Ocean by Sue Goyette

One of my absolute favourite books of 2013 was one that managed not to get a review (although I did include it in my top 10 books list) so I am back to say a few words about Ocean by Sue Goyette, a book of poetry that you absolutely must pick up! 

This book feels like a complete summary of the ocean and its impact. It’s a story, a community, one breathing tidal wave. There’s a certain humour to some of the poems, “One” plays on water-related words, mentioning a ‘tidal wave of disruption’ or ‘being out of our depths’. The playfulness of the words is mimicked by the oblivion of the house-searching individuals contained within the poem. Other poems have similar puns, such as "Thirty", where 'joy was tidal and anger came in waves'.

Sometimes the ocean is something to feared, other times it is joyous or even, in “Two”, it is a 'fashionable accessory for our vacation wardrobe' that isn’t quite as flawless as it appears. In “Eight” the ocean is something that must be fed, and that “the trick to building houses was making sure/ they didn’t taste good.” There are a few poems without oceans or water, like “Eleven” a poem about bees, but most of the rest tell a story using ocean, which is understandably that is the major focus of the collection. Trees also become beings, alive in Goyette's words. Flickering imagery. Old men beneath the ocean and 'the ocean is the original mood ring' in "Seventeen". Even as we fear the ocean, we are drawn towards it, and the same could be said of Goyette's captivating words.

Release Date: April 2013 Pages: 80  Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher  Publisher: Gaspereau Press   Buy It: Book Depository 

Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann

 Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann is a really short book--like a hundred pages of poetry including plenty of pictures--which is kinda fun to read once in awhile because it makes me feel like a super fast reader even though I'm not at all because I can finish it so fast. But I actually didn't rush through Heppermann's debut, because I really loved it. These are retold fairytales, modern and sharp, with twisted fantastical photos to go along with them. The poems themselves reminded me a bit of Anne Sexton Transformations as any well-done, realistic fairytale poem retelling is liable to. However, Poisoned Apples is definitely an original collection.

Heppermann's writing is sharp and full of metaphors. The poems may be short but her turns of phrases leave an impact, and this book is bigger than its page count. I feel like there are so few poetry books for teens and I really loved all the important issues that Poisoned Apples tackles, while not dumbing down the imagery either. These may be fairytales, but they are real. I think Hepperman's writing will also be appealing to people who don't like poetry because of how well it dissects life and emotion. Her words slice things apart and then put them back together again. Poisoned Apples was gorgeous and the photographs included (although some were missing in my advance copy) all matched perfectly and added to the impact. I will easily be reaching for anything Heppermann writes next, and encourage everyone to pick this up when it publishes in September!

Release Date: September 23rd 2014 Pages: 128  Format: Egalley
Source: Edelweiss  Publisher: Greenwillow Books  Buy It: Book Depository

October Mourning by Lesléa Newman

October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard by Lesléa Newman
 
Release Date: September 25th 2012
Pages: 128
Format: E-book/Hardcover
Source: Netgalley/Publisher
Publisher: Candlewick
Buy It: Book Depository

On the night of October 6, 1998, twenty-one-year-old college student Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die. Gay Awareness Week was beginning at the University of Wyoming, and the keynote speaker was Leslea Newman. Shaken, the author addressed the large audience that gathered and remained haunted by Matthew's murder. October Mourning, a novel in verse, is her response to the events of that tragic day.

There are some events that are so important to remember because of their complete horror, and the reminder that they serve not to let such things happen again. I think Matthew Shepard's brutal beating and murder, simply for being gay, is one of those events. In October Mourning, Newman reimagines what those final moments were like for Shepard, written from a variety of perspectives including inanimate objects like the fence he was tied to. It's both a collection of poetry and a novel-in-verse, as Newman says the book is meant to be read in order, and together it tells a definite story.

In some ways, Newman's style of telling the story reminded me of Ellen Hopkins, for her ways of playing with formatting, occasional rhyme, and even scattering words across a page when the poem called for it, like in "Stars". Despite its serious nature, October Mourning is a collection with a sense of humour, telling the events from the perspective of the road, the truck, or even the clotheslines (a poem which begins "They strung me along / I got tangled up").

The problem for me, was that the collection often seemed too concerned with being clever, like in "Once Upon a Time", where Newman begins "Once I hung out in bars / Now I hang out behind bars". Occasionally, it feels like she scarifies the raw emotion that is where October Mourning is most powerful, and swaps it out for a snappy ending like in "Raising Awareness", where she writes "It was gay awareness week / He was caught unaware".

Overall, October Mourning was great to see for a YA audience, but I did find some of the poems were a little too clever for their own good. While Shepard's murder is a horrific event that will always be engrained in my memory, I'm not sure I can say the same for Newman's book. The more emotional pieces in October Mourning, like "How to Have the Worst Day of Your Life", were good, but while the subject matter of the book was heart-breaking and important, from the perspective of a reader, I wanted more from the collection as a whole.

Book Spotlight: The Smooth Yarrow by Susan Glickman

The Smooth Yarrow by Susan Glickman is one of those cases where I read a book so beautiful, full of such profound yet delicate poetry, raw, honest and clear– that I immediately wanted to write a raving positive review. Unfortunately, I can't do so with much credibility: it just so happens that the poet, Glickman, is related to me. Still, I couldn't let The Smooth Yarrow go unmarked on my blog, so instead I offer an excerpt of Glickman's own words to convince you why you should definitely pick this book up.

"Whereas poetry offers the results of its meditation
tentatively; it is not embarrassed to show that thinking
–some of it slow, arduous, confused–has taken place.
And then poetry doesn't rush ahead shouting, "Look at me! Look at me!"
Instead, it takes your hand, your poor mangled hand, like the good surgeon it is
and massages it joint by joint, feeling for the sore places.
And because it doesn't speak without reflection
you trust it, and let it cut you open."

-From "On Finding a Copy of Pigeon in the Hospital Bookstore"

If you are interested in purchasing The Smooth Yarrow you can find it on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and the Book Depository. Also, if you're unwilling to take my opinion on this– and I don't blame you– then be sure to check out the reviews, like Quill and Quire that says "Glickman’s writing is defiant: like yarrow, it is lean and strong, not only beautiful, but possessed of myriad healing properties."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Coming to That: Poems by Dorothea Tanning

Coming to That: Poems is the second collection by Dorothea Tanning, an American artist who passed away only a few months later on January 31st, 2012 at 101 years-old. It's not only the first book by Tanning I've read, picking it up was also the first time I had heard of her. So reading Coming to That was this wonderful kind of double discovery, not only was the writing beautiful, but I also managed to stumble across an incredibly talented artist.

The very first poem in Coming to That, "Free Ride", was definitely one of my very favourites. It was short and evocative and sharp, telling a tiny story in at the same time. In fact, many of Tanning's poems tell stories, like "The Only Thing" about a wild girl gone tame: "Once in a blue / moon she would close her eyes and see // again what a million years ago / had been, for her, the right / and wild thing, the only thing."

In another one of my favourites, "No Snow", a long-awaited snowfall finally happens. Even "Interval with Kook" or "At the Seaside" which veers much more into the strange and unusual– which Tanning sometimes does, with things like halos and talking dogs– are still, at their core, stories.

Another one of my very favourite poems was "Woman Waving to Trees". One stanza reads:

"One thing I can tell you:
they are beautiful
and they know it.
They are also tired,
hundreds of years stuck in one spot—
beautiful paralytics."

It is the sort of poem that I could imagine Tanning painting, even before I knew what her paintings looked like. Afterwards, when I was done reading the collection, I looked them up and it was exactly right.

