Faraway Tables by Eric D. Goodman - Poetry Review

Poetry is a medium that really gets down to the bare bones of our world and our existence. Quoting from the poet's Afterword, "Poetry seems a perfect form for today's society--short, concise, and able to get a point or feeling or idea across succinctly." I could not agree more.

The poems in this collection touch on many subjects...life during and after the pandemic, world affairs, climate change, the ever changing and inevitable winding down of life. I was struck by the observations and how tuned in they are. As always, I feel like poetry "gets me." Most certainly, poetry always seems to understand life and the world. These poems are no different. 

A few quotes of verses/stanzas that were particularly striking to me...

from Toast to Friendship

These people in Kiev--people just like us--

no longer worried about 

when to go to the store for toothpaste,

but whether their sons and daughters

would live in an independent nation,

or live at all.

The war in Ukraine weighs heavily on our minds as it continues on and on. This poem captured the sorrow of what was, what is, and perhaps what could be again (we can only hope).

from Embracing Hermithood

No necessity to go out, no reason to drive,

hermit life made not only bearable--

embraceable.

The need to appear disappears.

The pandemic drives us into

our isolated caves. Gives us an excuse

to be what we want to be.

If the pandemic could be looked at in a more positive light, these stanzas demonstrate this. Perhaps the forced isolation made us slow down, as we were unable to go out as the social butterflies that many of us may be. Though the isolation was difficult at times, I also feel like it helped me to slow down and to be more centered, more focused on the now.

From Sassy

I see your collar on the table.

How I always wanted to sleep in

an extra ten minutes

when it was my turn to walk you.

How I long to walk with you--

at any hour--now.

The loss of a beloved pet. This one brought tears to my eyes. So often we take for granted their devoted companionship. Then they are gone and the memories of the joy they brought to our lives are a source of sorrow, and yet thoughts of them are cherished, happy memories. The loss of our four-legged family members is so difficult because they are with us for such a short time in the grand scheme of things. 

From Water Fall Blues

Driving a rented Skoda, you and I visit

the national park we remember from our last

visit to Croatia, and we find that our off-the-beaten-path

waterfall is nowhere to be found. Has it 

evaporated, or can we simply not find it?

A personal loss, worthy of your tears.

Climate change. Our vanishing waterways. A very real phenomena that is becoming more and more prevalent. A sad reality, and a harsh reality for people losing access to fresh water. Would that more world leaders and governments acknowledge it for the serious treat it is.

From Just Enough

But the mosh pits and energy,

vibration of the bass,

fist pumps and crowd surfing,

being there, part of the scene.

That was me. But not today.

This evening, I'd rather stay in.

He says "That was me." I say, this was me! Funny. So many of us can relate, I'm sure. As I listen to my 20-something sons speak of concerts they attend, despite the high cost of the tickets, I try to remind myself that this was once me. When life revolved around attending the next concert. But now, for me, home is where it's at.

From The Moment

So many perfect moments for scrapbook,

storybook memories.

You look up from your painting and smile,

the sound of the children's laughter

wafting up from the basement.

If I had to pick a perfect moment,

this moment

could very well be it.

So often we have photographs and mementos of the family trips, the big moments. But it's the little things, the fleeting memories of a tiny smile, a giggle, that really matter in the grand scheme of things.

From Submission to a Student Magazine

(from a writer who's burning out)

I shake your hand and want to cling to it,

to hold it until you understand,

until you feel what I feel

and know what it means to be one in

one hundred thousand writers.

Boy, I can relate to this one. As a writer, and aspiring to be a published author, it is often daunting thinking about how many writers, and books that are out in the world. That's when imposter syndrome kicks in, but I try to remember that it's the journey, not the destination, that really matters.

As you can see, I really related to this collection. I think you will too. An excellent debut collection. I hope to have the opportunity to read Goodman's future collections.

About the collection:

Faraway Tables is a mesmerizing collection of poetry that captures the monumental and the mundane with eloquent precision. Written largely during the COVID pandemic, these poems are imbued with a reflective depth that explores the essence of human experience—ranging from the personal to the geopolitical.

Goodman’s insightful observations of life’s transitions, especially in a world reshaped by pandemic isolation and technological shifts, reveal the courage it takes to love a life that’s continuously evolving.

Faraway Tables invites readers to savor the delicate flavors of experience, the tender beauty of other places and other times, and the enduring connections that define our shared humanity.

