Life Studies by Robert Lowell
More than sixty years since publication, it is hard now to see why this book was groundbreaking. It contains many poems and an autobiographical piece of prose. Strangely, the autobiographical piece is what was groundbreaking formally and a few of the poems in the last…
Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Stephen Mitchell
This excellent translation is particularly powerful with the Duino Elegies which as Mitchell explains in the forward sound as if these poems were channeled directly from divine beings. There is a breathless stream of consciousness with the Elegies as if the angels are whispering into…
frank: sonnets by dance seuss
Messy, painful, honest, funny, profound, mystical, lowdown are what comes to mind with this book of poetry. That they are ‘sonnets’ seems useful only in that it gives each of them a consistent form that helps one poem to flow into the next. Yes they…
Collected Poems: 1 by Muriel Spark
I am a Muriel Spark devotee. I bought her entire set of novels when they were recently reprinted for her 100th birthday. When I saw this volume of her poetry at a dank and dusty San Luis Obispo bookstore, I couldn’t resist purchasing it. I…
The Mersey Sound, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten
I found this book through an odd source. After reading the amazing ‘Savage Detectives’ by Roberto Bolano I decided to rifle through the book and research the name checks primarily of other poets and many of them who wrote in Spanish and aren’t translated into…
Fernando Pessoa and Co. : Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa
I read a profile of Pessoa in the New Yorker a number of years ago that intrigued me. The story of Pessoa is less about the compelling nature of his poems than his creations of heteronyms; fictional poets complete with backstories with unique voices, preoccupations…
The Best American Poetry 2021 edited by Tracy K. Smith
Poetry is so many things; a whiff of ancient dust, a perfectly crafted stanza, the hum of the collective consciousness. These annual collections are time capsules that reflect the feel and grit of a moment, the cry and shout of a Greek chorus. This collection…
The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
This collection is like a hovering consciousness, that barely audible whisper that could be the wind or a creaking door. Here we have flowers, plants, daily events, aspects of the weather mumbling out loud a form of awareness. Why? Gluck isn’t interested in stunts. This…
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
As a huge fan and reader of modernism both as a cultural event and as artistic expression, I came up against my ignorance of Baudelaire and this collection of his poetry over and over again. One of my rationales for not reading it was that…
Such Color, New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith
I got turned on to Tracy K. Smith when Amanda Gorman read Tracy’s poem ‘Declaration’ on the New Yorker Poetry podcast. This collection pulls from several of her collections over the past twenty years and covers a lot of ground; personal, historical, political, social and…
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