That said, Coming to That wasn't a collection that totally blew me away. Like many poetry collections, it was quite short, and within it were several poems I loved. But mostly there were good poems, with nice images, but not the kind I would go back and read again and again, not the kind to make me fall in love. Nothing was bad, but some were quite simple, and maybe more story than poem, more snapshot than painting. There are also times the poems go in quite strange directions, but it wasn't usually the kind of really wonderful wacky weird– like Buffy Cram's stories, for example– that blew me away. It was more the shoulder-shrugging-okay-weird.

Ultimately, Coming to That was a good collection filled with the occasional great poem. I would definitely be interested in picking up further work by Tanning, and although she won't be publishing anything else, it reassures me to know she had a long and productive life. In homage, I'm going to end with one of my favourite stanzas from the collection, coming from the poem "For Instance". 

"As everyone knows
dreams come true?
But you have to
dream them first."

Release Date: September 13th 2011  Pages: 72  Format: Paperback 
Source: D&M Publishers Publisher: Graywolf Press  Buy It: Book Depository

The Chameleon Couch: Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa

The Chameleon Couch: Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
 
Release Date: March 15th 2011
Pages: 128
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Buy It: Book Depository

                    

Somehow, I hadn't managed to read a single collection of poetry so far into 2012, and with nearly half the year slipped away I had the opportunity to pick up the latest book by Komunyakaa. I hadn't read any of his previous collections, but The Chameleon Couch was nominated for a National Book Award, and the author had previously been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. With credentials like that, my expectations were understandably pretty high.

As soon as I opened the book to the first poem, I was awed by the delicateness of Komunyakaa's words, his soft and sharp contrasting imagery. In that first poem, "Canticle", which remained one of my favourites of the entire collection, he writes:

"Because I mistrust my head & hands, because I know salt
    tinctures my songs, I tried hard not to touch you
even as I pulled you into my arms."

The poem itself finishes with these lines: 

"   I only want to hold you this way: a bundle of wild orchids
broken at the wet seam of memory & manna."

His words are filled with these beautiful images that bring his poems alive, vivid on the page. The collection is divided into three parts, but what they all have in common is their haunting insight into personal moments and the time when everything changes. "Ignis Fatuus" was another poem I found especially powerful, and in it Komunyakaa writes:

"A foolish fire
can also start this way: before
you slide the key into the lock
& half turn the know, you know
someone has snuck into your life."

Komunyakaa also has an amazing ability to bring alive inanimate objects, like "Ode to the Shaukuhachi" brings to life the instrument and later in the collection, "Ode to the Guitar" does the same. "A Translation of Silk", another one of my favourites, ends with the following words:

"Humans crave immortality, but oh,
yes, to think worms wove this
as a way to stay alive in our world."

This shows how even when the source of his fascination is non-human, he still manages to bring out the emotional aspects of it. The Chameleon Couch is filled with beautiful images, but they aren't just flat words, they bring the shape into existence and give it personality. In one of the final poems, "The Thorn Merchant's Godson", Komunyakaa writes:

"The gift
is the weight of a pocket watch
ticking like a fat slug of gold
pressed against his groin."

It is the kind of image I can exactly picture, bringing the moment to life with his tiny details and metaphors. That said, there wasn't exactly the kind of connecting themes I often find in poetry. There was a lot about music, and part II had many references to the Holocaust– boys with stars pinned to their sleeves and other Nazi imagery like Auschwitz– but there wasn't the kind of common thread that easily strings the poems together. Maybe that was the reason there were a few I simply didn't get, like "A Poem Written Inside A Big Round Machine".

Many of the poems in part III of the collection were more story than poem, steeped in history, but they are further proof of the way Komunyakaa brings moments to life. In "The Hedonist", much of which seems like a story in poetic form, he still manages to include his own sharp brand of imagery, writing:

"I am flesh
born to another dream of flesh. If I am clay,
  it is the same merciless clay you are made of,
with a red vein of iron running through it, the same
  naked prayer in the dark holding the song together." 

Still, even in Komunyakaa's darkest poems he brings a little bit of light to the surface. "Kindness" and "Goodness" are perfect examples of this. In "Goodness" he combines the imagery, the storytelling, and the bleak hope that seems to define his poetry, writing: 

"I’d love to believe nature
is never truly unkind, that she
only wills the tiger bee its stinger
to guard the rally of honeysuckle
climbing the rusty iron-spiked gate
where mercy pulled all the fruit
down to the lowest branches."

Overall, this is a collection filled with images and stories, and though I didn't grasp them all, there were plenty contained within it that left a lasting impression. The poet doesn't play with form, most of the poems appear the same stylistically, rather it is the images and rhythm of the poetry that makes it so unique. Ultimately, The Chameleon Couch was a wonderful introduction to Yusef Komunyakaa and was a lovely reminder to myself to pick up some more poetry before the rest of the 2012 is gone.

R.I.P. Adrienne Rich

I've only reviewed one book of hers on this little blog of mine, The Dream of A Common Language, but Adrienne Rich has been a huge inspiration to me over the past few years. I actually discovered her in the only upper-level English course I took, Modern American Poets, where I fell in love with Diving Into The Wreck. Her sharp images and strong political voice gave her writing a unique and memorable edge to it, even if you didn't always agree with what she was saying. I have read four of her books, and it reassures me to know that there are still many left waiting for me– some as near by as my book shelf– even as I saddened that there will not be any more. I find it so inspiring that she continued to work and publish even as she got older, and though 82 is not young, I can't help wishing she had just a little longer to grace the world with her words.

I feel the best homage is to simply share some of those words for those of you who have not stumbled upon her genius and passion. Here they are:

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”

-Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Sharks in the Rivers by Ada Limón

Sharks in the Rivers is a poetry collection by Ada Limón which is divided into four parts. From the very first poem, Limón's water imagery hooked me. Throughout the book there are rivers, floods, rain, but mostly rivers as the title indicates. The second poem in the collection, "Flood Coming" begins:

"The pulled-apart world scatters
its bad news like a brush fire,
the ink bleeds out the day's undoing
and here we are again: alive."

This subtle description, raw and sharp, unexpected, is what defines the poems that I loved. Limón adds just the right amount of adjectives, resulting in poetry that is both lush and rich, but never overwhelming. In "Overjoyed", she writes:

"And let me be the first to admit, when I
come across some jewel of pleasure, I too want
to squeeze that thing until even its seedy heart
evaporates like ethanol, want to throw my
bird-bones into the brush-fire until,
half-blind, all I can hear is the sound
of wings in the relentlessly delighted air."

Although the rivers portion of the title is representative, honestly this collection is far more about birds than it is sharks which only make a couple appearances. Sharks in the Rivers is filled with nature and change, growth and movement, and I really loved the first half of the book. 

Unfortunately, I was less enamored with the third section of the book, which felt a bit scattered at times. It covers everything from birds to infinity to the Twilight Zone to train stations to sex to boats to god to hospitals and then back to birds again- ending up feeling more random than all-encompassing. It is mainly connected by the image of hummingbirds, but this image doesn't actually appear in all pieces of the poem and therefore doesn't quite allow for the continuity I expect in a longer poem.

The four and final portion didn't really impress me either. It includes the poem "Sharks in the Rivers II" which was significantly less lovely than the first "Sharks in the Rivers" the collection begins with. In fact, it comes across as rather flat and more like telling a straightforward story than a delicate and intricate poem. In one stanza Limón writes:

"It's not the fish that I fear, but the jaw.
Or, it's not the jaw, it's the teeth.
It's not the teeth, but the multiple rows of teeth,
the conveyor belt of teeth growing like weeds
anchored in their shark skin." 

A description that feels more like the start of a horror story than profound and emotional poetry. In another poem, "To the Busted Among Us", the speaker has a conversation with a sewer rat, arguing "Are you rabid? / Are you crazy? / Are you responsible for the plague?" and it was the sort of metaphor that seemed too absurd, pushed past the point of clarity in an attempt to show the uselessness of life but instead coming across simply as silly. 
 
I went into reading this book with no preconceptions having never heard of the poet before. What I found was clear and jeweled writing that instantly drew me in, at least for the first half the book. To me, Sharks in the Rivers has a split personality and it is first half of it that I loved while the second half had difficulty keeping my interest. I'm still unsure if I will read more by Limón in the future, but I'm glad I spent the time to delve into her world with Sharks in the Rivers, even if I wish I had only stayed for the first half of the visit.

Release Date: October 1st, 2010
Pages: 96
Buy the Book
Source: Netgalley

The Zoo in Winter by Polina Barskova

The Zoo in Winter by Polina Barskova is a collection of selected poems, translated for the first time into English, written by a woman commonly regarded as the finest Russian poet under the age of forty working today. The Zoo in Winter contains excerpts from four of Barskova's collections, as well as a section dedicated to her newer work.

The first portion of the collection poems from the collection A Squeamish Race (1993), though lovely, was unfortunately not something I was really able to probe for deeper meaning because my lack of knowledge regarding all the literary references used. Yet even if I had to Google who Laertes was (a character in Shakespeare's play Hamlet by the way, and one of many who are featured in the collection) I was able to appreciate the beauty of lines, in the poem "Farewell to Laertes":

"Death's a reliable cell
     We'll wind up there together."

This was the case with almost every poem from this portion, "Farewell to Polonius", Polonius is another character in Hamlet, which I certainly need to read, Barskova begins with the stanza:

 "I still recall the eyes: two cooled sores on a cooling body.
Still see the fluttering of those short-fingered hands:
The agony of junkyard pigeons.
Behind him crawled the interlacing shades of
Those swallowed by the quenchless Chronos."

What a lovely way to say how time swallows us up without mercy, passes without hesitation. Even without any understanding of Shakespeare at all, I think that is an undeniably beautiful turn of phrase. Still, I will certainly have to reread this section in the future after picking up Hamlet, as I am sure there will be many more layers revealed once I do.

The second collection included is Evridei and Orphica (2000) features a poem, "Anaximenes" after the philosopher (thank you Google) among many other literary references I am sure I missed. The poems from this portion have a sort of dark humor to them, almost as if the narrator is laughing at themselves, and not in an entirely pleasant way. The final poem, "Reflection" epitomized this for me and it ends with the stanza:

"Head thrown back, you laughed, forgetting why.
Your laugh bounced like a ball among shadows.
And I, hugging you, watched as into the chasm,
We go. And the futher, the deeper, the darker the lacquer." 

The next collection excerpted was published only a year later, Arias (2001) and begins with "She Will Never Come in From the Cold", a sort of twisted fairytale about masters and frogs and adulterers, in which she paints an unattractive view of herself, writing:

"let's begin with health
my body seems to me a frosting
a meringue as a sweet-toothed-Gallomanic would say with a grin
pudgy and blinding-white on the outside
it's filled with hay-dust"

The poems from the collection have a slightly mystical and earthy feel to them, "Happiness" involves transmogrifying into a pot made of clay, while "Pottery/Poetry" draws comparisons between the two arts, or "The craft that I choose and the craft that choose me", in which "clay grows like a tumor on a blameless body." Prince Charming makes an appearance in "Madre Selva" while Tarzan and Little red Riding Hood show up in "A Baboon's Widow", resulting in poems I found to be more approachable in that the literary references appeared mostly to be ones which are slightly more well-known.

The last collection The Zoo in Winter draws from is Brazilian Scenes (2005) in which the reader truly feels like they have visited Brazil thanks to Barskova's sharp and insightful details, her rich and intricate language in the long title poem, "Brazilian Scenes". These poems focus on human and sometimes ordinary, yet unique, moments, a wedding dress before a wedding in "I Examine My Wedding Dress", "Verses About That Time I Washed Eric's Hair and Foam Got in His Ear", and a baby being comforted by the piano in "Chopin."

The final, and by far the longest, section in The Zoo in Winter contains New Poems (2005-2009). This last and most recent chapter is, in terms of number of pages, nearly half the book. The title poem, "The Zoo in Winter" is quiet and odd, using images of cabbage and parnish and lemurs and whales, but in a way that is both puzzling and beautiful. One of my favourites was "Turner", a poem full of fishy metaphors, part grotesque ("And out of them sticks tufts of sea grass / As from the armpits of a dead old woman.") and part sharp beauty ("Be evil silver of the unseen swarms of fish.")

Many of Barskova's poems are unsettling in a way, she has an abstract ability to confront human emotion, an uncanny way of showing their darkest underbelly. In "Love Verses About Pro-Motion" she writes:

"What should I say about life?
Such a tiny little thing,
But so painful and swollen."

It is from this slightly damaged beauty the Barskova constructs her finest work. There are many literary and mythical references- by now I had pretty much gotten used to them, the mix of fairytale and classic literature- Thumbelina in "Assimilation",  I.S. Turgenev in "Winter Tales", Persephone in "Kidnapping". Some of these retellings reminded me slightly of Transformations by Anne Sexton or The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy. Hecate appears in "Verses of Winter Gone By From Henry VI", where she writes:

"The face of love: it is unstable, it is evil.
Its features flame from underneath a layer
Of pride, lust, ignorance, and vanities."

When Barskova turns her mind to the twisted intricacies of life, the result is beautiful turns of phrase and thoughtful metaphors. There were many poems in The Zoo in Winter that simply didn't work for me, and this is probably because I didn't grasp the many literary references present in them, but for those looking for layered meaning and willing to probe below the surface there is much to find in the collection.

Release Date:  March 24th 2011
Pages: 176
Buy the Book
Source: Netgalley

Paramita, Little Black by Suzanne Robertson

Paramita, Little Black is the first collection of poetry by Canadian writer Suzanne Robertson. It was published as part of Guernica's First Poet Series, which is made up of first full poetry collections by authors 35 and younger.  At a slim sixty pages, this is really just an introduction to the author. Surprisingly for such a short collection, Robertson presents a variety of styles including a prose poem, "Fear of Death Confounds Me" which contains these stunning sentences:

"Elbows carried the delicate heads of newborns, hearts were stranded in their lifeboats, marriages were ditched in middle age, though not hers. The past grinds a thick lens from memory, tricks us into looking back: the way longing hangs like a woman's stocking in the shower, it leads to the medicine cabinet filled with multi-coloured pills, thoughts of not continuing."

While definitely one of my favourites in the collection, Roberston offers some lovely, more traditionally formatted, poetry as well. For example, in "Sibling of the Air" she writes:

"tomorrow died peacefully
in her sleep,
and yesterday dole out
second chances, gathered
your family around the oak table,
and everyone wore apologies
on their faces,
and laughed so hard
in the deepwooded heart
of today, day, day."

That said, there are poems, or at the very least, parts of poems- as several of them are quite long, the collection itself contains only 15- that left me quite puzzled, lines like "Freckled hands that are the opposite / Of lies" that I simply failed to grasp, even within their context. The message of certain poems, for example "A Conversation with Horizon", left me slightly unclear and it felt as if Robertson had not quite reached the level of clarity present in other poems in Paramita, Little Black. As with any poetry, it is hard to say if it is the author or the reader who didn't manage to cross the bridge to comprehension and understanding, perhaps there is simply an image I am missing. Perhaps not.

