Poetry Readers Challenge discussion
Reviews 2011
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Brute Neighbors
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Great concept. I love the cover, too. I have requested one - let's see if there are any left.
I like Kristy Bowen, and have heard you speak highly of Richard Jones, too, PLUS you're in there, so I am crosing my fingers.
I like Kristy Bowen, and have heard you speak highly of Richard Jones, too, PLUS you're in there, so I am crosing my fingers.



I love Mary Oliver but must take her a little at a time. She drives my mother sort of crazy.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm in this book! It's an anthology of pieces about "urban nature" or finding nature in or alongside the city, or confronting our wilderness/civilization issues. It's primarily poems, but there are mini-essays and short stories, too, plus color and black & white photography.
It's one of the interesting DePaul University collaborative anthologies that is, at first and while supplies last, given out free to those who ask via aperson@depaul.edu, so if this is a special interest of yours, email and ask for a copy, giving your address! A previous anthology celebrated the inauguration of Barack Obama, and that sea change in the USA.
As always with an anthology, there were pieces I really, really liked and some that I read quickly without being moved or provoked to thought. One of my favorite poets, Richard Jones, is in it, and I loved his poem "The Fox," about that fleeting sighting of a fox in the city, told simply, so the poem makes it happen just as it happens in life. (There are other fox/coyote poems, and I had sent my own "Coyote" from Living on the Earth, but I see why the editor took the one about snakes mating and time spiraling up in smoked ever since Hiroshima.... "Coyotes of Lakeshore Drive," by Kristy Bowen, is about human coyotes.)
Anyway, this book is full of surprising urban nature encounters, gritty realities, and startling beauties. I'm glad to be in it, and glad to have read it.
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