Working together each week the women built up their repertoire and began to hone their skills. The result is this anthology, which takes the best of their work, and presents, not only poetry, but a story about the writing process, a record of development, and a rather instructive and illustrative catalogue of poetic styles from Abecedarian to Cento, riddle poems to Tanka to Ekphrastic pieces.
Tag: poetry
A review of Dreaming My Animal Selves by Helene Cardona
There is the belief that dreams are ideas within the unconscious mind that push their way into the conscious mind. This Freudian classification of dreams is insufficient because it creates a “tight box” around what we think dreams are. Thankfully, there are writers like Helene Cardona that move beyond this box in their work. Similarly, Cardona’s poems challenge the narrative, often found in Western cultures, that sees human beings as dominant over and against all other animals. Left unchecked, this narrative creates separation between human beings and animals that, at the core, justifies and allows for the extinction of the latter.
A review of Hotel Hyperion by Lisa Gorton
Though each of the poems stands alone and indeed many of the poems in the collection were published individually, there is an underlying story that links the work together. This is a story of memory, loss, history and hubris. It’s a story about a new future and about the relics of the past that travel with us and are left behind as we transform – individually, and as a species. The poems are self-referential, memetic – with cultural ideas and motifs travelling from one poem to another, and metapoetic in a way that is somehow both humorous (at times) and profound.
A review of Bread of the Lost by Philomena van Rijswijk
In nearly all of the poems, the subject and object perform a dance where roles are reversed, aligned, torn, and reconfigured, always with a kind of skewed nourishment, as in “Strangled Collision” where the bread is the love object, imbibed and absorbed like wine and grains of rice, crushed down in a Strangler Fig embrace.
A review of Sublime Planet by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Sublime Planet includes a section called Sacred Lessons, Poems by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and one called Tipping Point with poems by Magdalena Ball. Two very different poets, very different styles of writing, have produced a collection united by their passion for environment, for the world that touches their skin and imbues them with its presence with every breath they take. This collection is their tribute to their world, both physical and mental; our world.
A review of Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden
Though the description of the Nebula alone is worth the price of the book, this building up of smaller things into something larger, powerful, transformative, is exactly what Liquid Nitrogen does, taking the many cultural, political and literary characters and references, in order to create something large, complex, woven on a “spinning jenny.”
A review of Designs on the Body by Lyn Reeves
The senses are not only invoked, but mingled in such a way that the metaphors combine and grow, illuminating each moment presented in a full body experience. By the end of this book the reader feels drained, enlivened, wiser somehow, as if a full live had been lived between its pages.
A review of Poetry Kanto 2010
It seems that traditional Japanese poetic genres such as haiku, tanka, haiga and haibun bear much in common with present-day global modes. Brevity and imagist impressions of nature are universal and don’t date. When I first looked at this book I thought “Why put all these modern western poets in a Japanese collection?” But on reflection I think that good poetry is universal.
A review of a wind has blown the rain away by Ellen Mandel and Todd Almond
Though I imagine it would be easy for Mandel to grandstand or write flashy piano, in every piece, the music is delicate and subservient to the words – it’s all about Cummings and enhancing, and drawing out the meaning of each piece such that they become fresh and new. Lovers of Cummings’ poetry won’t be disappointed with this CD, which is deeply engaged with the original poetry.
A review of On the Road to Infinity by Mark Logie
The thirteen poems in this chapbook cover a range of themes, working between personal turmoil and political issues. The book works between a number of dichotomies: sickness and health, sanity and insanity, youth and age, city and wilderness.