It may be due to this being a first collection, but there would be a poem like "The Prescription" whih felt like a jumble of images that left me perplexed and disenchanted, followed by "Flying" in which Robertson writes "We're all immigrants this close to heaven." and ends the poem with the subtle and powerful image:

"We are all flying to Winnipeg

We might've loved each other,
had we ever met."

This isn't a consistent collection, just as there are ups and downs with the success of the poetry, there is a variety of styles, one is written entirely as as a conversation, another is a prose poem, and yet another, "Signs", contains a large amount of profanity that in the context of so much subtle beauty and language feels brash and out of place.

Still, what I keep coming back to is that Paramita, Little Black is a first collection and although some of the poems could have percolated a bit longer, there are sparks of brilliance. When I finished the collection, I wondered if Robertson had saved her best for last, the second to last poem being the title one, "Little Black" in which  Robertson writes:

"If knowing is a sharp, shiny instrument and feeling
is a serrated edge then surrender must

be the hand that holds everything."

While the collection ends with the poem "October" which captures with heartbreaking clarity the pain of loosing a beloved pet, beginning with the lines:

"When that scrap of velvet died in our arms it was
   unlike
any sorrow I carried.
Grief was exactly 21.2 pounds of flesh and fur."

It is clear this is an emotional topic, the poem is actually dedicated to Little Black, the dog who the collection is also named for, and the strong love Robertson clearly felt for him provides a springboard for her best work, when she isn't trying to be clever or profound but just being honest and raw. Although Paramita, Little Black was a shaky collection, in Robertson's best poetry there is a pure and beautiful voice that would encourage me to pick up any future collection she might publish- this was her first go, and I have a feeling she will only get more confident and sure in her voice.

Release Date: March 1st, 2011
Pages: 60
Buy the Book
Source: Netgalley

Imaginary Logic by Rodney Jones

Imaginary Logic, the most recent collection of poetry by Rodney Jones, was a book that for me was filled with ups and downs- poems, or even parts of poems which I loved, followed by a stanza that bored me or a poem stifling in its obscure references. For example, "The Ante" comes across, at least for the first half of the poem, more as a list of poets and other things than as a poem itself. By the ending, it seemed that Jones had gotten away from the constricted format and practical lists and instead let the loose beauty of his writing flow, ending with the lines "That was the beauty of it. You could sing. / No one would hear. You could say anything."

This was my main problem with some of Jones' poetry, that the things he references occasionally overwhelm the simplicity of his own writing. In the next poem, "Confidential Advice" he begins with the same sort of list of people,

"Jesus was full of it,
and Muhammad and the Buddha and Marx
(both Groucho and Karl)
and Mao Zedong and his fourth wife, Jiang Qing,"

And although sure, what he is saying is true, I also felt like it was unnecessary and that the longer the list becomes the more irrelevant it is. What I craved was a snap judgment, a single metaphor.

In reality, "Confidential Advice" was less of a problem than other poems where not only does Jones list people, but they are often references so obscure that I had no idea who these people were. For example, in "Starstruck" he talks about celebrities but his examples include Leonard Nimoy and Joey Lauren Adams. True, these are actors of relative fame, but I had to google them. Honestly, maybe I am just ignorant when it comes to celebrities but I'm not sure how many people who read poetry will also know who Jean Skelton is- and even after googling I'm still not 100% sure who Jones meant. If the focus of the poem is about being starstruck and meeting famous people, the power is lost when the names aren't recognizable.

I realize that is a lot of criticism about the collection, but the reason I was so upset about these aspects is that outside of them Jones shows true talent. In "The End of Practice" Jones captures the sweat and the strength of this "male dream" where, "If I did not rise above the field, I would be eaten.", the poem vibrates with the intensity of the sport so powerfully that I almost didn't mind the references it contained, to more people who's names I don't recognize and even Google is unclear on (Charles Sandlin, Richard Foot, Jerry Reeder) leaving me wondering if I'm just really unaware or if they are as obscure as they seem.

Then again, maybe this is completely my problem and other less left-brained individuals wouldn't mind it so much since Jones himself is already a well-established poet having been named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for a previous collection, Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999) and as winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry award for Salvation Blues (2006), which was also shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. I would definitely consider picking up a second collection by him to see how it compares to Imaginary Logic stylistically.   

Some of the most interesting poems in Imaginary Logic, are the ones in which Jones deals with religion, but not just traditional dusty Christianity, but what it means in a modern and technologically advancing world such as in "The Competition of Prayers" which includes the lines "bandstand for heavy Christian music/ and widescreen Christian karaoke."

The poems I particularly enjoyed were the ones which seemed more personal to Jones, such as "Winning" where he discusses how his sister was always the one getting the prizes, and the only time he won anything was a H-4 club sack race where he may, or may not, have cheated. I also loved "Metaphors for Trance" about playfighting with his dog, which captures perfectly the image of a canine and boy intertwined, ending with the stanza:

"We had played this game often- no bruising ever, never blood,
though it would prove tricky in the endgame to regain control:
I would have to draw him like a large key through a small hole." 

Later in the collection, "Deathly" appears, a poem inspired by the Aimee Mann song of the same name. Since I've been a huge Aimee Mann fan for about a decade, this was a reference I certainly both understood and appreciated. The poem itself perfectly captured the bleak romance of Mann's song as well as the feeling of driving "a late-model car through a big city late a night: / the ordinary nostalgia, with its useless long / and then the clearer nostalgia for what never happened".

Another memorable portion of the book is a series of poems entitled "The Previous Tenants" which speaks of those who lived there before the narrator, all the people that used to be. It is about age and decay, a haunting story in which one stanza begins "Most of us who live here do not come from here / and seem to somewhere else when we talk" which sums up well the sensation of the poems, it is almost like Jones is telling a ghost story, a series of histories. At one point he writes:

"We know them from the colors they left more than their words.
We know them more from the marks they left on the wood
than the pulses that quickened when they entered rooms.
We know four flower beds. We do not know their love.
We know all that went unrepaired and fell apart.
We know them from others more than they told us themselves."

In the end I was left conflicted over my feelings for Imaginary Logic, a collection of poetry that can be at times brilliant and at times frustrating. Ultimately, although I didn't relate to or understand much of the name-dropping or enjoy the lengthy lists sometimes contained in Imaginary Logic, when Jones dealt with what appear to be personal incidents or memories in his poetry he caught my attention in a powerful and undeniable way.

Release Date: October 27th, 2011
Pages: 96
Source: Netgalley
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National Poetry Month Roundup

Although I read poetry year round, I loved taking the opportunity to pick up a few more books than usual and post about them this April in honour of National Poetry Month. In case you missed them, my poetry reviews for this month were:

• The Needle by Jennifer Grotz
• Is by Anne Simpson
• New Selected Poems: 1984-2004 by Carol Ann Duffy
• Double Shadow by Carl Phillips
• Small Mechanics by Lorna Crozier
• Folk by Jacob McArthur Mooney
• Origami Dove by Susan Musgrave

Click to be taken to the review. I also purchased four poetry collections, so there will definitely be more poetry coming up in the future. What about you, did you pick up any poetry to celebrate? Did you do something else to celebrate National Poetry Month?

