Writing Blind's poetry reviews

Rebecca of Writing Blind has started posting wonderful poetry reviews. This week's review was of Sandra Cisneros's Loose Woman.

Rebecca hopes to make this a weekly adventure in reviewing, which is fantastic. I'll be trying to link to each of her reviews as she posts them.

June 30

Retirement by Jason Fraley

Julie: Another of those poems where I would have guessed a woman wrote it but a man (or at least someone with a "male" name) did. That always makes me question my own biases, but that's the subject for another day. I found this poem competent and pleasant, and I had the feeling that this person has written much better poems than this.

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There will be a changing of the cabinet by Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo

Julie: I seem to have to be in a certain mood to appreciate Pattillo's poetry. Earlier in the week, I think I would have liked this more, or perhaps I simply like her only in very small doses, which is true for many things, especially feta cheese, which I adore.

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Take Comfort Where You Can by Michael Chitwood

Julie: I like the idea of not speaking goose, though I disagree with the notion that a goose doesn't have body language. I have been chased by geese, and I knew precisely what murder lurked in their black black hearts.

June 29

Three Poems by Tryfon Tolides

Julie: The first poem is fine, the second appealing but not terribly exciting, and the third, "I Will Sleep," just pleased the pants off me. Figuratively. Just a lovely read.

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There is no need for truth now that we have autopsy by Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo

Julie: This misses the mark for me. I feel very unconnected from it, passive.

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Neighborhood Light by Theodore Worozbyt

Julie: As this poem progresses, from the big to the little, it gains in intensity, in density. Makes sense, given the topic. So my read started a bit languorous and then started rolling like a tumblin' tumbleweed. I think, in the end, that it's not an entirely successful poem. It doesn't really force me to keep reading. I forced me to keep reading. It did reward the read, but could have been a bit tidier about it.

June 28

Later, People Took On Qualities That Planets Usually Have by Rebecca Wadlinger

Julie: The other day, I kinda dismissed a poem because of its title. But I confessed to it! This time, I was inclined to like a poem for its title, and that inclination has held up. I like essentially everything about this poem, with two tiny question marks. Why ampersands? Why those short little lines at the ends of strophes? I'm not criticizing, mind you, they were just choices that I didn't understand in the context of this poem.

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They are taking their celebrity into their own hands by Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo

Julie: I like this though I would be hard-pressed to explain why. And when I read it over, I think that I like only the last sentence, that I'm treading water until then, waiting for something special to happen. The last sentence is the poem. It could be clipped that far.

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Olives by AE Stallings

Julie: Nice. Everything about this shows control, and a sense of how rhyme can support a poem rather than hiding it (or even worse, creating it). The tendency amongst so many bad formalists to build nothing into a poem and defend it with its own rhymes is ghastly. Stallings doesn't fall prey.

June 27

People did not ask you to sign a release form by Deborah Wardlaw Pattillo

Julie: I'm sorry, but is it possible to have a better line of poetry than:

These panties are not your panties; all panties belong to the silent majority

I didn't think so. Though I'll admit I kinda read "moral" instead of "silent" and then had a picture of Jerry Falwell with a hot red thong on and then I kinda had to lie down.

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Scout by Jamie Ross

Julie: Inexplicable thing, poetry. There are times when I like it best when I understand it least. That odd tilt to the known world that also makes me enjoy fantasy fiction makes this poem a real pleasure. Good language, both descriptive and open. It's the right poem to follow Pattillo's, above. Start out giddy, move into strange. What will the next poem bring?

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Autopsy by Virginia M. Heatter

Julie: Though I like how this sits on the page, and I love repetition (as those who come here often would know because I am banging that drum not-so-slowly. Sorry), I wasn't truly sold on this poem until the end

is the dead space, the rift
behind the gums, that hollow.

That's lovely, and a good way to close out a very weird day.

June 25

The Mortgaging of Self is Done by Aimée Sands

Julie: Only one today since Poetry Daily's is a repeat. I'll be honest. As soon as I saw the title I was turned against this poem. I don't think I can explain why, really, just a bad first impression that the poem couldn't lift. I did like these lines

The miner that comes with a light, knees,
questions, gunpowder

but nothing else clicked. And the end just made me disappointed and strangely tired. Because I don't have another fresh poem, it's hard for me to judge my own read. Perhaps someone with a better feel will comment.

June 23

The New New Instinctivism by Dean Gorman

Julie: This one misses the mark for me entirely today. Me? The poem? Hard to say. I reread yesterday's and still like it. Today's isn't terrible or anything, just a little flat.

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Proof by David Hernandez

Julie: Meh. Maybe it is just me. The sparkles feel contrived, as did the reflected stories.

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All Things End in Fragrance and Starlings by James Hoch

Julie: Well, it might still just be me, but I loved these poems, the first somewhat more than the second, but both. I wonder if I would have preferred the second not bang up against the first. I do like reading how poets approach a topic, or even a word, in multiple ways, so I'm guessing no.