Advance praise:

“Faraway Tables carries its readers across boundaries–the personal, the political, and the geopolitical–and into those vital realms of memory and time that recall us to the comfort, the connections, and the love that see us home.” -Sherry Audette Morrow, Välittää

“Faraway Tables is a dazzling collection–a mixture of the mundane and the monumental that travels to marvelous times and places in the world and in the heart, with surprise detonated in many of the poems’ last lines. -Toby Devens, My Best Mid-Life Crisis (Yet)

“Eric D. Goodman writes with such a light hand. He sees endearing details in everyday happenstances–playful, erudite, perceptive. Norman Rockwell in words.” -Hezekiah Scretch, poetry editor, Fleas on the Dog Literary Journal

About the poet:

Eric D. Goodman lives and writes in Maryland. He’s the author of six previously published books of fiction. More than a hundred of his short stories, articles, and travel stories have been published in literary journals, magazines, and periodicals. Eric’s recent poetry has been featured in more than twenty publications, including Gargoyle Magazine and The Main Street Rag.

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Knowing by Mark Cox - Review

This is a long review, I know. But I felt this one so deeply, I could not in good faith make it short.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it is just what poetry does. But it never fails, when I'm reading poetry, for a poem to hone in on exactly what I've been experiencing in my own life. It's uncanny. The poem is Gasoline. I'll share parts of it, the parts that resonate with my own recent experience, below.

Even after all these years after the divorce, I still sometimes dream we are together. She and I will be rushing hand in hand, late for a movie....In the dream, I actually know what is ahead...but there is something hopeful about the way she touches me, even still. I think there will always be a bond...The children will always be our children...

I am not a idiot. :) I know better than to pine for all that has vanished behind me. In fact, I am faced forward, usually; a striking picture of good health, braced headlong against the wind!...Still, I'm surprised to be here. I thought my life would turn out differently. I expected better from and for myself. And so, though reconciliation isn't something I want to happen in real life, in my dreams, it's ok...In those dreams, it's that fresh and untouched. It is a pleasure to feel that fully again, to have the family under one roof...That's all I wanted, was for life to be easy, right, fluid. It didn't seem like a lot to ask at the time.

Let me just say that I was in tears after reading this poem. I guess it helps to know that I'm not alone in this experience. I think this is why poetry is so special to those who love it. It seems we always find pieces of ourselves in the words.

Case in point...here's another from this collection that hits home for me...straight to my heart. Some parts of this poem, Storm Front, I share below...

...I miss my sons and daughter, but then I have always missed them, even when I held them. I was always reminding myself to be present, to demarcate significance. I was always a little lost within my own home. A form of Narcissism, I suppose, never feeling able to take in enough. Honestly, I fear now, as I become old, both remembering too little and too much. Either pitfall bears challenges.

 Yesterday, watching a video of my youngest at two or three, listening to my young, robust voice read his storybook, I found I couldn't breathe. I would never be that father again; those years were lost to me. I understood then how such panic takes one to the edge of living. There is a violence enmeshed in memory I do not fully comprehend, ends are implicit in it....

I know I'm sharing a lot from these poems, but I just can't help it. As a mother of sons, I loved this one...

Mortal Currents

Side against side ~ lain face-up in sleep ~ two lone clouds ~

one a stuffed bear ~ one my young son ~ across the ridge they

are passing ~ shorn apart ~ thinned to wings ~

Little sleeper, dear child ~ so far from me now ~ there are

but these few miles of peace ~ these brief wondrous nights ~

then we wake diminished ~ awash in mortal currents ~

My son, sweet boy ~ this is such a precious time ~ sleep long ~

churn deeper ~ dream ~ while you still own your face ~ while

you are still near to home ~ before the angel of forgetting ~

puts its cool lips to your eyelids ~ and you become a man

Just when I thought I was safe, the final poem, Wonder Bread, hit me and I was down for the count. Here are the final several lines at the end...

...Give me the simple life. If I do get Alzheimer's, let me get stuck reliving those mornings making lunches. the same thing over and over again. Everybody late, rushing around, cramming stuff into bookbags, and scurrying out to the car. Then piling in together. Just being there, buckled in next to each other, sitting in line, waiting to drop off at the front doors. I could wait like that. I could wait like that for as long as it takes.

That's it. I'm wrecked. It's hard to be sad, but it would be even harder not to have these memories. This collection is so wonderful. I can't even put it in the proper words. I will just say that if you love poetry, and you love families and relationships and memories and yes, some poignancy, then this is the collection to read. I know these poems will stay with me.

About the collection:

Mark Cox pulls no punches in these poems about loving, drinking, traveling, and screwing up his relationships and parts of his life. “Looking back for a low point marking the worst of my insobriety, it might be that signal moment I put out my cigarette in the holy water font of St. Paul’s Catholic church, right in front of the priest. . .” Sometimes sobering, oftentimes funny, but always honest, the poems in Knowing aim for the heart and soul of us all.

