WEE reviews May 12, 2006

If My Love For You Were an Animal by Jennifer L Knox

Julie: And we end the week with a bang, not a whimper. This is Knox's most accessible and most powerful poem for the week. Not demonstrating the same vivid wordplay or cleverness of the week's earlier poems, but building, building, building to a great close that elevates the entire poem to something more than a little special.

Being able to read a sequence of poems from a single poet is a gift, and I want to drop a specific thanks to the folks at No Tell Motel for choosing to publish in this way. Poems are social creatures, and do their best when surrounded by other poems to gain context.

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Ontology of the Miniature Room by Rebecca Dunham

Julie: Rebecca Dunham uses one of my favorite words to end her poem, thereby guaranteeing that I'll regard it favorably. I can also be bribed with ice cream and shiny new books. This is a pleasant, pretty poem rather than a punchy, powerful poem, but I am pleased as punch, or perhaps merely punchy as punch, about it.

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Tu Fu Watches the Spring Festival Across Serpentine Lake by Frank Bidart

Julie: Some poems for some readers will always be less than the sum of their parts. This poem has some beautiful lines, but they are beautiful to me in the same way that a woman can be beautiful. I can see it, but I don't really care. There are beauties that hold no attraction, and Bidart's poem seems to be one of them.