June 22

Trouble by Melissa Stein

Julie: This poem takes a while to get going. It starts prettily enough, but doesn't come into its own until better than halfway through. I seem to have a thing for incantations, repetition. It's all that Catholic upbringing bubbling up, I expect.

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The evolving landscape by Bob Hicok

Julie: It's interesting how these things fall in patterns. This poem goes with, and goes against, the Stein poem. Not pretty. Tough and vigorous, with the sort of observation that is both obsessive and important, no matter how gruesome. I've become quite a fan of Bob Hicok.

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Everything Everything by Dean Gorman

Julie: And another. This is immediate, taking risks and paying off admirably. Unlike yesterday's poem, the lineation feels anything but arbitrary here, the meaning gets pushed through deftly. And how creepy is it that I like poems about dead things? I apologize.

June 21

How I Learned to Float Away From Windows by Dean Gorman

Julie: Like a bad penny, I return. But I don't look like Lincoln unless I've having a really bad day. There's a lot to like in this poem, especially

                     our eyes
holding onto smoke rings

but I think the lineation and lack of punctuation is making it a little harder than it has to be. The diction isn't so strong that the ambiguities set up neat little possibilities. Instead, it feels a little irksome to me.

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Turtle and Two Girls by Eamon Grennan

Julie: There's a good poem in there, but it feels very cluttered, like lots of phrases need trimmed down, punched up. The back and forth between fragment and complete sentences felt awkward, like the trimming started and stopped. I didn't dislike the poem, but it felt lethargic, too explanatory.

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Semaphore by Sarah Murphy

Julie: This poem will steamroll you if you're not careful. It's playful, thick, and loaded with sonics that scream to be read aloud. In the end, I enjoyed its play but was left a little cold.

June 16

How Small Pains by Molly Bendall

Julie: This poem never gels for me. I spent much of last week in various places railing against the idea that poetry has to be 100% comprehensible to just anyone, but the major action in the poem is escaping me while the imagery and diction isn't elevating it to a place where I don't mind if I'm baffled. I'm not captured. Perhaps that's simply the best way to put it. I'm not sucked in.

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A house at a crossroad, beside a grove, composes another house to take as a husband by Nina Lindsay

Julie: And again I've managed to review the wrong poem the wrong day. Perhaps my mood yesterday would have made this poem fly, but today it just didn't do much for me. The central metaphor seems awkward, without resonance for me. And that title is nearly as long as the poem itself (but I like it)! Hmm.

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Anatomy of a Comet by Gary L. McDowell

Julie: Well, there was zero chance, essentially, that I was going to like this poem as much as yesterdays. I simply don't like poems that much all the time. But this was a good read. I feel that I can understand where McDowell is coming from; there's a sense of recognition that I feel while reading his work that I don't often get.

June 15

Bones Hurt When They Have Flesh on Them by Gary L. McDowell

Julie: Holy mackerel. Okay, anyone who knows me would know that this poem is simply going to be one of those poems that I adore with all of my shriveled little heart. I could give some people 100 poems and say, "Pick which one you think I'd like the best" and I can guarantee you those people would pick this poem. That means I'm predictable, but sometimes I'm predictable in a really good way. And sometimes, dammit, I get to fall in love with a poem. Bones, birds, God, death, you can't beat that with a stick.

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Fall by Bob Hicok

Julie: I still can't tell if it's me or the poems. Somedays, I like all of them. Other days, none. This poem just delights me, and that final line is perfect. I love the repetition in this, the off-balance imagery. I didn't even notice the quotation marks at first, which usually toss me out of a poem. (I just tried writing a poem with dialogue. It was... not good.) But this is. Good. Excellent example of poetry being as much in the how as the what.

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My Name Is Donald by Donald Revell

Julie: After two poems that felt almost designed for me, I'll end with one that is aiming at a different audience altogether. I like individual lines, but the whole never came together for me, though it tries, and the end is strong.

That is the end of my hayride with oblivion.

I dunno.

June 12, 2006

Yellow Jackets by Gary L. McDowell

Julie: Hot diggity but I like that. (Tiny oddness in using "paper" instead of "papier" plus "mâché," but perhaps that's a typo, or hell a stylistic choice.) Like all good prose poetry, this one uses the form to advantage, sending out a cascade of words that rush by, as thick as bees. Oh, I guess that's a quibble. Yellow jackets are a variety of wasp so they wouldn't have honey in their hives. But I could be missing that point.

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June 9, 2006

After the sex by Salwa C. Jabado

Julie: An enjoyably surreal series of descriptions makes this poem interesting. Though it takes the poet saying

Happily disbelieving
transformations,

for me to get that the images are positive ones. I've got no quarrel with that.