Praise for Previous Collections:

On Readiness

Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer . . . . Cox gives lie to the common notion that prose poetry is too formless to count as real verse . . . . [He] is as careful with diction, rhythm, and even rhyme as one might be if they were writing strict alexandrines-and yet, his poems are as fluid and readable as Jack Kerouac’s novels. -Kirkus Reviews

On Sorrow Bread

Tony Hoagland has said Mark Cox is “a veteran of the deep water; there’s no one like him,” and Thomas Lux identified him as “one of the finest poets of his generation.” No one speaks more effectively of the vital and enduring syntaxes of common, even communal, life. -Richard Simpson

On Natural Causes

One of the best books I’ve read in years. In a style that’s brash, offbeat, tough-minded and big-hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world. Beyond the inventive language and formal range, what makes this work so memorable is Cox’s refusal to look away from even the hardest facts of “unadulterated sorrow.” -Alan Shapiro

About the poet:

Mark Cox has authored six other volumes of poetry, the most recent being Readiness (2018) and Sorrow Bread: Poems 1984-2015 (2017). He has a forty-year history of publication in prominent magazines and his honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, and The Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize. He chairs the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington and teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program.

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It Will Have Been So Beautiful by Amanda Shaw - Review

I'm thoroughly impressed with Shaw's debut collection. She touches on so many subjects. Her thoughts on home, love and loss, and what is going on in our world are eye-opening. She shows such insight when writing about human relationships. One underlying vibration that came through for me throughout the collection was the yearning for how things used to be. A hearkening to better times, before our world became so busy and jaded. 

I would be remiss not to mention the poem about the cat. "Felis Felix" is just an exact portrait of a cat. The final four lines, "Though not gifted with a range of sound / she lets us know with her clean tongue / You'll never own your lives as I do mine / however well you open doors." Truth...we may go out into the world, joining its hustle and bustle, but we will never be as free as a cat. 

I loved the poem touching on the waggle dance of bees (a form of animal language that honey bees use to communicate the location of food sources to other bees in their colony). "Dance, Dance, Evolution" says in its seventh stanza, "So it's a comfort / to hear there's a dance out there / to save a race from doom." A comfort indeed since bees are part of the biodiversity that humans depend on for survival. 

The title of this collection comes from a quote from Diane Arbus:

"While we regret that the past is not like the present and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable, inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful."

What a quote. I'm definitely keeping it around for inspiration. 

It Will Have Been So Beautiful...indeed. An appropriate title for this stunning debut.

About the collection:

With urgency and compassion, humor and wonder, Amanda Shaw’s It Will Have Been So Beautiful examines the many dimensions of what it means to call anything “home,” including the earth as we know it. In a manner reminiscent of Eugène Atget, who wrote “will disappear” on his photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Shaw captures the unique melancholy of living in a time of unknowable change.

As she explores the line between love and loss, Shaw implores us to find a more profound commitment to life in all its forms. At times playful and ironic, the poems celebrate language’s sonic capacities, probing art’s potential to move us from mourning to joy.

About the Poet:

From the time she learned to read her first word — “Boom!” — Amanda Shaw has been in love with literature and language. She earned a BA in English from Smith College and has advanced degrees in education and writing. Equally at ease in a high school classroom and a World Bank boardroom, she is an expert teacher who continues to share her belief in the power of words with students of all ages.

Amanda began her career at a public high school in Brooklyn, where she was committed to student-centered curriculum and staff development as part of NYC’s small schools movement. After nine years in the city, she moved on to teaching ESL internationally and domestically, first in Rome and now in Washington DC. Witnessing poetry’s unique impact on students’ intellectual and emotional development galvanized her own writing. In 2020, she received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

In addition to actively participating in local and online writing communities, Amanda is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review Books, where she supports emerging writers. Lily Poetry Review Books will publish her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, in March 2024. The poems, written over 15 years, explore love and loss in personal and global contexts. For the past four years, Amanda has divided her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, DC. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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Night of the Hawk: Poems by Lauren Martin - Review

This is my favorite kind of poetry. Poems that speak of the woman's experience, of family, of everything that makes us happy, or sad, in our lives. Moments that are sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful...and often somewhere in between. 

The poem below really spoke to me. I had to share it in its entirety. As a postmenopausal woman myself, I can certainly relate to it. Women beyond that "expiration date" are often forgotten, or our opinions seem at times to not matter, as they mattered once. Still, there are those who know that we came before and that our voices do still matter.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMAN

Is we are ignored
     Everywhere - even in poetry

Somehow not romantic or feminist
enough
Our wisdom excluded as undignified
As undignified as women running into the cold night with hot 

flashes peeling layers

"We're not helping men into the
conversation by making them feel
emasculated"   I say

And experience a new version of "blame the victim."

