July 31st, 2010
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Mary Meriam
THE ROMANCE OF MIDDLE AGE
Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showers
at night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swim
in cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hours
and days and decades, head to foot, and slim
is just a faded photograph. It’s strange
how people look away who once would look.
I didn’t know I’d undergo this change
and be the unseen cover of a book
whose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker.
One reaches for the pleasures of the mind
and heart to counteract the loss of quicker
knowledge. One feels old urgencies unwind,
although I still pluck chin hairs with a tweezer,
in case I might attract another geezer.
–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
Read by Author
July 30th, 2009
Review by Mary Meriam
EASY MARKS
by Gail White
David Robert Books
PO Box 541106
Cincinnati, OH 45254-1106
ISBN 978-1934999066
2008, 80 pp., $17.00
www.davidrobertbooks.com
Encountering a poet and her book of poems for the first time, I find myself fascinated by the slow emergence of the book’s persona. In a book of formalist poems, the persona can be seen in stanzas, like the rooms of a house. Though she may be working with received forms, these are rooms of the poet’s own creation, and she is free to move in and through the rooms as she wishes. Who is this persona? What is she moved by? How does she move through her rooms? For women have always had less space in which to move. Does the enclosure of the form open outward or spiral inward?
The poems in Gail White’s Easy Marks are marked by a central persona known as “woman,” in this case a highly intelligent woman aware of the restrictions around her and the prejudices against her. She’s an outsider, she may have disappeared, she may be a ghost, but she has plenty to do in her rooms, as we can see in this powerful poem:
The Disappearance of Mary Magdalene
At Pentecost, she’s gone. Her tongue of fire
had come already, scorching Peter’s brain
with a subtle whisper, “I have seen the Lord.”
Then, not another sound. As if she knew,
with her next breath, Peter was taking charge:
this movement was for men. There’d be no chair
for her in their tight circle.Underground, her faith ran like a waterfall. She lived
a hermit’s life. If women sought her out,
their stories thumped like washing on the rocks,
buckets in wells. Theirs was a gospel word
that shunned the daylight—tales Paul never heard.
July 5th, 2009
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Review by Mary Meriam
RHYTHM AND BOOZE
by Julie Kane
University of Illinois Press
1325 South Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820-6903
ISBN 978-0-252-07140-9
2003, 88 pp., $14.95
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/
Once upon a time, there was a powerful ruler called King Booze. Almost all the people were in thrall to King Booze, who was vicious and bloodthirsty and sucked the life out of his people. Only the most brave subjects of King Booze managed to escape his clutches. These brave souls formed little groups, but still, it wasn’t the same as being part of King Booze’s mighty nation. They were lonely.
The loneliness we get at night « Read the rest of this entry »
April 30th, 2009
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Review by Mary Meriam
BUNDLE O’ TINDER
by Rose Kelleher
The Waywiser Press
P.O. Box 6025
Baltimore, MD 21206
ISBN: 978-1904130-33-8
2008, 88 pp., £7.99
www.waywiser-press.com
Why do we read poems? Poems can be songs, prayers, chronicles, confessions, memories, meditations, complaints, portraits. Poems give us contact with the world and help us feel less alone. Reading a poem can be a moment of pleasure in an otherwise painful world. Sometimes poems speak for us when we can’t find the words, when it all seems too terrible. Here’s where we can be thankful for Rose Kelleher’s brave, strong book of poems, Bundle o’ Tinder. This book wrestles demons to the ground and pins them there, crushed.
In Kelleher’s poem, “Lourdes,” compassion is in full force. Lourdes is a grotto in France, with spring water that many pilgrims believe can heal. With great gusto, Kelleher writes:
Burst the spigots. Overflow.
Send mercy surging down the mountainside,
washing over every borderline.
Don’t just stand there. Go
These commanding lines are just one « Read the rest of this entry »
April 10th, 2009
Review by Mary Meriam
AMERICA IS HIDING UNDER MY BED
by Julia Vinograd
Zeitgeist Press
1630 University Avenue #34
Berkeley, CA 94703
ISBN 0-929730-84-x
2008, 70 pp., $8.95
www.zeitgeist-press.com
The cover of Julia Vinograd’s new book of poems, America Is Hiding Under My Bed, is graced by a lively, loving portrait of Julia, painted by her sister, Debbie Vinograd. Both Vinograds are portrait artists: Julia paints with words; Debbie is a poet with paint.
Adrienne Rich could have been describing the Vinograd sisters when she wrote, “The revolutionary poet loves people, rivers, other creatures, stones, trees inseparably from art, is not ashamed of any of these loves, and for them conjures a language that is public, intimate, inviting, terrifying, and beloved.”
The book’s eponymous poem is a public, intimate, inviting, terrifying, and beloved portrait of America as a felon, fugitive, and addict. In contrast to a poem about hiding is this poem about being invisible in plain sight:
