I marveled at how Pacht is a poet in constant absorption. From a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog to lines from fellow poets to topics like electrical currents and plastic surgery pulled from the news, the poet is a deliberate sponge whose words in the end are selected across a world of inspiration.
Category: Poetry Reviews
A review of Chords in the Soundscapes by Michael J. Leach
One of the opening epigraphs by Brenda Eldridge likens music to ekphrastic poetry, but the poetry in this book is often ekphrasis based on music, taking its cue from the experience of listening. The result is poetry that is descriptive, rhythmic and often catchy in the way that popular music can be.
Redemption Songs: A review of The Wreck of Your Life on the Evening News by Roy Bentley
When he says “Movies are what we have in the United States of America / to save of from some poverty of Spirit,” (99) he speaks for humankind. That he does so in words that are passionate, elegant, and honest is his readers’ good fortune. Roy Bentley is one of the best poets writing in English, and The Wreck of Your Life on the Evening News is his best book to date.
A review of The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge by Charles Rammelkamp
Here, as elsewhere in this fine collection, Rammelkamp’s poetical plain style doesn’t attempt to call attention to its cleverness, but mirrors Coolidge’s own reserved eloquence. Or as Abraham Lincoln once ironically opined: if you keep your mouth shut, people will think you’re a fool. If you open it, they’ll know for sure.
A review of trying x trying by Dora Malech
The paronomasia here and all over trying x trying is astounding, and the cryptic title – trying x trying – likewise highlights Malech’s elusive cleverness, her coy, seductive use of words, her dexterity with language. Dora Malech’s verse makes you think of an acrobat who makes it look so easy, flying through the air, swinging on the trapeze, gracefully contorting, spinning, landing in a seemingly single effort.
A review of Eject City by Jason Morphew
Morphew’s background as both a poet and songwriter resonates throughout the collection. Some poems carry a musical cadence; others resist rhythm altogether. Morphew is unafraid to let his poems falter, stutter, or collapse into silence. He is a true artist—a virtuoso who is unafraid to take risks. He transforms his despair and life’s experiences into art—whether of body, of heart, or of legacy.
A review of Alighting in Time by Lynne Wycherley
As her poetry and prose articles indicate, she is concerned about the little-known risks of the wireless boom and works to build awareness of the dangers. While her recurrent theme is the threat posed by modernity to the rhythms and solace of nature, her poems are not overly didactic nor depressing. They are uplifting and also reader-friendly; she includes footnotes to explain potentially unfamiliar terms.
Death and Desire: A review of Mother, Daughter, Augur by Mary Simmons
Often in this gorgeous collection, I found the theme of death to be that of decay: dead birds, dead spiders, pears rotting; the kind of death that winter brings. In the poem, “In the Small Hours,” Simmons writes of dead spiders, “their brittle petals,/their dull pigments/their spiders/in diapause, because in the belly/of the dead it is always winter.”
A review of Burn by Barbara Hamby
Hamby’s ideas flow like a person talking to herself, and we get to listen in. Her free-association stream-of-consciousness is exactly the stuff of dreams, as alluded to earlier, so it’s no surprise that so many of the odes involve dreams. “Ode on the Rilke Metro Stop in the Paris of My Dreams” is one (“In this dream we’re in Paris, driving around in a car, / which is a nightmare…”).
A review of The Drop Off by David Stavanger
The Drop Off takes these notions of play, irreverence and art, and utilises the tools of poetry – redaction and silences, puns, the language of public discourse, rhythm and structure to lead the reader, almost by stealth, into sudden moments of intense vulnerability.