One in which there is no respect for the 

elder authority of the endocrine system 

and years of misogyny with no
conversation. Where we screamed into 

the Grand Canyon that blew dust back 

into our faces on the hot wind

I am told that I lack some insight that is 

honored and reflected in youth     rather
     must reflect my inability as an 

"old feminist" to differentiate between my 

"internalized misogyny" and what is
unbalanced

To be told that you have no idea when 

We paved the way
When I am standing on the shoulders 

of my own mother

You don't see me

And maybe that's because you're 

Not looking down
To the foundation of     my shoulders
To the years of my sleeves rolled up 

And boots tied high
At rallies and secret activist meetings 

Countless abuses of power 

Soul changing assaults

I can see the context of our culture
Then and now
And am happy you are bashing
The door open
Breaking the
Glass ceiling
But it's not because     we didn't try
Of course we did
Our height lets you touch
                                 the glass with
your hammer

Another poem that struck me, "OF TIMES TRAVELLED" because of this verse...

So the choice is

Lonely alone

or Lonely with

And how many women

Feel this

Or are discounted for their substance

Since my divorce 10 years ago, I have chosen to remain alone. Going along with what the verse says, I'd rather be lonely alone than lonely when I'm with someone. And you know what...I'm not really lonely.

This book of poems is an excellent volume to add to anyone's poetry collection. It is certainly going to be added to mine.

About the collection:

When I have wandered
long enough
what am I still beholden to?

Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.

But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“ Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines ”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.

Advance praise:

“The poems gathered here address themes of survival, chronic illness, shamanism, and feminism against the backdrop of daily life. . . . The diversity of experience examined makes for a collection that is both full and human. A whole life in one volume.” —Kirkus Reviews “Night of the Hawk is a luminous and numinous collection about women and men, about betrayal and forbearance, about endurance, death, and art, and, most essentially, about the search for a sacred path through life. There is so much love in these poems” –Michael Laurence, award-winning playwright “Lauren’s poems drop into your psyche and ripple outward, echoing in the moments of life. Their beauty haunts.” –Sallie Ann Glassman, Head Manbo Asogwe of La Source Ancienne Ounfo

About the Poet:

Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and a devoted Ìyânífá. She lives in Oakland, California. Lauren studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey, which led her to both Ifá, and to the writing of this collection of poems. Learn more at: www.laurenmartin.net

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Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (128) Elizabeth Bishop, Poet

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come acros s, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author, pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.

I've learned of so many authors and poets I otherwise might not have known about if not searching for authors and cats for these posts.

Poet Elizabeth Bishop is one of them. Turns out, she was a great lover of cats. Her childhood cat was named Minnow. Serendipity! I also had a cat named Minnow when I was a child. I love poetry so I will definitely be seeking out her works.

Elizabeth Bishop (February 08, 1911 - October 06, 1979) was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century. (Goodreads)

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Poet Anique Sara Taylor discusses Inspiration in Poetry

Welcoming today Anique Sara Taylor, the poet behind the new collection, Civil Twilight.

From Inspiration to Exploration

Inspiration, from the Latin “to breathe into.” The subject of inspiration has followed many concepts through many centuries.

• The Greeks believed it came from the Muse.
• The Nordic peoples considered it the voice of the Gods.
• Israelites deemed it an overwhelming need to share God’s voice.
• Christians thought it was a communication from the Holy Spirit.

     The Romantics considered the poet a willing receiver of inspiration because of developed inner sensitivities.

     More recently inspiration has included ideas of courting visions, mystical winds, the inner psyche, a divine fury. Endless discussions continue about connecting with inspiration as a form of ecstasy and fervor. Even frenzy and madness. Or being transported, as if this were something the writer hadn’t asked for and couldn’t resist or control.

     In searching for an open connection to creativity, writers have utilized Ouija Boards, meditation, automatic writing, various substances, all in the pursuit of open access to inspiration, and therefore genius. This has inspired philosophers, theologians, psychologists to write many books, with a variety of viewpoints.

     Growing up, I remember teachers referring to creatives as having inspiration, as if this was a magical gift given to only the lucky (or perhaps insane) few.

     I used to wait for the thrilling rush of inspiration, the burning trigger to tell my story. I loved riding the crest of that wave. But in my studies, classes, reading and friendship with other poets, I’ve observed that inspiration doesn’t always swoop down reliably, in full and complete usable form. Working on craft that deepens over time, is a less romantic version that’s often ignored.

     Many serious writers come to learn a more sober, and perhaps more deeply fulfilling mode of working: Read. Study. Research. Have a daily writing practice. Ask questions. Follow threads of completely new and unfamiliar resources. Delve deep into various crafts, professions, and sciences. Write down what comes to you in dreams and meditation. Make friends with phrases. Compose and refine phrases. Explore with curiosity to discover what can be built. Thoughtfully combine materials that have been gathered.

     Welcome the uncut, the wild and the unvarnished parts. Let in what’s unsettling and what’s on fire. Take your time. Sort it out in the rewrite. Then rewrite again. And again.

