Maybe it’s just my age, maybe it’s the era we’re living in, but these last few years have been tough, and I’m not even thinking of covid or politics–I’m not even going to mention them. (Okay, I just did.) But suffice it to say, I’ve had a hard time keeping my nose above water. I haven’t kept up with poetry. But lately I’ve been wading back into reading and writing. There is so much I’ve missed. I just wanted to mention a few things here.
Like Tim Seibles amazing collection, Voodoo Libretto: New and Selected Poems. And Terrance Hayes’ stunning review published in The Yale Review in which Hayes analyzes Seibles’ poetry as if it were a “bookbioboardgame.” If you haven’t read either of these, you must!
Like Chard deNiord’s last interview with Charles Simic, published in The Paris Review, which includes this delightful exchange:
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written so many memorable poems about poetry and about writing poetry, one of which includes this definition—“Poetry is always the cat concert under the window of the room in which the official version of reality is being written.” How exactly would you describe the cat concert?
SIMIC
Look at it this way: I have a cat that’s twenty-five years old. She’s a black cat. She complains. She comes in and she says to me, You’re still here? Poetry really is a comic scene where you, whoever you are, pretend to be in control, but really the speaker is at the mercy of things that are completely out of his hands. But he pretends that he is in control. We’re schmucks.
Like Cassandra Atherton’s review in Plume of Peter Johnson’s latest collection, While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems, which is not only a review but also an illuminating essay on Peter Johnson’s poetry as well as his contribution to the prose poem. The review begins:
Self-confessed “wise guy of the prose poem” and also its unofficial laureate, Peter Johnson is one of America’s foremost practitioners and critics of prose poetry. The publication of his While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems provides an important opportunity to reflect on the reputation of a master of the form, who, according to poet and critic Chard deNiord, “almost singlehandedly revived the currency of the prose poem during the nineties and early oughts.” Indeed, Johnson has been a major force in the development of the American prose poem for more than three decades and has contributed significantly to its prominence on the world stage.
Go to Source
Author: Nin Andrews
