My Heart is Not Asleep, by Thomas A. Thomas is a poetry book that invites the reader into a personal love relationship and its loss. Through his eyes My Heart is Not Asleep, by Thomas A. Thomas is a poetry book that invites the reader into a personal love relationship and its loss. Through his eyes we witness the devastating effects of Alzheimer's. In his poem, "Because the Words," he expresses the physical impedius that birthed this book, "Because the words turn to broken glass on my tongue / and make of my voice a rusty hinge, / I write them here. // Dread darkness grows behind beloved blue eyes, ...." And ends, "My beloved disappears, day upon night, untethered in time, / leaving language behind. And yes, because / her words are being lost, / I write these, here." A moving tribute to their love and expression of grief.
The author is a photographer and sees the natural world with laser vision, precise detail that is a joy to read. In the poem, "In a Time," he writes of the month August and the mix of the hardships and yet joy that beset his family and his life. "And it is still the month berries ripen along / humid vines, corn ears swell in steamy fields, / as fawns fatten out of their spots, gorging on / clover blossoms and dandelion blooms, as seal / pups bask between fishing lessons, as fingerlings // flash to avoid shadows, as kingfisher young / learn not to make shadows as they dive, it is / the month apples begin to blush at the thought / of falling, time of joy upon joy, joy upon sorrow, / time of sorry, time of love upon love upon love upon love." Keen observations that are succulent to read and feel.
We have nature, love, sadness, grief, and yes, joy. The beautiful cover is one of his photographs. Anyone who has loved will be moved by this book.
Infodemic Carol Guess's latest poetry book speaks to our times. According to the World Health Organization, "An infodemic is too much information inclInfodemic Carol Guess's latest poetry book speaks to our times. According to the World Health Organization, "An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response. An infodemic can intensify or lengthen outbreaks when people are unsure about what they need to do to protect their health and the health of people around them. With growing digitization – an expansion of social media and internet use – information can spread more rapidly. This can help to more quickly fill information voids but can also amplify harmful messages."
What better than poetry to view our changed world. The swirl we live in daily with the pandemic still raging and new diseases likely to follow. In the opening poem set before the book starts, 1978, she writes "...I danced // the Bus Stop with the all-skate line. / I believed I would survive." Followed by poems titled, "The Year I Stayed Inside," "Unexpected Side Effect of the Second Dose of the Moderna Vaccine," "Thank You to the Needle for Not Wasting My Time," and "There is No Goddamn Chip in the Vaccine." This last poem opens with the line, "But if there was, maybe you'd like it."
An assortment of prose poems are included, some longer that cover the intricacies of living life during a pandemic: getting rear-ended, watching too much television, vacuuming and discovering classified documents, hiking as women under siege.... This book will make you laugh, fear, and hope. One central long poem is titled, "What is a Divorce Poem?," which is filled with brilliant quips on both divorce but especially on a poem, because Carol is not only a brilliant writer, but a teacher. One line form this three page poem, "A divorce trusts that you will bring your own life experiences to the / divorce and therefore every reading of a divorce is different."
One of my favorite poetry books that walks us through this difficult time we've survived. ...more
The Autobiography of Rain, by Lana Hechtman Ayers is a stunning book dedicated to her poetry mentor Patricia Fargnoli. From the art on the cover by AnThe Autobiography of Rain, by Lana Hechtman Ayers is a stunning book dedicated to her poetry mentor Patricia Fargnoli. From the art on the cover by Andrea Kowch, to the bounty of lyrical poems within, we are carried into the emotional language of rain.
The opening section is titled, Immovable Clouds. In her opening poem, "Nineteen Things No One Knows about Me (And One They Do)," we learn, "The rain is my best friend. She knows how to keep a secret and wash away the evidence."
The middle section is titled Endless Rain. In one of her five tribute poems to Patricia Fargnoli, “On the Nature of Grief,” she writes, "Take notice how fog clings to the mountaintop. Take notice / how air swirls into gale force in a single pulse of your heart. / even as the moon waxes." The final stanza, "Massless, yet heavy as uranium, we bear our griefs / as pinned wings, ever grounded from flight."