     Below I’m sharing ways phrases can begin. These are both the tiny lighting strikes and the nuts-and-bolts of inspiration. I hope these will give you insight into the endless ways you can shift from inspiration to curiosity and exploration.

How a Poem Can Begin

• A poem can begin in confusion or passion. A wild inspiration that pulls you away from everything that needs to be done that day.

• Phrases can begin with lines in disarray that you’ve gathered in notebooks where nothing connects. You don’t know what to do with them, or where they’ll go.

• Words come to you while you’re driving or cooking, taking a shower, answering the phone, or stirring the oatmeal.

• A poem begins with the way morning light glitters off the telephone wires.

• Writing begins when someone tells you they have Lyme Disease and you research lists of symptoms and causes, and then you wonder what it’s like to be a spirochete.

• Memories topple in when a phone call comes from a childhood friend. You flash back to a rock ’n roll party in her driveway. Records. 45s spinning on her portable record player, a B-side slow-dance, and the sweet boy who swayed you to the music on a June evening.

• A poem begins when you finally have time to write, and you can’t think of a thing to say. And you feel everything you write is wrong. But you write anyway. On the day you finally had time to write.

• Phrases come when you’re walking the unpaved circular mile around the town pond in early morning, when everyone else is still asleep.

• Words tumble in quickly with a workshop prompt, in the class you were afraid to sign up for. You don’t know where it’s going, and you feel exposed because you’re afraid they’ll ask you to read it out loud.

• Phrases come to you when someone on TV has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and you search websites, and then your life, for a vocabulary of obsessive-compulsive traits.

• Strange dream-words flood in from blurred clouds on first waking up. You feel they’re trying to tell you something, even though you don’t understand. But you write them down anyway.

• Images rush in when you’re stopped at the red light, and you have less than a minute to capture words for the scene at the intersection.

• A poem begins with your journal when you’re sad and alone, and there’s no one to call.

• Phrases pour out over a collection of seashells. A list of first times, last times and turning points. A history of places where you’ve lived. Shoes you’ve worn. Cars. Jobs. Past loves.

• An elegy begins when you write about one loss as if it was a reflection of every other loss.

• A poem begins when you research snakes or frogs, or how you learned to walk. Or how the rocks below you were formed billions of years ago.

• Imagery begins when you catalogue all you see around you. Or hear, smell, taste, feel, touch.

• A poem begins when you’re reading someone else’s poem, and it sparks an idea in you that continues on your own tangent.

• A new thought opens up when your cousin calls to say she’s taken the kids to Arizona’s Saguoro National Park. And although you only know New England forests, you read about the cactus that take 50-75 years to grow their first arms.

• A project can start when you make a date to meet a friend at the mall for tea. You sit and write together quietly.

• Poems begin when you enter your daily writing practice and continue the work you'd left unfinished and breathing from the day before.

• Writing begins with a wild body-surfing wave, or on thin ice. With too much time, or not enough time. With what is disconnected, broken, messy and uncertain, But begin in any way you can.

A Poem Begins With Possibility

     With these possibilities, I bring you back into the little world of my own beginnings and disconnected phrases. These lines are from unwritten poems, slips of paper and old computer files. Maybe someday, some will grow up to become poems.

Lines:

Bass sax threads a warm perfume around the slow dancers.

*

Another Lucky Strike between her red lips,

she inhales with a magnet of breath until embers glow scarlet.

*

Thistles, nettles and thorns of night where owl shadows

and hawks gather, where no one has ever been so alone.

*

It was the year of seven monkeys and the structure of dragon kites.

*

As shimmering fish intersperse with ruins and castles,

soaking up the sadness of shipwrecks.

*

White noise ripples in my ears, I can no longer hear the angels.

Spirochetes dive into my tissues, I ask for grace.

*

Even with theories of atonement, the deeper difficulty remains.

*

Among the sand and mud of protected bays,

submerged lilies sway with pond grass.

*

a similarity of corresponding mouth parts

*

its nature smoother than glass, rounder than pearl

*

Just before the roses bloomed, just before you left me

*

memories of ten thousand cigarettes

beside discarded J&B Scotch bottles

*

Birds swoop past unaware, their music first urgent, then tender

*

The silver planets of my thoughts

*

How a Poem Grows

     Early writers often try to tell their personal story. But magic can happen when they loosen their personal grip on the story and consider the limitless possibilities of the universe. If we open our senses to the cornucopia of material ceaselessly seething all around us, we might find that all we’d wanted to say would still follow us.

     When you gather phrases of possibility, when you combine them, you might discover something you’d always wished for, but didn’t know how to find.

*

What are the silver planets of your thoughts?