Origami Dove by Susan Musgrave

Origami Dove is the first poetry collection by Canadian author Susan Musgrave in over ten years. It is divided into four section, and the first portion, "Madagascar vanilla", focuses on loss and love, particularly when it comes to a husband and father who suffers from heroine addiction. In "The Room Where They Found You" Musgrave writes "I believed in everything: the hope / in you, your brokenness". The poems are about lost hope and about grieving, they are powerful and tragic. These poems, like the coroner in"The Coroner at the Taverna", seek beauty but instead find something slightly poisoned, for as Musgrave writes:

"And beauty is what he seeks
though how you know beauty when you see it
is the question he asks each time he cuts
open a young body and fins something
beautiful but malignant inside."

The title poem, "Origami Dove" is a goodbye to a father as he lies dying, but also a testament to the loneliness and emptiness of the world, ending on the somber note: "I see how true / loneliness has become when he takes up with me / and walks me through the world I have always / called my home. Only in the darkness I see now/ it has never been home." Musgrave's poetry is part grief, part longing, but always straightforward and beautiful. Almost impossibly after the dark words that begin Origami Dove, the first section ends on a note of hope with "Understanding the Sky" in which Musgrave finishes, "The going / doesn't get any easier, but by any name / I'd miss the wind too much to be / parted from this life for even one hard winter." It is a life of pain and loss, but it is one in which Musgrave manages to find beauty anyway.

The second part of the collection, "Obituary of Light" contains one long poem divided into four portions by seasons and then into many parts "The Sangan River Meditations" continues the hint of hope provided at the end of the first section. In the first portion, "Winter", remarking on a moment of snowflakes melting on children's tongues, Musgrave writes "joy is there, in everything, and even / when we can't see it." Use of the wind appears throughout the collection, showing up in "Spring" where once again it provides a kind of hope, the openness of possibility, "how boundless is the pure / wind circling our lives." Still, although there is a hint of hope, Musgrave's outlook remains bleak, in "Summer" she writes "Suffering is the way / we measure love" and if that is the case, Origami Dove is a collection full of love. It is a love betrayed but it is a love all the same, for in "Fall" she writes:

"I loved you
with a fierceness we save for those
who can breaks us in all the broken places.
Never mind the lies, the promises
you couldn't keep."

The section itself ends with the lines, "We are the broken / heart of this world.", the exact sentiment that Musgrave's poetry captures, broken, but full of heart.

The third part of the collection is "Random Acts of Poetry", in which even with the title Musgrave begins to show her sense of humour, re-enforced in "Ice Age Lingerie" where she writes of a dream in which she is "wearing ice-age lingerie, oblivious / to the effects of global warming." The poem "Rest Area: No Loitering and Other Signs of the Times" is distinctly Canadian with a satiric bite that often had me chuckling under my breath, including such gems as "Americans say no to drugs; Canadians say / no thank you." and "My new philosophy for the millennium: / dread one day at a time." After such a bleak first half of the collection, Musgrave's humour is surprising, though still dark, describing going through airport security in "No Hablo Ingles" she refers to the inspectors as "The false-sense-of-security / guards". This section in particular, is one that would sound incredible read out lout, a spoken word poetic humour, with its commentary on politics and love.

The final section is called "Heroines" is about heroin addiction and prostitution and getting clean and selling your body. It is rough and gritty and blunt and powerfully raw. One poem is entitled "Question: Have you been hurt by men, have you been raped?", to which Musgrave replies:

"I've been raped, yes,
but what hurts worse is the way
they look at you afterwards
when they refuse to pay

as if you're the one dirty habit
they can't break."

While in another "Question" poem she writes, "the only / desire left in me is the desire / to make the best of it." It is an empowering collection, because Musgrave still expresses hope in the poems despite a narrator who grew up being abused by her foster father and now sells her body to other men. The poems themselves are based on the lives of six heroin-addicted prostitutes and originally portions of them were used as a voice-over in an art documentary film on the topic called Heroines. Although these poems are very powerful, they don't have the same confessional appeal I found in the first two portions of the collection.

Overall, Origami Dove is a bleak but beautiful collection with an unexpected hint of humour my only hope is that we don't have to wait another ten years for Musgrave's next book of poetry.

Release Date: March 29th, 2011
Pages: 128
Source: Publisher 
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Folk by Jacob McArthur Mooney

Folk is the second collection of poetry by Canadian author Jacob McArthur Mooney, following The New Layman's Almanac in 2008. It is divided into two sections, one rural and one urban. The first section focuses on the residents of St. Margaret's Bay after the crash of Swissair Flight 111, while the second takes place in the residential area surrounding the Toronto airport.

Water courses through the first half of the collection which includes poems such as "Station and Vicinity" which begins with:

"Every night in winter
a forgotten million snowflakes fall
on the ocean and so all
they learn about is water."

you really get a feeling for the town and the people, for what it is like there, but the result isn't overly poetic, at many times it feels more like telling a story than poetry. For example in "A Surface Normal (Five Points in the Life of a Wave)", Mooney writes:

"That October, on the fourteenth floor
of a brand-new building that I swear
was somehow haunted, I toss a penny off the balcony
and lose it in the jet stream. True story."

and yes, the reader can imagine the moment, and Mooney has captured it concisely and crystallized its simplicity, but it lacks the richness and depth that makes poetry truly move me as a reader, and it feels that in many of the poems this is something Folk has not quite achieved. Of course, this is not universally true, "The Mourner with the Alabama Plates" is still straightforward but manages to be haunting in its portrayal of grief, as a person comes to see where their loved one died, Mooney writes that "Grief / is a compulsion. Walk up to the dead / and lay your body on their bodies/ until you share a central chill."

I felt the second half of the collection had a stronger political voice to it, as well as a more poetic and lyrical tint, like in "The First Wave of Malton Housing Units Fail" which begins with the lines "It begins with believing / your warped and weakened want the best for you despite / their bad intestines. Their guttural melodies / burping through the night. Problem pumbing. Poor cement. / Houses erected to lend credence to the headlines / harnessed to the land. The Development Story. / The Immigration Angle."

The theme of the second half of Folk, a section filled with individuals looking for a home of some sort, is epitomized in "Riddles for Lester B. Pearson International Airport" where Mooney ends with:

"everyone
is nationless. Everyone's a nation.

Everyone has something to declare."

It is a section about urbanization, about property and privacy and urban sprawl and the connection, and disconnection, between people. In "Monica and Brandon Gate", Mooney writes:

"The weather waned that March,
folded back the snow to show
a whole city of dead birds,
slumped forward on their silence like
a growth of cheap new houses."

The sprawl of cheap houses reappears in Mooney's repeated references to Malton, Ontario. In, "The Earth is Round: Six Approaches to Malton, Ontario", he writes that "The harvest lasted some four hundred / straight seasons, bales of self-sufficient towns sucked up / by the whirligig urban unfoundry." connecting the traditional (harvest) with the changes in the name of progress which have occurred. The second half of the collection stands in stark contrast to the first, with its ocean breeze and familiar neighbours. I definitely preferred the imagery of the second half to the first. Even though Mooney is writing on a less emotional topic, his imagery felt more developed and profound.

Ultimately, the potential of Mooney in the collection Folk is apparent, but at times so is the fact that he is a beginner, still finding his poetic place. Although his voice is memorable, it often lacked the richness and depth I craved to find beneath his words. Overall, Folk is an interesting and perceptive collection, but Mooney's poetry tended to be too straightforward and cold for it to be emotionally moving as well.

Release Date: March 29th, 2011
Pages: 112
Source: Publisher
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Small Mechanics by Lorna Crozier

Small Mechanics is the sixteenth collection of poetry by Canadian author Lorna Crozier. Although I wasn't familiar with Crozier previous to picking up the book, as soon as I began reading the collection I knew I was going to love it. What is so refreshing about the poetry is Crozier's simplicity, some of the best lines are so straightforward and yet raw and piercing. The poem "Giving Up" ends with the stanza:

"No one will go mad tonight.
No one will ride a silver slip across the waters,
and no one, no one, no one will fall
in love." 

