David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 143
May 5, 2019
Review: Marching Orders: Poems
Marching Orders: Poems by Bill Glose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This powerful collection of poetry by veteran of the first Gulf War, Bill Glose, manages to be violently truthful, harshly hopeful, angry and yet forgiving. Probably only a combat veteran could have written anything with this truth; but only a poet gifted with the ability to find the right images and words could have made the ugly, fearful, heroic truth so beautiful and moving.
This is one of the best collections of poetry I have read by a poet writing today. It should be read by everyone, whether they like reading poetry or not. Live the experience of our warfighters through the vivid language of Glose and, as he writes in “Homecoming,” “Never let it go.”
May 3, 2019
Literature of the Categories
“When literature is divided into categories based on the politics or even the worldly identity of the writer, everyone loses.” Susan Cheever
Liberty and the word
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell
April 30, 2019
A Powerful Collection of Poetry Vividly Truthful to the Warfighters’ Experience
Marching Orders: Poems by Bill Glose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This powerful collection of poetry by veteran of the first Gulf War, Bill Glose, manages to be violently truthful, harshly hopeful, angry and yet forgiving. Probably only a combat veteran could have written anything with this truth; but only a poet gifted with the ability to find the right images and words could have made the ugly, fearful, heroic truth so beautiful and moving.
This is one of the best collections of poetry I have read by a poet writing today. It should be read by everyone, whether they like reading poetry or not. Live the experience of our warfighters through the vivid language of Glose and, as he writes in “Homecoming,” “Never let it go.”
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April 28, 2019
Thank you Bill Glose for recording the poetry readings from April 25, 2019
Thank you, Bill Glose, for recording the poetry readings from the April 25, 2019 event cosponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia and Germanna Community College.
April 27, 2019
Lowering the Bar
“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
– Alexander Pope
April 26, 2019
April 25 Poetry Reading a Success
The Poetry Reading at Germanna Community College the evening of April 25 was a success. Thirty-two attended the event, cosponsored by the College and the Poetry Society of Virginia. Jim Gaines, Beth Spragins and Bill Glose were joined by 8 students from my creative writing class and 6 others in reading their work.
My students, none of whom had read their poetry in public before, all did a fine job.
Looking forward to doing it again in October.
April 22, 2019
Neruda’s final collection rewards the reader
The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Neruda’s last and unfinished collection still contains a number of poems that are as wonderful as any her has written. These poems are both very person, such as the last poem he wrote to his beloved, Matilde (“Finale”), but also touch the universal if not the mythic (“Returning”).
Many of these poems feel unfinished, not just because they have no titles, but they lack that final quality of workmanship Neruda gives to his collections as they are published. Read this collection regardless. Neruda unfinished is superior to so many poets writing today and the collection as a whole rewards us as we experience the haunting sea and silent bell.
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April 17, 2019
Thank you Sky Island Journal for publishing two of my poems in their Issue 8
Thank you Sky Island Journal for publishing my poems “Smith” and “Dark Sector Lab, South Pole, March 2014” in Issue 8 Spring 2019. This is the first time my work has appeared in this journal.
April 14, 2019
Facing Winter
Winter Garden by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A pensive collection as Neruda faces the Winter Garden of his dying. These elegiac poems sing with the imagery of nature and the lyrical voice of one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets as he faces the termination of his light. He addresses his literal last homecoming from France where he serves his native Chile, and a figurative homecoming as his “single journal” of life returns to the silence from which it came:
I am a man of so many homecomings
that form a cluster of betrayals,
and again, I leave on a frightening voyage
in which I travel and never arrive anywhere:
my single journey is a homecoming.
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