David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 200
August 7, 2015
The latest issue of Yellowchair includes my poem “The Alien in Meeting”
The latest issue of Yellowchair Review includes my poem “The Alien in Meeting”
July 17, 2015
Pick up a copy of The Piedmont Virginian Summer 2015 edition to read two of my poems.
Pick up a copy of The Piedmont Virginian Summer 2015 edition to read two of my poems.
July 15, 2015
Charles Wright’s bittersweet “Buffalo Yoga”
Buffalo Yoga: Poems by Charles Wright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Charles Wright’s Buffalo Yoga poems contain no buffaloes, but do interweave personal memories with the natural world, history and biography.
“Everything’s more essential in norther light, horses/Lie down in the dry meadow,/Clouds trail, like prairie schooners…”
And the losses of the past are like the absence of buffalo from a plain.
“Thus do we take our deaths up on our shoulders and walk and walk,/ Trying to get back
Wright’s prosy and natural style still has a subtle eloquence, and only falters a bit in the latter third of the collection. But it is a worth collection, accessible, yet deep.
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July 7, 2015
A collection that tells the tales we need to hear
The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison by Maggie Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Maggie Smith’s new collection looms rich in terrible “grim” fairy tales, told with a hint of the child’s voice but very much adult in theme and honesty. Veils slip aside briefly to suggest ancient myths and stories told over the eons to try to help us understand the falling of stars and dying of everything we love or touch. Wolves and birds are mythic beings. The forest invades our nightmares and day dreams. The common lurches into the eerie and back again.
The commonplace weirds into the uncommon: “The seatbelt buckle branded/its open mouth into your wait.” Nature dreams itself into our daylight: “Wrens pinned like brooches/to the trees, singing, their eyes glass beads.” Always, death lurks in the eyes of the forest and in the inanimate briefly animated: “When the stone/healed behind you, it sounded like a lid closing over a tomb.”
Smith identifies with other beings, becoming the other, allowing the other to enter into herself: “I began as one cricket singing/one song. Soon we were all singing,” and contemplates the self-consciousness that removes her from the whole as well as the inevitable silence from the chorus of the living:
The sound/of me missing might be clearer
than my song. I could gift it to the night,
which misses its dear, departed silences.
Or finally:
“One night the cricket finished boring
through the air to me. But before I could see him,
the trees went dark and took me with them.
I had not been familiar with Maggie Smith’s writing, but I will certainly look forward to reading more of her poetry. This collection of adult fairy tales courageously faces life and its end with simple eloquence and even a touch of wicked charm.
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June 29, 2015
Hirshfield is a wonderful guide through poems
Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World by Jane Hirshfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jane Hirshfield doesn’t just write some of the finest poetry being published at this moment, she is also a great explicator and celebrator of poems. In Ten Windows, she argues that since language has power and poetry is uniquely powerful language, poems can indeed change the world. I gave up on trying to write the world whole decades ago, but she still makes good points as she gives excellent readings of powerful poetry:
“And by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share.”
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June 28, 2015
June 26, 2015
The Write Place at the Write Time to publish one of my poems again
The Write Place at the Write Time accepted my poem “Still Life: Old Man with Mockingbird” for this fall.
June 25, 2015
My poem “Remnant” has been published in American Tanka.
My poem “Remnant” has been published in American Tanka.
June 22, 2015
Yellow Chair Review has accepted my poem “The Alien in Meeting”
The Yellow Chair Review has accepted my poem “The Alien in Meeting” for publication in its August online edition. This poem is from my unpublished collection “Stone Bird.” Thus far in 2015, a total of 16 journals have accepted 26 of my poems for publication.
June 16, 2015
Bacon Review will publish my poem “Returning”
The Bacon Review has decided to publish my poem “Returning” in a future edition. #yam