While "Night Walk" ends with:

"Once, twice, a truck goes past.
I raise my hand to wave but I can't see
if anyone is waving back."

The simplicity of the lines grips the reader into a world of emptiness and loneliness, the lines are quiet but with an echo that resonates, and the division between them break them up perfectly creating moments such as "and no one, no one, no one will fall" and "I raise my hand to wave but I can't see" that tell stories by themselves. Of course, that isn't to say that Crozier can't play with language either, because there are plenty of vivid poems in she seems to have selected specifically words whose sound compliments her imagery, using words like scab and crusty in the poem "Lichen".

The moments Crozier celebrates are ordinary but she views them from a different and beautiful perspective, turning an annoyance into poetry with "Finding Four Ways to Celebrate the Huge Moths That Keep Me Awake Banging Between the Blind and Window and Falling On My Pillow" which uses the wing imagery to tell four small stories. The image of the moth appears in many of the poems including "A Cow's Eye" and "Obsession", representing something that is both ugly and extraordinary. Wings in particular play an important role in the collection, not only the wings of moths but also birds and even dragonflies, things that beat and fly away. There are also several references to the song of a bird in "If Bach Was A Bird" Crozier writes "the bird sings not because / it has an answer / but because it has a song" while "Holy One" ends with the stanza:

"A chickadee lighting on your palm:
hard to believe that a soul weighs less than that
and does not sing."

A bird's song is both simple and magical, a beautiful mystery, one of the small, unexpected moments that Small Mechanics uncovers. Another major theme to many of the poems in the collection is mourning, grief at the loss of parents, in particular a mother as well as time leading up to her death. In "Angel of Grief", Crozier delves into the mystery that our parents always maintain and the rituals that follow their deaths:

"And there's something
sacred about this place and what I'm doing,
empty my mother's dresser,
the only thing she claimed as hers alone,
the house too small, too poor to keep a secret."

The narrator is visited by the Angel of Grief but says:

"-enough of him. Here, he's less
important than my mother, her last things;
they slip through my fingers into the garbage sack
and leave their mark on me like scalding water." 

Crozier also mourns her father, who according to poems such as "Getting Used To It" and "Grief Resume" passed away sixteen years before her mother. In "My Father, Face To Face" she reflects on what it would be like to see him again, in the other world, and the insecurities and regrets she has about their relationship, "I wish / I'd known then that his drinking / was a sickness not a sin" she writes while in "The Dead Twin 2" she lists her sins including the fact that she has "mourned a cat more than my father". The poem "Grief Resume" is a collection of losses, from animals to parents to friends, "Too many friends. / Once I could count them / on one hand." The quiet nature of grief is epitomized by in the poem "The Day My Friend is Dying", where Crozier writes, "What is silent is more silent."

Many of the poems in Small Mechanics have an air of nostalgic to them, not just for those who have passed away but also for what life was like when they were alive, for the person you are when you have your parents and are a child, the vast potential that the world offers. In "What Holds You" Crozier reflects that

"The sky's
the only childhood thing
that isn't smaller
than you remember it."

while one of the very first poems in the collection, "The First Day of the Year", begins with the potential of a newborn writer, one who is "dreaming ink / though she hasn't seen it / in this world yet." 

The second half of Small Mechanics is compiled under the tile "Our Good and Common Bones" and then divided into poems within it, all filled with rich imagery. In the title poem "Small Mechanics" Crozier writes "your old bones / need dress rehearsals for the fleshless times." and ends with the stanza:

"I want a poet who goes outside,
who knows the small mechanics
of the clothespin and the muddy boot."

Crozier is exactly that kind of poet, the one who in "The Grasshopper's Task" finds the beauty in something as ordinary as a potato, writing that:

"Potatoes: more like us than any other vegetable.
In the root cellar their long pale arms
reach for one another in the dark."

Many of the poems in "Our Good and Common Bones" revolves around various animals, rats, horses, birds, cows, cats, grasshoppers, foxes- each of these is viewed in a unique and interesting way and the poems feel like a distinct look at them, a look goes beyond the feathers or fur and examines what makes up their soul. One poem, "A New Religion", even goes so far as to describe a religion which centres around the cat, although it was one of the cases where the concept didn't quite work for me. As a whole however, "Our Good and Common Bones" is a perfect title for a collection of poems which looks at animals in such a way that they could be human. The section also includes several unconventional love poems, ones that address the changes that happen as you age, not just to the body but also to the kind of love you have in poems such as "My Last Erotic Poem" and "Taking the Measure".

Ultimately, Small Mechanics is epitomized by Crozier's ability to capture rich details. It is a collection about time and animals, about mourning and remembering. In each poem Crozier examines the small mechanics of a moment and with her observant eye what she finds beneath the skin throughout Small Mechanics is described with incredible beauty and skill.

Release Date: March 29th, 2011
Pages: 120
Source: Publisher
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Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

Double Shadow is the eleventh collection of poetry by Carl Phillips, although the first that I have read. The title refers to the duality of life, the double shadow it casts, the contrasting worlds a single moment can create. The collection also deals strongly with the theme of loss and grief. In "Next Stop, Arcadia", Phillips ends with the question, "which is better? It's hard to decide: / the ugliness of weeping, or the tears themselves?", an example of the conflict, both external and internal, present through Double Shadow.

"The Need for Dreaming" begins with the lines:

"As a scar commemorates what happened,
so is memory itself but a scar."

These are the subjects present in Phillips' writing, nothing is quite as it seems, a scar that is not just a scar. Rather, it is an emptiness he "can't stop collecting", "the strewn shells/of spent ammunition where I come across them;/ carefully, I hold each up toward what's left of the light." The brokenness of humanity comes across again in the poem "Night" where Phillips writes:

                               "But by then, it was morning again.
We could see what it was to be at last forsaken-
not so much by others, as by what we'd come to
think of as our better selves,"

 and later, in the same poem:

"The restless choir
that any human life can be, sometimes, casts forth
all over again its double shadow: now risk, and now
faintheartedness- we're not what
                                                    either of us expected,
are we?- each one a form of disembodiment,
without the other." 

The line "we're not what/ either of us expected/are we?" reminds the reader how easy it is to become something else. The main theme at the centre of Double Shadow is epitomized in the poem "On Horseback", in which Phillips writes, "At/ once both a thing that blinds and a form of blindness." In "Of The Rippling Surface", Phillips begins:

"The dragonsflies are only the first thing. How they're
not what you think, or thought you would."

reminding the reader of yet another thing which we think is something other than what it is. This related to both our emotions and physical objects which we imbue with our own feelings. Our perception of what something is and what it actually may stand in stark contrast to each other, but neither one is false. In "My Bluest Shirt", Phillips ends with the line "Now I touch at once both everything and nothing." which seems to be what he has attempted with this collection. The poems in Double Shadow are fragile pieces, verging on fragments at times. The writing is sparse but haunting, and when it succeeds it leaves the reader in precarious position, doubting if what we thought was one thing was in fact something else.

Release Date: March 15th, 2011
Pages: 64
Source: Publisher
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New Selected Poems: 1984-2004 by Carol Ann Duffy

New Selected Poems: 1984-2004 by Carol Ann Duffy is a compilation of the best of her poetry of twenty years of published works, Standing Female Nude (1985) to Feminine Gospels (2002). I had fallen in love with Duffy's poetry after being introduced to her by a friend living in the UK where she is quite popular, who lent me another selected works of hers, Love Poems. In Canada the only collection I was able to locate was Standing Female Nude, so I decided to purchase New Selected Poems online to get a taste of the rest of her writing.