In the last section titled Rain Glow, her poem "Why I Write" we find the line, "I write because the rain needs an advocate." Lana is an advocate for poetry, poets, rain, people she loves, the many issues of our times; she is a seasoned poet who feels deep into the atmosphere. Coming back to the first poem in the book, it ends, "The answer to every question I ever asked is poetry." Thus an inclusive book that resonates for our time and all time through history.
I leave you with one short poem from this wonderful book:
River Light
grief and grit and still the moon above
still the moon path flowing across the river like a raft
save yourself in the quiet hours one kind word at a time...more
Palestine Wail, by Yahia Lababidi is exactly what the title says, a wail for Palestine, that is pertinent to the war between Israel and Hamas and the Palestine Wail, by Yahia Lababidi is exactly what the title says, a wail for Palestine, that is pertinent to the war between Israel and Hamas and the genocide of the Palestine people. The poem, Double Bind," exemplifies a simple view:
Double Bind
To secure the world's sympathy Palestinians must be saintly— yet, Israel has universal trust despite continuing to act monstrously.
Now, tell us the difference between Palestinians & Hamas? I sigh and say, again, Palestinians are an innocent people who want only to live in peace
Caught between a rock, called Israel, and a hard place that is Hamas.
The world is burning with wars, and with damaged people. In the introduction we get an overview of how people "oscillate" between becoming hardened or an open wound. Like Elie Wiesel, Lababidi asks us to rise above loyalty to any nation-state, and to care about our fellow humans. He compares the current war with the 9/11 and its retribution where multiples of Iraqi civilian deaths were incomparable against the 3,000 deaths on US soil. Ultimately the pain and suffering on our own soil is our shadow side, hate. We are asked again to move from this warlike affront to life, to a more compassionate, empathetic trust of others' pain. He has turned to art, to poetry, to express the pain of these times when so many are needlessly having their lives and worlds destroyed. And through art and spirit this is a hopeful book that reminds us how to be human. How to be with another and question ourselves, and ask why our internal landscapes cause such external trauma.
We find the opening poem "Hope," set before the section Unbearable Casualties, it opens, "Hope's not quite as it seems, / it's slimmer than you think / and less steady on its feet." We move into this book knowing we have to stand up for what is right. Hence the first poem in the first section, "What to Bring to a War Protest." Later, an "Open Letter to Israel," and poems on student uprisings. In the poem "Columbia University," he writes, "Bless these natural born idealists / (in other words, peace activists) / for their unbridled vision / and unbridled principles // Bless the young for reminding us / there is no looking away / no foreign soil / no other." Bringing us back to the principle concept of the mystics, we are one; to the lesson in the poem "Gaza, A Capital of Hurt," here he reminds us what Gaza means, "a center of weaving / since the 13th century // It’s our turn, after hundreds of years / to dress Gazan wounds & wipe their tears…”
In the "Afterward: Poetry of Resistance and Resilience," he writes about the journalists, artists, intellectuals, writers, and children killed. He reminds us, “Words matter, since narratives shape realities — and, in turn, how history is told and who is deemed worthy of our sympathies. That’s why artists are considered dangerous — for daring to speak truth to power.” In this afterward he names those speaking out. This is a vital book to read....more
The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm, is the Sally Albiso Award winner (2024) from MoonPath Press. Written by Bethany Reid this is a book that calmed me. IThe Pear Tree: elegy for a farm, is the Sally Albiso Award winner (2024) from MoonPath Press. Written by Bethany Reid this is a book that calmed me. It helped me remember the sturdy people this country is made of, everyday people who are true to their core and to their faith. The book slowed me down; reminded me of life in the country where I grew up; helped me remember the hard work our ancestors did and the difficult choices they had to make. In the three section poem, "Selling the Wetlands," her family had to sell part of their land, warned by the surveyor not to say the word wetlands at the bank. And this gorgeous line, "My heart is a geography of loss,"...
