David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 212

An uneven but worth effort

domina Un/blued by Ruth Ellen Kocher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the anti-aesthetic shatter of the post-post-post, any art that is at all representational, any language that is at all eloquent, any verse that is at all unified is at best suspect, and at worst disrespected.

In the best poems in this collection, Kocher makes good use of the shatter to unveil the slave/dominant relationship, whether individual or societal. Perhaps despite herself, some lines approach a kind of eloquence.

Then there are “Un/blued” which repeats E/empire empire Empire over and over in three columns. I get it. I get it. I get it.

The extravagant use of white space mostly works to convey the shatter as well. Such use can be mere laziness, but that does not seem so here. The theme of domination/slavery also mostly works, approaching a versified “Fifty Shades” but not falling into it. Sometimes the fragmentation of dialogue conveys the shatter. Other times it seems pseudo-Wasteland.

All in all, I would argue that readers of poetry should spend one trip though this collection. It is very much worth one reading. Some poems merit rereading, such as:

“Near Torre Argentina”
“Exercise 17”
“D/domina: Daughter”
“D/domina: Forgetting the Tree”

and especially “D/domina: Issues Involving Interpretation”






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New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry

New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wendell Berry is one of the more under-rated poets of the last 50 years. His new collection of his best over that time demonstrates time and again his deep connection with the land, his profound but complex religious faith, and his lyrical ear. His poems can be read and appreciated by those who regularly read verse and those who seldom do.

That accessibility and his impatience with artifice in poetry or politics may suggest why some in the academic world ignore or disparage his writing.

The later collections are not as strong as those from 1994 and before. His elegies, especially the one for his grandfather, are haunting and universal. I highly recommend living with this collection for a while.

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Labor Day Book Sale

Check here from August 30 to September 3 for specials on my books this weekend:

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sam/e/B00K82RUTY

Watch for a "Labor Day Special" on my two books Aug 31 to Sept 5.

Watch for a "Labor Day Special" on my two books Aug 31 to Sept 5.

Check back at the following sites:

http://www.davidanthonysam.com/bookstore/

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sam/e/B00K82RUTY/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1408550476&sr=1-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/david-anthony-sam

http://www.indiebound.org/search/apachesolr_search?author_filter=Sam%2C+David+Anthony

A poem often requested

This poem, from Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves, is often requested when I do a public reading:

from the inertia of the flight               transferred from sky to silent tree                            this time, the rock flew certain,   the arm was true, the motion perfect.               There was a "thuk"–as if the rock                         had struck the branch alone.   The robin stumbled from the tree,               dropping feathers, losing its flight,                         abandoning its grace, its pulse of life.   The robin bounced three inches               from the red clay bared by a shovel                         beneath the silent locust tree.   The bird lay still. The tree no               longer moved. The boy stood, stunned                         by the anger of his unthought aim,   by the power of his arm to negate               the flight, the pulse of bird.                         There was no blood. The robin's eyes   were beady, but clear. The boy               backed away from the black feathers.                         The rock had disappeared,   transferring its stillness, its inertia               of silence and negation                         to deny the pulse, the life of bird.   The bird lay still, its eyes useless,               its wings folded against its breast,                         having spent its motion to the stone.
The rock flew on with the bird's               momentum–forever–in the boy's mind                           negating the wind, the sky, the just passed spring. 

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Frost is one of the few great poets who can write narrative verse, including conversation, and have it work both as story and as verse. This collection is held together by a theme of the relationship between humans, each other, and the natural world. There is cruelty, often unintentional or unknowing. But there is beauty in the intersection and the conflicts that result.

"The Road Not Taken" leaves its ambiguous ending hanging there: is it celebration, regret, or is it a facile narrator missing his own point? And in "Snow" the complexities of human feelings swirl with the storm that challenges Meserve to heroism or is it foolishness, or is it love for his wife?

Frost has often been underestimated, more by his fans than by some post-modernists who seem to loathe his writing. This collection bears rereading and savoring for its depths.

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Reading "Momentum" at the Raven's Nest July 11, 2014

You can watch my reading of  “Momentum” from “Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves” at Culpeper’s Raven’s Nest Cofffeehouse on July 11, 2014 on my website:

http://www.davidanthonysam.com/audio-video-photo/

or on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT_1NJmwGaI

Poetry Reading - Arts Center of Orange - September 2

My next poetry reading and book signing is scheduled for September 2, 2014 from 5:30pm at the Arts Center of Orange, VA.


Hope to see you there.

Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke --- Read it.

Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent collection by Laura Kasischke with many fine lines and poems. There are moments where the collection lags with a few uneven spots, but Kasischke always redeems the waiting on the next page or two.

Some of the parts that struck me, some for their elogquence, some for their simplicity:

"A girl in a bed trying to tune the AM radio to the voices of the dead."

"... the soldiers marching across some flowery field in France bear their own soft pottery in their arms—heart, lung, abdomen."

"as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it."

"The wind has toppled the telescope over onto the lawn: So much for stars. Your brief shot at the universe, gone."

"Bright splash of blood on the kitchen floor. Astonishing red. (All that brightness inside me?)"

"And my father ringing the bell for the nurse in the night, and then not even the bell. Ringing the quiet. Waiting in the silence"

"Believable, chronological, but so quickly erased that it only serves to prove that the universe is made of curving, warping space."

"When I built my luminous prison around you, you simply lay down at the center of it and died."

"Who knew those bees were making honey of our grief?"


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Reading at the Orange Rotary Club - August 5, 2014

I enjoyed reading at the Rotary Club of Orange VA for my fellow Rotarians.


And thanks to those who purchased copies of my two books, including Linda Miller, (pictured).

This was the poem I finished with today, from Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves :


“When you look too long into an abyss,the abyss looks into you.” – Nietzsche
I am becomehurricane,whirling manifestationof the abyssI too longlook into.I wear whorlsin my bloodstream.I hear windsin my earpulse.I am made of waterand wild air.In the end, Idissipate acrossthe wide plainsin rain,brief flashes,
and long echoes.