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In the end, Water & Wave succeeds by telling the story of the poet’s own evolution as a witness to experience. From the poems early in the book that treat memory and the writer’s capacity to evoke it with few caveats, to the final title poem in which the distinctions between mind and body, thought and experience, are stark and unable to be overcome, Datta brings us to the present moment.
A cellist for over eighteen years with the Golden Gate Symphony, Diane Frank writes about music with profound authority. Her deep understanding, knowledge and love of music in all its forms is evident throughout, whether it’s dissecting the Beethoven Quartets or describing the subtle performance of vibrato on a cello or delighting in banjo and fiddle tunes at a dance where people are waltzing, clogging, dancing contras. Her lyrical style is as elusive and rousing as the music in which she luxuriates.
“I know it seems like I didn’t choose you, ever, Rosie says, when all I wanted was to choose you.” Will and Rosie’s commitment is honest, low-key, and earned. The frustrations of two fallible people trying to do it right make Talking At Night a worthwhile read, A fragile, fierce meditation on love, restraint, and what it means to be chosen, seen, and loved selflessly.
The author of The Years of Blood talks about his new collection and its impetus, the Poetic Justice Book Prize, influences, structures, ‘Faith’ and the visceral, Yoruba culture, the catastrophe already here, the use of grammar, especially the em dash, in poetry, the impact of music on his writing, Nigeria’s vast literary tradition and upcoming books to look out for, and much more.
Everyday African life, as depicted in Agarau’s debut poetry collection The Years of Blood, is a concrete space where “God is somewhere withering in his envelope of silence” – but how to overcome both God’s silence and the West’s speculative consideration? Infliction. In a style diagonal to Ocean Vuong’s arcane confessionalism and Charles Reznikoff’s documentarian ache, Agarau aims to inflict the griefs and hopes of life in Ibadan, during “the years of blood.”
This essay collection is of particular use to educators, with many of the essays operating from the perspective of professors in classroom settings, and thus including their strategies for engaging students in community. But there are also prescient reflections outside of the classroom or workshop, such that any reader with a passion for writing and poetry might find new perspectives and useful tools.
These overwrought overthinking characters, some dubious, some convinced at the get-go by the gentleman’s parlor tricks, are epic romantics. You might even say emotional vampires. Back and forth between alternate lives on the Amalfi coast, and in New York City (where London Terrace apartments and the High Line figure mightily), these folks dive deep into their projections and unslaked thirst for completion.
While mainly a tribute to her father’s memory, Beth SKMorris’ A Yellowed Notebook also fondly (and sometimes not so fondly) recalls the rest of her family as well. Bookended by two haiku set seventy years apart, the poet lovingly reviews her father’s life and the lives he affected. The overweening picture of David Kaplan, her father, is of a confident and caring man deeply engaged in life.
The Making of a Poem has consistently excellent poems, worthy of emulation and worth buying for the selections alone. Being able to follow the transition from rough draft to finished poem provides fascinating insight. It’s isn’t some ineffable genius that creates such works, but hard yakka combined with a crucial sense of what does and doesn’t work which only comes with extensive reading and years of practice: the long apprenticeship that the poets featured here have clearly had.
Connie Willis has won more major science fiction writing awards than any other science fiction author. More than the Big Three—Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury—more than her “hero” Heinlein, more than George R.R. Martin, more than the irascible Harlan Ellison. When I chat with her on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Greeley, Colorado, she’s matter-of-fact about her writing accomplishments, and not all that impressed with herself.