Like most selected works, the collection appears in chronological order so the first poems I read were ones excerpted from Standing Female Nude (1985). Rereading them I shared the same feelings I had initially, that although some showed potential and a couple lines were lovely, they definitely didn't have the spark I had expected from Duffy's writing. To be honest, if I was unaware of how incredible her later writing was I am uncertain that I would have continued reading the collection, which I suppose is the unfortunate result of starting from the beginning when it comes to a person's writing as many poets improve over time. The biggest disappointment was that most of the poems I had loved when I read Standing Female Nude are not included in New Selected Poems, and many of the ones I had particularly not enjoyed or understood such as "Comprehensive" and "$", were. Overall, it provided a good introduction to Duffy to allow the reader to see how her work has evolved even if it's not a portion of the collection I will be flipping back to regularly.

Next up was Selling Manhattan (1987), which from the poems selected shows a definite improvement over Standing Female Nude. Many of the poems in this collection deals with different sorts of love from love for a place ("Homesick") to love for a person that is far away ("Telephoning Home"), and a few are quite powerful. "Warming Her Pearls" about a servant in love with their master was one that particularly stuck with me, as did "Foreign" which discusses what it is like to be in a new country where "You think/ in a language of your own and talk in theirs." However there were still quite a few poems which seemed to not quite fulfill their potential, often suffering from the same abruptness that appears in the previous collection. These include "Money Talks" and "The Brink of Shrieks". Selling Manhattan begins to show what Duffy is capable of, even if she hasn't quite reached it yet.

The Other Country (1990), includes several poems on the theme of childhood which were my favourite. In "Originally", Duffy writes that "All childhood is an emigration." as we grow and change into a new person until we hardly remember what things used to be like. "In Mrs Tilscher's Class" captures the enthralling and anxious nature of childhood, ending with the lines "You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown, / as the sky split open into a thunderstorm." Unfortunately, outside of these childhood poems I was less impressed by the rest of the poems, many of which like "Weasel Words" felt almost nonsensical at times. "Making Money" and "Pere Lachaise" both reverted to the list-like abruptness I didn't enjoy in Standing Female Nude, and in general the collection seemed like more a step backwards than forward from Selling Manhattan. 

In Mean Time (1993) Duffy begins to develop some of her signature careful and beautiful language. There were still poems I didn't quite grasp or appreciate, ones such as "The Captain of the 1964 Top of Form Team" and "Fraud" which just didn't find have any form of emotional connection, but they finally became outnumbered by ones I enjoyed. "Moments of Grace" reminded me exactly of what I love about Duffy, her vivid metaphor in ordinary moments, followed by "Valentine" where she writes: 

"Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promise light
like the careful undressing of love."

It is with simple stanzas like this, not bulky lists, that the emotional power of her words truly shines and in Mean Time she seems to finally discover this. Even in "Adultery" Duffy makes the abruptness work as she shows the steps of an affair, saying "You're a bastard. / Do it do it do it." It is clear from this selection that although Duffy may still have some growing pains she has begun to crystallize her style and form.

Following Mean Time there is a selection of Other Poems which do not belong to a collection but are collected in New Selected Poems. I didn't find any of these poems incredibly amazing but I suppose they were an interesting addition to the collection especially if this is the first time they have been published together. Quite a few of them were a bit odd, for example "To Boil Bacon" which is exactly what it sounds like. Several poems revert back to the list-format I don't enjoy, including "Kipling" for a description of the many items a man is selling without much emotional impact even when I realized that the reason he is selling everything is a lost bet and "Named For" which describes all the reasons for a person's many names. Overall, these poems seemed pretty ordinary and I am unsure when they were written but it felt like many of them must have been older.

Next was The World's Wife (1999), a themed collection which retells various famous stories but from the female perspective. Some of the poems reminded me slightly of the collection Transformations by Anne Sexton which retells fairytales, just as Duffy does in "Little Red-Cap" in which the Little Red Riding Hood takes an axe to the wolf, finding the "virgin white of my grandmother's bones" inside. In "Mrs Midas", Midas' wife deals with her husband's transformation, and how he had no thought for her when he gave up their ability to touch each other and "from Mrs Tiresias" tells what it was like when her husband came home a woman. Other poems like "Mrs Darwin" and "Mrs Faust" are more clever than poetic but they all show the important role of the woman in a story which is usually told from the man's perspective. The poems in The World's Wife tells old stories in a new way, but what makes them most unique is the beautiful language that Duffy uses to do it.

The final collection included is Feminine Gospels (2002) which is all about the woman. These aren't the wives of men like they are in the previous collection, but independent and interesting all in their own right. Some of the poems such as "The Map-Woman", "Beautiful" and "The Diet" contain the same whimsy present in The World's Wife as Duffy tells an actual story through them. These poems focus on specific women- one who is thin, one who is beautiful, one who is tall- and what happens to them. I found the poems about these archetypes insightful and well written. They are followed by The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High makes up over a third of the selection and is by far the longest poem in the entire book. The problem with it was that I didn't really consider it a poem, it becomes so much like a narrative that it feels more like a story in verse than a poem. It was enjoyable and entertaining to read, but I don't really feel like that makes it a good poem.

New Selected Poems was an uneven collection for me, with my favourite selection being from The World's Wife although there were quite a few other gems throughout. The collection shows Duffy's growth as a writer, and I am definitely interested in picking up Rapture her most recent collection which centres around love and which I have a feeling will be even more to my liking as Duffy seems to be at her best when she is writing passionately. Overall, New Selected Poems provides a good overview of Carol Ann Duffy's writing but it also let me know that when it comes to further purchases I will definitely sticking to her later collections.

Release Date: October 15th, 2004
Pages: 253
Source: Personal Copy
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Is by Anne Simpson

Is, the latest collection of poetry from Canadian author Anne Simpson, was, at least for me, a surprising and lovely experience. The thing about Is, is that it isn't always poetry in the traditional and expected sense.

The collection starts, quite appropriately, with a poem entitled "Books of Beginnings" which stretches over several pages, the first page containing only the line "before you were a cell, dividing into cells and more cells-" with the text all at the bottom of the pages, the subsequent two pages each possessing a paragraph made up of a kind of list of things before- "before crumpled dark before tarnished dark" she writes- and not having any punctuation. On the fourth page in the top corner, Simpson writes "You are the world dividing.", using punctuation once again to help break up the poem before continuing into several pages with text at the top, lists of things which are separated, "You are day divided from night," she writes. Over the subsequent pages the poem shifts almost imperceptibly into a story of creation, "Fire. You are what you embrace- heat, in its thousand costumes.", Simpson writes, and then later "Ash, a layer of velvet, dressed up as beauty when it's merely wreckage." a line which was my favourite of the poem. The poem ends with the line "Beginning, ending, beginning.", summing up the contrast within the poem, the division and conflict it contains. Overall, "Books of Beginnings" which takes up 12 pages makes up over 10% of Is and provides a perfect introduction to Simpson, how she plays with the shape of the page and the sounds of words, her poetry is also a very much visual experience.