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http://poems.com/elainjoh.htm by Amaud Jamaul Johnson

Julie: I can't claim to be getting all of this. The first section in particular left me befuddled. I knew that it was bad, but precisely who was doing what to whom confused me. The rest of the poem is much less opaque (or I was less stupid by then), and I really loved the varied voices Johnson uses, from the lyricism of 2, to the intense sonic density of 3, to the matter-of-factness of 4. 3 is almost too much, too densely alliterated and thick as hell on the tongue, but that density caused me to slow, to ponder.

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Bird Call, Wave by Laurie Lamon

Julie: Well now, that's pretty, though again I'm not completely confident I'm getting the whole plot, since I came away from it thinking something quite bad had just happened, then a reread told me I was wrong, and a rereread went back to the original.

Better to hear the waves.

The husband moved to the window-side better to hear the waves? Or the wife thinks it would have been better to hear the waves than to have turned toward the window? Both? The ambiguity is a pleasing one.

June 5, 2006

Mi barrio by Salwa C. Jabado

Julie: I'm not 100% certain how to read this poem or, rather, I'm not 100% certain I'm catching all of the nuances of the Greek chorus this one is lobbing at me. But I very much enjoyed the read, the little telling details, and that close. Two years ago, I don't think I would have liked this poem. The older I get, the broader my tastes become. I like things. I think it's supposed to work the other way around. I'm supposed to become refined. I'm supposed to be a snob. Perhaps I'll become a snob at 40. No, that's too soon. 45. Of course, it's easy to get broader tastes when you were a prig in a previous life. Someone should have smothered me.

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9/9, Thinking of My Brothers East of the Mountains by Wang Wei, trans. David Hinton

Julie: So I'm getting all psychologically comfy, thinking this one was going to be one of those gentle set pieces that seem to wax and wane in popularity but are waxing. In any case, it's like a lullaby with a mean streak. Lull lull lull slap. Very enjoyable. Huh. What does that analogy say about me?

June 3, 2006

Granite from Sugar Water by Richard Lyons

Julie: For the first strophe and a half, I was twiddling my mental thumbs, which is a bad habit because the whole purpose of the WEE reviews is to give attention and the benefit of the doubt to all comers. But twiddle I did. From the mention of "sax" to the "small brown birds" I twiddled. And then I perked up. The twiddling stopped. Did the poem change? Did I? I can't tell you. But from there on I was reading too fast, sped along by the rhythms and the drive and when I went back to read again, savoring, I still didn't like the first strophe and a half, but now it might just be plain old contrariness.

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The Customary Mysteries by Aleda Shirley

Julie: I think there's a great poem here, but I don't think Aleda Shirley has quite found it yet. There's a story, I don't know how true, that Michaelangelo said that he didn't carve a shape into marble, he released the form that was already there. This poem strikes me as a block of marble, with some of the shape showing, but with a little bit hidden. The ampersands did start to pester me after a while. Damn, that's a lot of ampersands.

June 2, 2006

[When You Asked, I Thought At First] by Boyer Rickel

Julie: For the first ten lines of this, I was delighted. And then the delight turned into a rather grudging acceptance. It transforms from image and detail into abstraction and blah. Someday I might read a poem that can afford

                         A fact
explicit and exegetical

but this isn't it.

WEE reviews June 1, 2006

The Power Plant by Julianne Buchsbaum

Damn, I'm a slacker. This poem strikes me as intentionally difficult, but I like it despite that. I like it because of that. A scattering of great lines, mixed with a scattering of lines that are almost Charlie Brown teacher-ish in their lack of concrete meaning for me. It helps when you're in the right mood, and I'm in the right mood.

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Feast of the Ascension, 2004. Planting Hibiscus by Jay Hopler

Julie: If you thought I looked confused before, you should see me now! I thought when this poem began that it was going to be one of those very dense sonically aware poems. This line

Look at the garden: dew-swooned and with fat blooms swollen

pointed me in that direction. A little over the top, but hey, I like an enthusiastically extravagant poem. But then we seem to be in a morass of corporate speak and while that might be the point, it was also a disappointment. If I never hear someone say "X is the new Y" again in my life, I'll be thankful. On my deathbed, I'll say, "I thought that shrimp tasted funny," and then I'll say, "Thank you for not saying 'Shrimp is the new hemlock.' That's why you're still in my will."

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Fall Aubade, with Window and Buzz by Molly Tenenbaum

Julie: Someone on a workshop said, I think recently, that everyone has written an Aubade. That person is a liar, as I have never written an Aubade and have never actually wanted to use that title for anything. You know what this means? Tomorrow I'll suddenly be struck by the urge to write an Aubade. And it will suck. But this Aubade is rather clever, though it's jumpy, like a string of jokes by a stand-up instead of a coherent routine. (Yesterday's Tenebaum was also an Aubade, and I should have reviewed it but instead I actually did work. I gotta stop doing that.) Tenenbaum is striking a mood in my brain even if I don't walk away thinking deep thoughts. I get a sense of eating poetry candy while I'm reading her, as if I'm going to eventually need some broccoli or something to stay fit.