I will confess that I have a mild aversion to poetry. I am wary that any poetry event could turn into a Vogon Poetry reading*. I was reminded that April is National Poetry Month, so I went looking for Cannonballer’s reviews about poetry. When I read Siege’s review of A Book of Luminous Things by Czesław Miłosz, I was intrigued by what poem could have motivated her to read a whole anthology of poetry. Maybe she will tell us, or maybe she doesn’t want to […]
Pretty Poems from a Local Artist
Nature's Secrecy: Collected Poems by Amiyo Basu
Several years ago I reviewed David Byrne’s How Music Works. One of the most interesting things in Byrne’s book is how differently we experience music today than we did prior to the phonograph. Until that time, music was localized and live by necessity. Every version of a song you heard was likely an interpretation, a cover; there was no “definitive” album version of a song. Additionally, musical styles were also more local because it wasn’t feasible to keep up with artists or a favorite genre outside […]
“Everything that disappears / Disappears as if returning somewhere.”
Life on Mars: Poems by Tracy K. Smith
April is National Poetry Month! If you want to celebrate and aren’t sure where to start, consider Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. Here are three reasons why: This book won a Pulitzer Prize. The cover art is an awesome photo of space. My friend Deandra recommends this book. The themes of Life on Mars are wide-ranging. Existence, love, death, the future, our ephemeral nature – it’s all here, with a cosmos-minded sci-fi flavor. You’ll find a lot of references to the stars, as well as […]
Lin-Manuel Miranda and I recommend this collection
I struggle with poetry. Reading it never has the same effect as listening to it, even when I read it aloud to myself. But, since April is National Poetry Month I thought I’d give it another shot. In an example of past me having current me’s back, one of the books I picked out for last year’s Read Harder challenge that I never got to was No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay and it is a book of poems. I don’t know how I […]
Poems from a Renaissance Man
In honor of National Poetry Month, I have reviewed several collections of poetry throughout April. You can also read my reviews of Michael Gilmore, Billy Collins, and Jack Kerouac. John Koblas was a renaissance man. He was a doo-wop musician, an historian, an author, a consultant for the History Channel and PBS, a script-writer, and also a poet. In other words, he was an interesting man. He died in 2013, a mere two years after Letters from the Moon was published. Death is an important […]
the soul burns out the eyes
Reading Pomes All Sizes feels like watching Birdman or Whiplash. It’s drunk, jubilant, sweaty. The collection is manic, exhilarating, confusing, fun, heartbeating, a little sad. You’ll find friend poems, wine poems, God and Buddha poems, and a few poems about girls. The subject matter isn’t that different from a hundred other poets, but the delivery is something else. Kerouac’s voice and playfulness and mindfulness read unlike so much of what came before. For me, it just rings clear like a bell through shelves of mumbling, […]