The following poem, "Cell Division" is also visually unique, it is divided up into three identical portions of text, each labeled as a figure and found on a subsequent page, containing progressively smaller text and more columns. "Cell Division" is the story of a seduction and the repetition within the poem as well as the back and forth of "him" and "her" pronouns results in a poem which is both rushed and slow, the hesitant pull of the lovers' passion. Later poems also use unexpected spacing or placement of words, striking through words at one point, and the poem in the collection, "Double Helix" is actually shaped like a double helix. With Simpson's maturity of words and quiet eloquence, her playful formatting adds an unexpected dimension to her poetry. The reader is forced to follow her words across the page, lead there not only by their beauty but also by the form that Simpson has given them.

There were times however when I craved a little more rigidity within the poems, such as in "Divide, Break" when the lack of punctuation felt familiar instead of surprising and the repeated use of the word "break" in various contexts- "Break into break up break down break out break off break open" felt more like wordplay than actual poetry. "Child" a play on various nursery rhymes likewise failed to create a connection with me as a reader. In contrast to some of the less emotionally interesting poems, Simpson shared gems such as "At the Bottom of the World, a Tree of Gold", a delicate piece combining imagery of nature and the slow decay of letting go of a person you love. One page of the poem goes:

"It's October. The souls of the flower have risen into the cool air. Phlox, daisies, lilies, roses. The leaves of the hostas are yellow, waxy.

You've come to strip the garden for winter. You have shears in your hands.

But you think of your fingers on her scalp, making circles. The way the two of you were quiet.

When you rinsed her hair, she didn't complain. Silver ran down her neck, down her back- music slipping away from the body, returning to it."

It epitomizes what is lovely about the collection, the simplicipity of Is, the quiet images and scenes. More than the unique and interesting formats of the poems, moments like these are the ones which will stay with me as a reader. "At the Bottom of the World, a Tree of Gold" is not a poem with a predictable form either, it is a snapshot on many pages, but it is not something that overpowers the reader but rather something you look back on, and realize that the reason why it felt like a collection of memories was partially due to the way it Simpson spread out and divided the scenes within the poem.

The range of topics Simpson covers in Is is broad. Several poems focus on the political "Viva Voce" is a long poem dedicated to oil spills and "Life Magazine" begins with a woman seeing the photograph of a monk who lit himself on fire in 1963 and delves into the consequences of war through vivid images, but others feel quite personal. Throughout them all, there is a scientific underpinning, which is unusual in poetry. From describing the poem as three figures in "Cell Division", to talking about creation as beginning from a cell in "Books of Beginnings", to the title of the final poem, "Double Helix", Simpson manages to intertwine the scientific with the poetic throughout the collection. Nature also appears regularly, with water in particular playing an important role in many of the poems including "Viva Voce", "River", "Flood", "Flood, Translated", "Flood, Interior View" and "Boat of Dawn, Boat of Dusk" as well as appearing subtly in many more.

The last poem in the collection is "Double Helix" and it is clear why Simpson saved it for the end. It is a poem which describes what two people are made of, both as a list of things "unlit dust of stars. / Blood, / bone. / Salt / on skin." as well as traits, incidents and desires. The twisted format of the poem works surprisingly well in the way it leads the reader's eye up and down and across the pages, and circular in the sense that the end can easily once again become the beginning. If anything, I feel "Double Helix" it would have made a better title for the collection, although Is works (besides the difficulty of using it in a sentence, especially in a review when I feel compelled not to say Is is too often) the poem of the same name is good but not remarkable. Ultimately, I felt this was a collection about creation, about the start of something new, about the thin line between a beginning and an ending and how they twist together like a double helix, intertwined, both are necessary for it to be complete. While there were a few times I craved a stronger emotional connection in Is, overall Simpson has created a book remarkable for the simple beauty of her poetry and the complex originality of her structure resulting in a collection which compels the reader from page to page with the wave-like power of her writing.

Release Date: March 29th, 2011
Pages: 104
Source: Publisher
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The Needle by Jennifer Grotz

Admittedly, I love poetry, but the first thing that attracted me to Jennifer Grotz's latest collection, The Needle, was the strange and odd imagery on the cover but I was lucky it did because the contents were equally unique in a beautiful way. Grotz's skill lies in the tiny details and moments she captures. In the title poem, "The Needle" she stitches together various memories, describing a bee feeding thoughtfully from a sugar bowl and "the glint of blond down/on his knuckle as he/ crushed a spent cigarette". Universal across the collection is this attention to the minute, the vivid details. In "Landscape with Town Square" she writes:

And afterward, the wet and gleaming square seems slowly rubbed dry
By the bolt of blue-gray velvet the sky unspools above.

And each word feels perfect and intense, I fell in love with the image of the bolt of velvet being unspooled by the sky, imagery which connects, intentionally or not, quite well with the title of the collection. In the poem "Late Summer" Grotz describes with perfect imagery how beside a man "blooms a large gray rose of pigeons / huddled around a dropped piece of bread." and the reader and see the shape of those birds as they spread and grow like a flower.

Grotz captures both the internal and the external with equal ease, apparently having lived in Poland much of her collection is inspired by Kraków with the city itself becoming its own character in the story she is telling. The square which she mentions in "Landscape with Town Square" is Kraków Town Square. In "Alchemy" she discusses the transformations that can take place in the city, such as "When a pebble becomes a bright coin on the sidewalk", ultimately ending with the memorable lines:

One's fate in this city is to come and become and be overcome.
In each of us a mad rabbit thrashes and a wolf pack howls. 

Just as Grotz's poetry overcomes the reader, taking them into her bright world. On the tram in "The Nunnery" where she sits next to a nun "wearing a Members Only jacket". Later, Grotz takes the reader back to Town Square, in "Boy Playing Violin" where a young boy plays his instrument on the corner, awful noises coming from his violin, his bowl empty as he competes with a puppeteer. Grotz once again brings the Town Square to life, but this times it is the busy noise:

a city square populated by potbellied men 
with cameras strapped around their neck,
their well-appointment wives accessorized with gobules of amber,
and by lovers holding hands, oblivious,
and by waddling pigeons chased endlessly

At other times, Grotz just as expertly looks inwards, such as in "The Window at Night" where she describes her body, saying "My face is not a democracy- the eyes are tyrants / and the ears are radical dissenters." and capturing the inequality of disproportion so many people obsess over when they look in the mirror and all the various emotions found in the subtleties of expression, eyebrows whisper and "anger hides in the jaw", bringing each aspect of the face to life.  

Grotz also deals with the deeply personal subject of her brother's death in poems such as "Silence" and "The Eldest", where she begins "After my brother died, I stared out the window", both of which are heartbreaking in their simplicity and clear portrayal of loss and the feeling of being left behind. In many instances it feels as if the reader has been let in on a private moment, on a conversation Grotz is having with herself such as in "The Mountain" where she discussed what it means to be Jennifer, "that to be a Jennifer meant to chase endlessly after desire / or else to try to live without it."
  
The beauty Grotz captures in The Needle is ethereal, and at times it seems she is writing of another world, such as in "The Ocracoke Ponies" where you can just feel the sunlight and the twitch of the ponies' manes, soaking it up even as she reminds you:

That's not dream, it's not even sleeping.
It is the nature of sleeping to be unaware.
This was some kind of waiting for the world to come back. 

Or in "Sunrise in Cassis", where Grotz writes:

This is the hour when the moon is a fishhook
steadily pulled up out of the liquid sky
into some drier realm.

Lines which just ooze imagery of the kind that makes the book such an incredible collection, full of the beautiful and unique. Ultimately, The Needle not only captures the feeling of a city but also the feelings of a person inside it; with composed expertise and attention to the tiny details Grotz lets the reader into a vivid and incredible place- her mind.

Release Date: March 24th, 2011
Pages: 80
Source: Netgalley
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