Many lives from our past sit witin us. In the poem "Pear," she sits buttering her bread with her grandmother's knife, with its "yellow Bakelite handle, / and my grandmother is here, shuffling / across my kitchen in her paisley housedress / forty years after her death." Of his character, in the poem "A Coil of Barbed Wire," she finds a curl of a rusted iron in the field years after her father died. She realizes her father missed going back to pick it up. Not his habit, he "drank / yesterday's cold coffee so not to waste it."
This eloquent elegy is filled with religious images such as the King James Bible, the prayer to forgive our trespasses, Sunday school, rapture and Jesus. There is faith and being raised by the switch. In the moving poem, "After the Fall," she is instructed to cut her own switch to bring to her mother, she writes "I stripped the leaves away, / carrying back / only the thin bare switch." In the poem, "Faith and Doubt" she explores her allegiance to faith, ".... Then doubt // crept in. Like a wasp / encased in a gall, // how it prickled to get out."
This is a large family with five siblings; they lived in a house filled with books: a dictionary, an encyclopedia set. In the poem "A Haunted House," she writes, "The house we grew up in was large, multi- / syllabic." and later, ".... Our father's books / muttered on disordered shelves, old men / who had went to war. It was a house / that held onto its secrets." In the poem "The Lost Brother," she writes —for Matthew, "I've dreamed you living in a cabin / in the tress at the back of our old place, / reading Dostoevsky and writing poems." In this same poem, "I know you're on that hillside / where we left you, your coffin turned away / from the marker because our mother / didn't want your head down and feet up / for all eternity." Her grandmother's family was larger, with fifteen siblings.
There are sensory fields full of wild plants: alfalfa, timothy, horsetail, tansy ragwort, curly dock, Queen Anne's Lace or wild carrot, foxglove. Reading her book of life on a timber farm in Lewis County, Washington, I heard the frogs singing, imagined the cows and horses, animals that keep them tied to the earth and to daily tasks. Maintenance and living the hard life up till death. The father had a brain bleed, the mother dementia. This is a story of family and farm life that is our American blood made of immigrants seeking freedom.
I have many favorite poems in this collection, below is a short one for one of her sisters with their horses. I love "that still place." Calmed and still is the place this book brought me to.
Years before Her Death —for Lori
We rode our horses through fields bright with dust and Canadian thistle to the creek. At the back of the farm, ancient alders and fir trees stood like caryatids holding up the sky. The horses waded to their bellies, plunging their noses where the pull of the creek was greatest. I looped my stirrups over the saddle horn to keep them dry. My cousin unfastened her hair, cupped a hand to the dark, mirroring water, lifted it to her lips. This is the dream of my childhood. All night I rein my bay horse back to that still place. All night I watch her reflections waver and beckon....more
I Weave a Nest of Foil, by Arlene Naganawa, is a poetry book that sings to us with ghosts, dreams, ekphrastic imagery, and sensory details.
In the openI Weave a Nest of Foil, by Arlene Naganawa, is a poetry book that sings to us with ghosts, dreams, ekphrastic imagery, and sensory details.
In the opening poem "CVS," named after the pharmacy, she starts us off with these lines making me laugh and drawing me into the book: "I had given up the material world but I was tempted by snacks in cellophane bags."
There is a political undercurrent in her work. The poem "Space Bear, Heaven and Earth," is based on Tlingit artists Alison Marks’ and Paul Marks’ "Heaven and Earth," she writes: "The dream-dog whispers in my ear: They said this to trap him, so that they could accuse him.
I knew about this. I know about that."
At a reading during Q&A she said her poem, "The Naming," is about colonialization. In this poem she writes: "We named, we claimed.
We started early. The stars a million years beyond our world, the numbers that swirled around us: exponents, square roots, zero. Organs and illnesses, words for things our bodies do," ...
A wonderful collection that is sweet on the surface but has a deep underpinning of political understanding.
And a full poem to leave you with:
I Receive
my baby girl, wrapped in a cotton swaddle. The ghost moves close,
and the baby becomes the mother of the shadowy sadness that is motherhood,
death lurking behind birth, soft powder of skin faint as breath
ruffling the edge of sleep. The infant ghost sits up before God,
hopeful, the Word, but oh how strong does a mother have to be? ...more
Loading...
