This poet’s cut-up poems, generated mostly during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, when he felt “cut-off [like a] … modern day monk languishing in the solitude of my cell…” find their roots in Dada poet Tristan Tzara’s méthode découpé, and shares scissors with William S. Burroughs’ cut-up method by which the gunman-junkie-novelist made new poems from old material. Wortsman’s approach differs though from his forbears.
Tag: poetry
A review of Laughing Matters: Poems with a Wink and a Smile by James A. Tweedie
James Tweedie is not only a first-rate poet, but is also a musician and composer, which is very refreshing to me, as I am also both a poet and a musician. You can hear the musicality exuding from his poetry. The meter is clean and precise, the rhymes are perfect, rarely slanted, so you get the full effect of the satisfactions inherent in perfectly-executed formal poetry. But it never upstages the humor and wit of Tweedie’s funny perspective, and the results are often quite unexpected!
A review of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris
Over and over, Farris lightly dances between the doors of this world and beyond, between the possibility of dying, between the possibility of continuing to live, almost daring death, daring the doctor. She continues to give the reader a very candid view of how she copes with cancer, treatment, other people’s views of her, her own sense of loss, America, and her will to live.
A review of a brief letter to the sea about a couple of things by Ali Whitelock
Ali Whitelock’s voice is so distinctive. I don’t just mean her beautiful Scottish brogue, though if you’ve ever heard her read, the richness of that accent will remain with you when you read her work on the page. Whitelock’s voice is woven throughout the work. It’s an immediacy and an openness that makes you feel, when reading her poetry, that you have been friends your whole life and she is not only confiding in you but drawing out of you your own dark secrets so you can laugh at them together.
A review of Chinese Fish by Grace Yee
The book contains lists, poems in two different styles, one style is always in italic and written in a way like if the person writing the piece doesn’t have full command of the English language, the others are normal poems, some of the poems as well as the narrated pieces include some words in Chinese characters. Furthermore, the reader will encounter short dialogues, archival fragments, old policies, lists, eight pages (eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture) containing the pictures of a Chinese doll and some political comments.
Sun-Showered Burial: A Review of Memorial With Liminal Space by Mitchell Untchs
A Memorial With Liminal Space speaks eloquently and intimately-one of those hallowed late-night conversations with someone you’ve known for a very long time. Reading this book helped me feel more connected to myself, the larger world, and loved ones that have passed, and that is a beautiful feeling I am deeply grateful for.
A review of Tuesday’s Child Is Full by PS Cottier
Cottier hides treasures in every poems. Some of the treasures are not easily accessible because the poet very cleverly has hidden them in abstract pictures painted with words. Consequently, some of the poems may need more than one reading to get to their meaning. Others, like a Rorschach test, open a door in your mind and allows you to search for your own meaning which can be an excellent stimulant for the imagination.
A review of The Book of Falling by David McCooey
There is no question that McCooey is a creative and sophisticated poet. In this collection he turns questions and lists into poems. He also has included various narrations and short poems which are precise and concise with manicured lines. One of the poems, “Your Life as a Movie”, cleverly shows the many ways we find meaning in life against its illogicality and incongruity.
A review of The Animals of My Earth School by Mildred Kiconco Barya
Mildred Barya’s The Animals of My Earth School does that: it gets under the skin and into the psyche in a labyrinthine hall of mirrors, the reader like the writer seeing our human selves as animals and the animals as human reflections.
A review of Jack Skelley’s Interstellar Theme Park: New and Selected Writing
How Skelley is able to write lines that simultaneously describe, illuminate, juxtapose, and contradict is anyone’s guess. There is an intimacy, a voyeuristic quality to this work overall, as we turn each page, as if we’ve happened upon these poems, found them stashed away in a jean jacket pocket or borrowed them from a friend, like that treasured indie rock vinyl record. The lines are meant to be savored and shared. This is a collection that slows down time, forces the reader to stop and linger awhile.