*

Anique Sara Taylor’s book Civil Twilight is Blue Light Poetry Prize 2022. Where Space Bends was published by Finishing Line Press 2020. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her chapbooks chosen Finalist in 2023 are: When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe (Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize); Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning (Minerva Rising); Cobblestone Mist (Long-listed Finalist by Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series). Earlier Chapbook Finalists: Where Space Bends (In earlier chapbook form 2014 by both Minerva Rising & Blue Light Press.) and Under the Ice Moon (2015 Blue Light Press). She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew), Diplôme (Sorbonne, Paris), a Drawing MFA & Painting BFA (With Highest Honors / Pratt) and a Master of Divinity degree. Follow her on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and her blog. Sign up for her newsletter.

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Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the book:

Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is the winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize.

As the sun sinks 6 ̊ below the horizon at dawn or dusk, it’s 5:30am/pm someplace in the world. In thirty shimmering poems (30 words/5 lines each), Civil Twilight probes borders of risk across a landscape of thunderstorms, quill-shaped mist, falcons that soar, the hope of regeneration, a compass to the center. Tightly hewn poems ring with rhythm and sound, follow ghosts who relentlessly weave through a journey of grief toward ecstasy. Spinning words seek to unhinge inner wounds among sea shells and hostile mirrors, eagles and cardinals––to enter “the infinity between atoms,” hear the invisible waltz. Even the regrets. The search for an inner silhouette becomes a quest for shards of truth, as she asks the simple question, “What will you take with you?”

Advance Praise:

“Taylor’s award-winning collection is mesmerizing. 30 poems, 30 words each shimmer with a refined intensity at once both taut and expansive … her emotional richness is as lyric as it is restrained.” ––Leslie T. Sharpe, Author of The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills

“Experience each poem, woven [with] great intimacy and rare musicality … Read all 30 poems aloud in sequence and feel yourself transformed.” ––Sharon Israel, Host of Planet Poet, Words in Space Radio Show and Podcast

“Civil Twilight is a stunningly crafted sequence of small poems … keenly attuned to the language of the natural world and all the mysteries that come with it.” —Sean Nevin, Author of Oblivio Gate

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Arranging Words: Poems by Fran Abrams - Review

What a clever little collection! Abrams knows how to use words precisely to bring out a chuckle, or even to make that light bulb come on in your head..."Hey, I've always thought/wondered that myself." As in, On the Tip of my Tongue, she talks about how when you talk to someone with a pierced tongue, you really have to work at not looking at it the entire time. And then there's this one, which touches on something I've always wondered myself. Why do we have names for some things and then just don't for others? From We Have No Name for Them...

When a parent loses a child, 

we have no name for that. 

When a boy loses his sister, 

there is not word to label him. 

Whether his sister died a victim

of car crash, shooting, or illness, 

we have no vocabulary 

for those who remain.

The poem Three Little Words showcases how powerful just three little words can be. A stanza from the poem:

Knowledge is power

Just do it

Nothing is impossible

And the hilariously funny All Ears. Seriously, the image in my head on this one. It also reminded me of a Shel Siverstein poem. 

This is such a fun collection. Things are so serious in the world right now. Sometimes it's nice to read something lighthearted to take us away from it all. This collection does just that.

About the collection:

Arranging Words is Abrams’ second chapbook collection. It is a series of light-hearted poems that asks the reader to look at words from a new perspective. These poems approach letters, words, and everyday phrases in a way that pokes fun at the eccentricities of the English language.

For example, her poem titled “K Knows How to Hide and Seek” begins with the line “Kknocks twice, but we only hear him once,” reminding us how often “k” is a silent letter.

The poem “Poetry Exercise” plays on the meaning of the word “exercise” with the line “Brain cells stretch, lift your arms, reach for words.” Phrases are deconstructed into literal meanings, such as in the poem “Beside Myself” that asks, “Am I myself or the one beside myself?”

This collection illuminates the quirks of the English language in a lively, humorous way while demonstrating a love for words themselves.

About the Author:

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. Her poems have been published in literary magazines online and in print and appear in more than a dozen anthologies. In July 2022, the title poem of this book, “Arranging Words,” was a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. Her two previous books are: I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir (2022) and The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras (2023). Learn more at www.franabramspoetry.com and Connect on Facebook at Fran Abrams, Poet.

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Dancehall by Tim Stobierski - Review

Love is a hard thing. It seems so easy when things are going well, and then they're not, and it's a whole other ball of wax. Many of us (like me, for instance) have hardened our hearts to love because of painful experiences, but that doesn't mean we don't look back at times on the love we had and feel sorrow and a deep longing for it. When I first started reading this collection, I felt the pain and longing rush back and I found myself in tears. It's powerful to evoke this kind of reaction in a reader. 

These two poems from Act One...I was not ready for my reaction (see above)...

Falling in love with you

was like venturing into the sun

after spending hours in the darkness

Melody

The first April night you and I kissed

in the parking lot behind the bar,

I remember the rain

played piano on my skin--

soft and cool, a song

I'd known the lyrics to

so many years before,

sitting in the backseat of my mother's Volvo

as she drove me home from Sunday school

the week we had learned about grace.

