lots and lots of neat

recommended: rae gouirand

I think one of the reasons I'm recommending Gouirand is that her poems were such a contrast to the other poems in the Fall 2008 issue of Forklift, OH. Don't get me wrong, the predominant style in the magazine is exciting. I like the kinetic imaginative rush many of these poets present. But often I don't feel there's much of a commitment to crafting a poem in these types of poems. They feel like a race to someplace, and the poet doesn't really care where that place is, so long as it's just fast, fast, fast!

But Gouirard's poems have a felt thoughtfulness to them. I'm especially fond of "Plurals," where formal elements and sincere sentiment and real idea come together for a poem that makes me invested in the speaker. "What is there to weep for:" the poem starts, which could easily be guilty of too much sentiment. In fact, I think I would be wary of most poems starting with a line like this, except in this case Gouirand punctuates with a colon instead of a question mark. It defuses, even mutes, the moment by pulling away from the question, and I think making this sentiment more a state of mind, which can be thought through.

But not thought through clinically, or without feeling. She still has moments where the poem touches on the speaker's feelings: "more is not more but still // it moves me: like the moving / through of mouth on mouth". Hopefully in this quote you can see the evident feeling that is occasion for the poem, while the careful language that pushes that feeling into further thought.

Related Links:
Forklift, OH (worldcat search for Forklift, OH)

recommended: mary szybist

I have to admit, I am always crazy for Mary Szybist's poems. Crazy meaning interested, impressed, indulged, any way that you would want to say you experienced a poem, and feeling as though you have found that place because the poet has led you to it with kindness and insight. What I mean by that is that Szybist's poems tend to a transparency and accessibility because they are so graceful with their intelligence.

For instance, in the poem from the 2009 issue of Witness, "Conversion Figure," the speaker is falling into a woman. Who is it? I don't know. I've read through the poems a few times, and I switch between the speaker as Satan, or the Holy Spirit, or Christ (could this be a poem about the Annunciation?), but I really can't be certain which of these it is. "Out of God's mouth I fell," says the speaker, which is provocative enough to make me think of the extreme character types, but still not enough to make me certain which character it is.

Add to this the ambiguous feminine figure being fallen into, and the poem takes even greater pleasures. Should a line like "Stop licking cake from your fingers" make me look at her in a sarcastic light? an overly wholesome one? I just read Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, and I would say these multiple possibilities are exactly what make this poem so strong. Of course, I think what else makes this ambiguity so strong is the sharpened description of the figures populating the poem--Szybist gives a lot, inviting the reader to imagine their own ideas about how the spaces could be filled.

Related Links:
Witness
Granted

recommended: carolyn hembree

Um, what? That's what I want to say to Carolyn Hembree. What? Because I'm thinking, where is this speaker getting all this from? I've never met anyone named Eyecandy. Or Cleb, but I suspect if I waited around long enough, maybe at some dive bar, and I got to be friends with the bartender I might meet someone like that.

But of course I'm not going to. I like meeting the Cleb in Hembree's poems, though. She manages that feat fiction writers do all the time: introduce dispicable characters a reader would discreetly avoid in real life, but in writing, takes a nice long leer. I like leering here. Because Cleb is pretty funny. And the whole poem is spoken pretty funny, like the speaker wishes he were as drunk as Cleb and Eyecandy (at least I think they're drunk). And in the end, what the poem mainly comments on is attitudes and the bizarre attitudes people have, and what it makes them do.

I'd say it's mainly fiction, but it's told in a poetic voice. How do you like that? And even the open poetic form fits here.

Related Link:
Witness

recommended: forrest gander

I'm not at all interested in the occasion for this poem. The action described here, of "touching" someone with new-minty breath, is fashioned into something much more precious than it really is. I'm not sure I can imagine any poem that could take that gesture (a woman who has just smeared toothpaste on her upper and lower teeth), tie it to evaporation (the poem is titled "Evaporation 2"), and then claim that the speaker is "touched" in any way.

However, I am still recommending this poem, published in the May/June 2009 issue of Boston Review. The parenthetical asides, and their constant rhythm shifts, invigorates this poem. "the meanings (in increments) lie / bare (she says) (Oh, to her friend) // who is watching" That moment, "Oh to her friend" is where I feel the poem invents a new grammatical relationship (she says, "Oh to her friend") or the speaker says "Oh" in response to the meanings), and, at the same time, changes up the pacing of a reading. Mr. Gander continues to make these parenthetical comments, and they may be straightforward descriptive additions, or they may have this element of ambiguity, adding a graceful density to the poem's possible meanings.

Related Links:
Boston Review (read poem online here)
Eye Against Eye

recommended: jynne dilling martin

On the whole, a good group of "Discovery"/Boston Review Contest winners in the May/June 2009 issue. But I have to say that Ms. Martin's poem, "Reprucussions of the Current Import/Export Ratio," stands out as my favorite of the group. I like it when the theme of a poem is tied to the action of multiple images in a poem. For this poem what this means is that within the first two stanzas, the idea of "personal mystery" and "invisibility" are made central to the poem. They go together. Of course, they go together, but the art Martin uses in stating invisibility makes me feel a depth to the concept, partially because of the skipped rock sinking, which for me evokes a physical sensation that doesn't seem to have an end, or a bottom to the whatever this body of water is, only sinking.

But this depth is also created by the simplicity and specificity of the images. Turnip seeds sewn into coats and skipping stones sinking out of sight. They have such an easy coincidence, and that ease is what I think lends the poem authority. So that when Martin extends the image, I trust her, and I keep trusting her enough so that when it lands on these turnips sprouting out of gravesites, and a donkey (which had appeared earlier drawing mathematics in the dirt) who has its leg poised for more problems, and I'm not sure I can put in words who "you" are at the end, I'm willing to accept the speaker's need to pose a question without my knowing what all the parts of the question are about. Because this poem is more about the sentiment that drove her to ask a donkey anything.

Related Links:
Boston Review (or read the poem online)

recommended: sara michas-martin

The Spring 2009 issue FIELD is all poetry! And enter Sara Michas-Martin in her first appearance in the magazine! Next, enter as many colors for the brain as you can imagine: twilight, pink, bowling ball, the color of your head under a hat. The brain is flexible. It thinks! And one of my favorite parts of this poem is the way it creates a dialogue between "what the speaker has to say" and "why the speaker would be making such claims." It's kind of like that subtle point where you see a brain, physically see it, and then try to understand that all your thoughts actually happen in that cauliflower looking thing.

In the case of this poem, though, I am more interested because of the way the poem slyly complicates itself, starting with this exotic image of a brain in a jar, and then speculating about what that looks like (a government that's lost its country?), and then, through implication, trying to understand how this thing could be responsible for the decisions people make for themselves. It's not a huge step, then, for the speaker to wonder how her brain might be responsible for herself, and, if the poem isn't already complicated enough for you, that's where Michas-Martin takes you to school. All these different ways a brain could be working: memories, biases, imaginations. They're all there.

And while this is happening, she keeps admiring the brain, just for being a brain! "I ask if I can touch the brain, / maybe hold it, and when I do its weight / tests the give of both hands. I think of bowling / and watermelons floating in a pool" I think those watermelons floating in the pool are my favorite!

Related Links:
FIELD (worldcat search for FIELD)
Goddard Faculty page (she has a statement about brains there!)