires, in which the best poems are also the most terrifying in their focus on loss and absence. The poem “It Won’t Be Long,” for example, makes clear why no matter how well prepared we think we are for loss, it is never as we expect. Made aware of the pending reality of a loved one’s loss to cancer, the speaker prepares herself:
I find myself on this transient road
. . . . . . . . . .
thinking I might know
what it will be like
when you are gone
. . . . . . . . . .
but when the phone rings
and all the purple vases crash to the floor
I realize I should have known
. . . . . . . . . .
the resounding difference between
the end of dusk
and total darkness
The understated devastation expressed in the concluding contrast of expectation and reality is one of the more harrowing moments I’ve read in poetry in quite some time, and it makes clear that preparation and imagination can never negate the absence that results from loss.
Another sort of devastation is addressed when the speaker of “Undoing a Poem” imagines going backwards to the nothing that existed in the place a poem now exists before the poem was, or perhaps all poems were, written.
Start from the end and peel back meaning
word by word, line by line
undress each stanza
. . . . . . . . . .
until you are alone in a room
. . . . . . . . . .
fall to your knees
grope the fallible floor . . .
until you fall back onto one rusty nail
then bleed backwards into the placenta
to the place where you found yourself
absent of all language
again
Again, it is absence, in this case the imagined absence of language, that sends a shiver up the readers’ spine.
Perhaps what is most revelatory and frightening about these poems is that they suggest we live amidst loss and absence all the time, not just when someone dies, or when words fail, but every day. The very lifestyles we have chosen to subject ourselves to are fraught with felt but unrecognized, and unaddressed absence. The poem, “One Monthly Donation,” for example, speaks of “the endemic solitude / built by a steady and proportioned life” and suggests “you plow steadily into the tyranny of your days // your needs surround you like a well built fence // enclose the backyards of self made urgencies.”
Poet and critic, Edwin Honig, has commented that, “In a large, mobile industrial society people tend to become indifferent about their ability to think or feel for themselves.” Isolated by the busyness of our daily lives, we need poems like those found in Trip Wires to remind us to be humble, to recognize that we don’t have it all under control, that, in fact, control is largely beside the point and that we are surrounded by the trip wires of loneliness and desolation. We need poems like these to shake us out of our comfort and complacency, to scare us into remembering the primacy of connection with self and others.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
New Series in Morganton to Feature Local Writers
NEW SERIES IN MORGANTON TO FEATURE LOCAL WRITERS
The Burke County Public Library is beginning a new reading series to be called “Wednesday Night Readings.” The readings will be held at the main branch library in downtown Morganton, and at least initially will feature primarily area writers.
The series will kick off March 9, at 6:30, with Hickory poet, Scott Owens. Owens, who teaches at Catawba Valley Community College, is the author of 6 collections of poetry, editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review, Vice President of the Poetry Council of NC, and founder of Poetry Hickory. His work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the NC Poetry Society, the NC Writers’ Network, the Poetry Society of SC, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Owens’ latest collection of poems, The Nature of Attraction, is a narrative sequence focusing on the relationship of two characters, Norman and Sara. The collection was written collaboratively with Florida poet, Pris Campbell, and published in 2010 by Main Street Rag.
Joining Owens will be Lincolnton poet, Morgan DePue. Together, they will present a dramatic reading from The Nature of Attraction. They will each read a small selection of their own work as well.
Other readings in the series this spring will feature T.A. Epley, author of Ghosts of the Soon Departed, on March 30; Vale’s Ann Chandonnet, author of Write Quick: War and a Woman’s Life in Letters, 1835-1887 and The Pioneer Village Cookbook, on April 6; Morganton poet, Ted Pope and Hickory poet, Tim Peeler, co-authors of Waiting for Charlie Brown, on April 20; Caldwell Community College instructor, Nancy Posey, author of Let the Lady Speak, on May 4; Hickory poet, Kermit Turner, author of Sandy Ridge: Portrait of a Depression Family, on May 18; biographer T.J. Shimeld, author of The Four Foot Giant and the Vanishing Wheelchair, on June 1; and Winston-Salem poet, Helen Losse, author of Seriously Dangerous and editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, on June 22.
All readings in the series are free and open to the public. For more information on the series, contact coordinator, Mindy Evans, at 828-437-5638
The Burke County Public Library is beginning a new reading series to be called “Wednesday Night Readings.” The readings will be held at the main branch library in downtown Morganton, and at least initially will feature primarily area writers.
The series will kick off March 9, at 6:30, with Hickory poet, Scott Owens. Owens, who teaches at Catawba Valley Community College, is the author of 6 collections of poetry, editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review, Vice President of the Poetry Council of NC, and founder of Poetry Hickory. His work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the NC Poetry Society, the NC Writers’ Network, the Poetry Society of SC, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Owens’ latest collection of poems, The Nature of Attraction, is a narrative sequence focusing on the relationship of two characters, Norman and Sara. The collection was written collaboratively with Florida poet, Pris Campbell, and published in 2010 by Main Street Rag.
Joining Owens will be Lincolnton poet, Morgan DePue. Together, they will present a dramatic reading from The Nature of Attraction. They will each read a small selection of their own work as well.
Other readings in the series this spring will feature T.A. Epley, author of Ghosts of the Soon Departed, on March 30; Vale’s Ann Chandonnet, author of Write Quick: War and a Woman’s Life in Letters, 1835-1887 and The Pioneer Village Cookbook, on April 6; Morganton poet, Ted Pope and Hickory poet, Tim Peeler, co-authors of Waiting for Charlie Brown, on April 20; Caldwell Community College instructor, Nancy Posey, author of Let the Lady Speak, on May 4; Hickory poet, Kermit Turner, author of Sandy Ridge: Portrait of a Depression Family, on May 18; biographer T.J. Shimeld, author of The Four Foot Giant and the Vanishing Wheelchair, on June 1; and Winston-Salem poet, Helen Losse, author of Seriously Dangerous and editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, on June 22.
All readings in the series are free and open to the public. For more information on the series, contact coordinator, Mindy Evans, at 828-437-5638
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