The Poem's Country: Place & Poetic Practice

by Shara Lessley (Editor), Bruce Snider (Editor)

In twenty-nine innovative essays, THE POEM'S COUNTRY: PLACE & POETIC PRACTICE considers how the question of place shapes contemporary poetry. Responding from cities and rural communities across the United States, the contributors of THE POEM'S COUNTRY thoughtfully and passionately explore issues of politics, personal identity, ecology, the Internet, war, sexuality, faith, and the imagination. Essential reading for students of poetry at every level, THE POEM'S COUNTRY examines the connection between lyric and geographical constraint, as well as how place challenges, enchants, and helps clarify the intersections between language and the world.

With essays by: Kazim Ali, Nicky Beer, Eavan Boland, Elizabeth Bradfield, Abigail Chabitnoy, Hayan Charara, Katy Didden, Jehanne Dubrow, Keith Ekiss, Rigoberto González, James Allen Hall, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Janine Joseph, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Christopher Kempf, Nick Lantz, Shara Lessley, Sandra Lim, Sabrina Orah Mark, Shane McCrae, Molly McCully Brown, Philip Metres, Wayne Miller, Craig Santos Perez, Emilia Phillips, Spencer Reece, Bruce Snider, Peter Streckfus, Mark Wunderlich, and Monica Youn.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

350 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2018

Reviews

[Lucas Bailor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm somewhat conflicted with how I feel about this book, which I think is for a couple primary reasons:
-I had very high expectations going into it
-Due to "place" being a term open to interpretation and thus risking very divergent essays
-My assumptions of what exactly the essays would be focused on

Primarily with those last two points, one of my biggest problems with this anthology was that there were a few essays that I feel didn't deal with the topic of "place" concretely enough, or that simply talked about a conception of "place" that I am less interested in. Also, there were some essays that I think just didn't talk about their conception of place well due to falling into somewhat unnuanced critique, particularly re: essays around the internet as place, which very easily fall into statements about the internet that feel too thin, or simply lacking complexity.
There were occasional essays that I felt just had too tenuous of a connection to the anthology as a whole as well, making them feel somewhat awkward in context of the collection.
However, I still give this 4 stars (probably closer to 3.5 but am rounding up). This is due to there being occasional essays that are, I think, incredibly important for how we think of place in a poetic context. Below are some of my favorite essays (some of which I think have been published elsewhere, as well) along with my favorite quote from the entire collection:
Kazim Ali, "What's American about American Poetry?"
Bruce Snider, "Trouble & Consolidation: Writing the Gay Rural"
Rigoberto Gonzalez, "Unpeopled Edens"
Joan Naviyuk Kane, "The Broken Lines"
Amaud Jamaul Johnson, "Broad Daylight"
Hayan Charara, "Thinking Detroit"
Craig Santos Perez, "On Writing from the New Oceania"
Mark Wunderlich, "Famous Mushroom"
Molly McCully Brown, "My Backyard, but Not What Happened to My Body"
Katy Didden, "A Poetics of Tectonic Scale: The Great Distance Poem"
A couple of these especially shine above others, as a couple are still a bit tenuous or even go on a bit too long (example: I think Didden's essay hits its stride when she starts discussing Layli Long Solider, which is a bit into the essay), but these are my favorites mostly because they either talk about specific places or offer me new ways of thinking about how I write place, which is what I was sort of expecting out of this anthology.
Anyways, I went on longer than I planned, and here's my favorite quote, from Charara's essay:
"We live in places. Regardless of where on earth, and when in time we live in them, and regardless of the extraordinary diversity of these places and of humanity across space and time, our joy and grief, our pain and happiness, remains much the same. How we encounter and reencounter those joys and pains also remains much the same. Whether in Houston or New York City, London or Madrid, on a trail in a forest or at a table in a coffee shop, when I think of Detroit in the years 1972 through 1994, which are all gone, or when I think of the house I grew up in on Carlin Street, which is gone, or my mother, gone, and everything else in the past which is always on the verge of coming to mind, when it comes, all of it, whether I want it to or not, it is always there, always here, and never the same."

[James Grinwis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm basically dittoing what Susan Mills wrote about this book here on goodreads. A very neat and concisely readable collection of essays from a variety of poets on place. Eavan Boland's intro caught much of what happens here: "In so much of this book the concept of place slides inevitably into the idea of displacement, and may indeed never have left it." Standout readings for me include Mary Bradfield's mediation on the icy seas, Amaud Jamaul Johnson's memoir on his youth and development into a poet in Compton, and Nicky Beer's foray into the relationship of how we think about poetry and the nature of aquariums.

[Susan Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection offers thoughtful and moving essays for aspiring and established writers, as well as those interested in poetry and place. I especially loved Amaud Jamaul Johnson's reflections on the history of Compton, Elizabeth Bradfield's study of the ocean, and Bruce Snider's memoir of gayness and the Midwest. There are essays on the city, driving as a meditative act, Native poetry, invented landscapes, ecopoetics, and the body as place, among others. The essays come in a variety of forms. Some are more scholarly, while others are more like lyric essays or memoirs (Sabrina Orah Mark, Spencer Reece, Shane McCrae). The editors and authors also recommend "essential" poems for further reading, the majority of which can be accessed online. Great book for students or for your personal library.

[gabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

started really strong and gave me lots of ideas and notes