The words escape me,

but with your lips against mine

I can almost hear the tune.

and in Act Three, what I went through after my divorce...

from "Heartbreak echoes"...

There is, of course, that first momentous rip--

clear and fibrous and sharp

and so unlike any other pain you have ever felt.

Don't worry. It will heal.

It is the echoes that will get you,

dull and muffled as they are--

It's the echoes that will get you...and they're still there, however small, even after all these years.

And finally, I'm reminded it does get easier. It did get easier. But there's still what was, and what might have been...

from "Just as breathing"...

But just as breathing 

slows once more, and calms

once the running stops,

so, too, does this get easier. 

I'll admit it. This collection wrecked me. But what is poetry if it is not inducing such deep emotion? I say, well done, Mr. Stobierski. 

About the collection:

A queer love story in five acts, Dancehall follows the arc of a relationship from its earliest days to its final, somber conclusion.

In these 60 poems, you will join the speaker as they navigate the highs and the lows, the tranquility and the turbulence, the euphoria and the despair that comes with giving yourself fully to another.

Through language, imagery, and form at once universal and intimate, you are invited to take part in this love story – not as some distant observer, but as a central figure: The “you” to whom the speaker writes these poems.

Experienced poetry readers and poetry novices alike will enjoy the clean, simple style embodied in the majority of the poems.

Whether straight or queer, young or old, single or happily partnered, these poems are for anyone who has ever loved or longed for another.

Advance Praise:

“Tim Stobierski’s debut volume, Dancehall, captures the thrall of first real love in Sapphic poems that tumble with excitement and tumult. I rooted for the lovers, feeling as swept away as the speaker is: “Harvest me by the handful;/tear me out of the black earth.” Stobierski’s stunning imagery will have you enthralled again with the love poem and clinging with suspense while riding the affair’s arc.” – Pegi Deitz Shea, two-time winner of the Connecticut Book Award and author of The Weight of Kindling.

“Erotic, sublime, funny, and sharp, Tim Stobierski writes poems the way tango-dancers cross the floor: His confidence, mastery of language, sexual energy, and essential vitality make it impossible to turn away. You’ll read, and you’ll weep, or sigh, or laugh, or be swept off your feet by longing—grateful to be alive, but reminded of love’s price and desire’s debt. You’ll read Stobierski’s poems out loud and recite them at weddings, and you’ll remember them as you fall asleep.” –Gina Barreca, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Connecticut and author of They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted.

“Tim Stobierski’s collection, Dancehall, is in itself an ode to love, with all its passion and contradictions, gifting readers a wisdom we could only learn through a language like his, a skillful juxtaposition of love and loss, tenderness and lust. Stobierski is a master of craft, a speaker who knows how to feel, who knows that love is a journey and a puzzle. His titles intrigue, his last lines transport the reader way beyond the initial moment. Each short poem is a tender vignette that smacks of the truth of human relationships, each one a moment to be felt, tasted, savored, cold and warmth juxtaposed. In them, we feel the passion and contradictions, something between the tender and the tumultuous—something like love Tim Stobierski’s poems speak to everyone. Dancehall is a welcome reminder of poetry’s often overlooked power to awaken us to the beauty, complexity, and fragility of love, life, and the small gifts we often ignore.” –Pat Mottola, author of After Hours (Five Oaks Press)

“In these tender poems, Tim Stobierski traces the familiar yet always-wrenching arc of early love gained, then lost. And while the darlings here are queer and kissing in parking lots, this tale brings us right back to Dante’s Vita Nuova and the love lyric’s difficult task: to explore the particularities of a singular vanished beloved in language that allows its readers, its voyeurs, to feel intimately present.” –V. Penelope Pelizzon, author of Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time

“This book works like the metal teeth of a zipper, alternating exigent heartbreak with love throes. You can read it in one sitting, persisting even as its teeth catch on and scrape your skin, because it is such a pleasure ‘to remember what it is like / to be so lonely.'” –Darcie Dennigan, author of Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse and Madame X

“At first glance, Dancehall is a title that conjures, to some, Jamaican dancehall music and the various popular dances this reggae style and vibe created. But a dancehall is also a public hall or building in which people dance, whether you call it a club, a disco, or a nightspot. Tim Stobierski’s Dancehall tells the tale of a queer love story enacted nimbly as image/word dances and flourishes on the page. The speaker in these poems invites the reader to consider the myriad ways narratives are crafted in poetic form. One is struck by the brevity Stobierski establishes with poems such as the “Apolloniad,” which calls upon Greek mythology, and one poem “Falling in love with you” that appears pirouette-like in all five “acts” of the collection. There is a lot to admire in Stobierski’s collection of poems, and it’s a gem I’ll enjoy reading again and again.” –Sean Frederick Forbes, author of Providencia, a book of poems

