Poetry

Blood Atlas by Lynne DeSilva Johnson, 90’s?. As in all atlases, geography is central. From Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn in the first poem, near the Marcy housing development, to the candles melted into Himalayans, to the ride on the Hudson Line, we are reminded of the importance of place and of a cartographic approach to living and life. Gazing at a partner, the poet muses, “How foreign, the geography of another.” In the final poem Baedeker, a reference to a German publisher of travel guides, a home is viewed in geographical terms, the living room, an archipelago. The collection is rooted in a complex New York, the one found in Concrete Shadows – part whore and part dream maker, permanent as steel and fragile as snowflakes. Lullaby of Birdland declares, “Here lives possible.” Here we find “teacups of art and despair.” New Yorkers know what she means when she says,

Dear Elena, Letters to Elena Ferrante, Poems by Tina Cane ff. I feel quite privileged to have number 136 of 150 copies of this gorgeous book with artwork by Esther Solondz. (Other printed versions are available too). My project of reading books by the Friends community has led me to other works, just so I could get a handle on allusions. For Anne Waldman’s book I read Blake’s The Book of Thel, for Camille Guthrie’s, I went back to the Brothers Grimm, and for this work, I read My Brilliant Friend by the novelist who goes by the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. I was rewarded for my trouble (actually it was no trouble at all but a real pleasure) in the very first of these poem/letters by the connection between the doll named Tina in Ferrante’s novel and the poet Tina.

The novel concerns a friendship fraught with competition and bound…

Manderley, Poems by Rebecca Wolff, middle school in the 80’s. I picked this work because I had just read Nora Olsen’s homage to Daphne du Maurier (Maxine Wore Black)and wondered how Rebecca Wolff would incorporate Rebeccainto her own poetry. Early on we see that the connection is through the world of dreams. In her first poem in this collection, Rebecca makes the point that when one dreams, “every character/is you…” and since most of these poems could well be dreams, we see in the denizens of this Manderley, the facets that make up one particular sleeping psyche. A woman visiting the gardens of a castle steals some dirt for her begonia. To hide her crime, she “surreptitiously /kicked the earth with her royal toe.” How did she turn out to be royal, I wondered. Later, in another poem, a volume of Freud appears on a bedside table. Perhaps the r…

Ism is a Retrovirus by Matthew Hupert, late 70’s?. In the section of this poetry collection titled Ars Poetica, Matthew gives his 10 Top Tips – For Poets. Among them is the warning, “If all your poems sound/ the same you/’ve only written one poem.” No danger of that in this work where every poem sounds very different, sometimes harking back to old forms (like the sonnet and the sestina), sometimes incorporating experimental echoes of rap and jazz, and sometimes just speaking in a brand new tongue. Columbus Circe sings and roams like Whitman. Terse aphorisms meet up with rambling stream of consciousness. Last lines sometimes punch out at you, sending up the preceding setup with hilarity. His subject matter evokes a new look at contemporary masculinity. Loss evolves from raw pain to poetry. Playfulness and surprise await you in this collection.