David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 144
May 8, 2019
Review: See Me Improving
See Me Improving by Travis Nichols
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Travis Nichols writes “A poem needs a reader—how will I seduce you?” There are moments, lines, images when Nichols nears his goal of seduction. But overall this collection fails. Nichols often writes overweening attempts at a kind of surrealism that simply strain or even approach the inane
One of the title poems tries hard but strains:
Tomorrow in a kindergarten of trees
a carrot will spurt
from a small hole in the ground
and pin the berserk heart
of a rabbit to the sun
“A Poem from Bled” is one of the better attempts.
His poem, “New England,” seems to be Nichols version of Dickinson’s definition of poetry: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” But Nichols version is a bit silly, including such lines as:
When my scalp retreats
to the back of my skull
and my intestine fires flare
Through their tubes, I know
I am beginning….
“Ding Dong!”
I yell…
With some editing and rewriting, there is promise here. I hope future work by Nichols lives up to the title and shows improvement.
May 6, 2019
Review: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A profoundly depressing work that is profoundly convincing. It is an ice bucket to wake us up with a bit of hope that we may wake up:
“This goes beyond thinking like a planet, because the planet will survive, however terribly we poison it; it is thinking like a people, one people, whose fate is shared by all.”
“The emergent portrait of suffering is, I hope, horrifying. It is also entirely, elective. If we allow global warming to proceed, and to punish us with all the ferocity we have fed it, it will be because have chosen that punishment—collectively walking down a path of suicide. If we avert it, it will be because we have chosen to walk different path, and endure.”
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Our Placebo Screens
“Staring into the screen so we don’t have to see the planet die.” Poet Kate Tempest
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.”
View all my reviews
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.