“In Dancehall, a love story in five acts, Stobierski selects, dissects, and presents a series of moments—ranging from the mundane to the passionate to the anguished—that, when strung together, tell the complicated story of loving someone fully. While each poem is strong on its own, the work is tied together by recurring themes, comparisons, and language that take the reader on a rollercoaster of love and loss. Both playful and hard-hitting, it’s unputdownable.” –Catherine Cote, founder of Project Empathy

“Stobierski’s Dancehall traces romantic love from its early, ingenuous encounters, when one lover can entreat the other to “speak me into being“ and the whole natural world, from the keenest flower to the ocean itself, grows more vital and fine. But Stobierski’s book, like love itself, also embraces darkness. It goes on to explore that same love lost, as the poet learns to “give praise to the shadows,” in a renewed and more reflective effort to entwine the self and the other. These poems are acutely attuned to love’s shadow and love’s light.” –David Groff, Live in Suspense

About the Poet:

Tim Stobierski writes about relationships. His work explores universal themes of love, lust, longing, and loss — presented through the lens of his own experiences as a queer man. His poetry has been published in a number of journals, including the Connecticut River Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Grey Sparrow. His first book of poetry, Chronicles of a Bee Whisperer, was published by River Otter Press in 2012.

To pay the bills, he is a freelance writer and content strategist focused on the world of finance, investing, fintech, insurance, and software. In his professional writing, he prides himself on his ability to help the reader understand complicated subjects easily, a quality that informs his poetry.

He is also the founder and editor of Student Debt Warriors, a free resource for college students, graduates, and parents who are struggling to make sense of the complex world of student loans. Follow Tim on Instagram.

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The Unempty Spaces Between by Louis Efron - Review

I always find it uncanny when I read a collection and one particular poem seems to fit with my current mindset. I had been thinking about keepsakes and memories, photographs, and school papers and artwork from my sons' school days. I started feeling sad because we always seem to forget to go back and look at that stuff, and want so much to do it, and make the time for it...and yet, I feel like there's no time. And so, I read the poem "Empty Attic" and there it is, pretty much what I was thinking. And I quote, "...our treasures...memories unlit by such neglected bulbs...still failing to see ourselves illuminated as dust settles again on the balconies of our mind...precious things boxed for overwhelmed hands and a crowded heart..."

"Nicked Wedding Ring"...boy, does it speak the truth. I have witnessed a couple of deaths where greed and anger are all that seemed present. I quote a couple of stanzas here...

Death brings out the very best in people

The ugly DNA of their soul

Self-righteousness hangs above the church steeple

A look into a twisted peephole

Even before the body grows cold

Vultures fighting over the money basket

Papers burned to keep the stolen gold

Jewelry hidden in the viewing casket

"Arcadian Eyes" really captures the current crisis of our so plugged in world. "...we are lonely...a world that can no longer be unplugged...where soft hands without heartbeats join then pass through to emptiness."

A lot of the poetry I've been reading lately touches on the state of our world. Poetry is so organic. I think it is one of the best forms for these topics. In "Reflection," the last two stanzas are powerful.

A rhyme that riffs a careless scrawl

A world in desperate need of peace

Two hands dropping a wanting ball

A time that now must cease

What will tomorrow's reflection hold?

Blood-stained cheeks, sockets conspiring to swell

Clocks stop ticking before the story is told

Doors now open, a quick descent to Hell

This is an outstanding debut collection. Highly recommended to anyone who loves poetry.

Advance Praise:

"A beautiful creation of song and scar, of emotional complexity and simple witness, Louis Efron’s debut collection The Unempty Spaces Between mingles the natural and human worlds in a series of accessible, personal, universal poems. From lush to bare, the landscapes he presents us with are so intertwined with and impacted by our actions that we realize the two have always been one. Brimming with meditations deep as winter snow and boundless compassion and curiosity, these vibrant poems remain grounded in a universal familiarity that opens us up to something greater." -John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another

"Haunting, harrowing and frighteningly incisive . . . a welcome assault on the senses" -Jim Volz, PH.D
Editor, Shakespeare Theatre Association’s Quarto

" . . . a reverence for nature and personal connection that reminds us of Mary Oliver’s gorgeous nature poems." - Karol Nielsen, author of Small Life

"This work of poetry is worthy of a good read and the time of those who enjoy serious writing." -Emmett Wheatfall, author of Our Scarlet Blue Wounds

About the Poet:

Louis Efron is a poet and writer who has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, POETiCA REViEW, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Literary Yard, New Reader Magazine and over 100 other national and global publications. He is also the author of five books, including The Unempty Spaces Between, How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love; Purpose Meets Execution; Beyond the Ink; as well as the children’s book What Kind of Bee Can I Be?

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