Poetry and About Poetry

Its Day Being Gone by Rose McLarney My rating: 4 of 5 stars In this collection, Rose McLarney interweaves the personal and the historical, the geography and the rain and mud, showing how all things are connected and the value and validity of the simple before the large. Her language and imagery are evocative, but not overly studied, colloguial without being prosy. Here she likens mistaking a doe for a predatory cougar to her thinking a young man who stops to offer her a lift is a rapist: The predator’s eyes go gentle as a doe’s because they are a doe’s. The man rides up, in shining rims and mirror tinted windows. And the sunset, which we love for its colored summary, gloriously reimagines the day As there is life in her writing, so there is a wistfulness for loss, that which is already past, and that which must soon go: As if those lives had wandered away from me and I was the one who would run for days on a scent-memory toward an end to which I thought I was bound. Spending sometime ...

Its Day Being Gone by Rose McLarney My rating: 4 of 5 stars In this collection, Rose McLarney interweaves the personal and the historical, the geography and the rain and mud, showing how all things are connected and the value and validity of the simple before the large. Her language and imagery are evocative, but not overly studied, colloguial without being prosy. Here she likens mistaking a doe for a predatory cougar to her thinking a young man who stops to offer her a lift is a rapist: The predator’s eyes go gentle as a doe’s because they are a doe’s. The man rides up, in shining rims and mirror tinted windows. And the sunset, which we love for its colored summary, gloriously reimagines the day As there is life in her writing, so there is a wistfulness for loss, that which is already past, and that which must soon go: As if those lives had wandered away from me and I was the one who would run for days on a scent-memory toward an end to which I thought I was bound. Spending sometim...

My poem “Above Emile Creek” is included in the Fall 2014 edition of FLARE: The Flager Review, available here: http://issuu.com/bthompson73/docs/flare_fall_2014 on page 42. Don’t be confused by the misprint in the contents. My name has not changed to “David Dam.”

My poem "Above Emile Creek" is included in the Fall 2014 edition of FLARE: The Flager Review, available here: http://issuu.com/bthompson73/docs/flare_fall_2014 on page 42. Don't be confused by the misprint in the contents. My name has not changed to "David Dam."

Living Wages by Michael Chitwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars In "Living Wages," Michael Chitwood displays Robert Frost's love of manual labor and his simplicity of language and everyday imagery coupled with depth of thought and feeling. Something's being painted or patched. The rattle of the handy, portable rack of stairs is a sound like no other. The shudder of the extension, as one reach rides its twin up until it's twice as long as it began. Good work needs good assistance and what a clever commotion this is. There are no weak poems in this collection, no twaddle of seeking the "experimental" which too often means the inconsequential phrased as the incommunicable. Chitwood speaks cleanly and clearly and reaches the heart's muscle fiber. View all my reviews

Solstice The clear night drops snow from the clarity of stars, sighing in a gather under our footsteps. The brevity of cold light outside leads us indoors to the warmth greeting from a fireplace. There oak and maple hiss steam from snow crannied into bark. Summer sweet sap crackles. And we are witness to the logs becoming red glows, our faces the embers of quiet celebration.

Solstice The clear night drops snow from the clarity of stars, sighing in a gather under our footsteps. The brevity of cold light outside leads us indoors to the warmth greeting from a fireplace. There oak and maple hiss steam from snow crannied into bark. Summer sweet sap crackles. And we are witness to the logs becoming red glows, our faces the embers of quiet celebration.

My deepest gratitude to all who bought copies of my books during 2014. As promised, because there was a profit on Memories in Clay , Dreams or Wolves , a donation of $300 was made to the Germanna Community College Educational Foundation.

My deepest gratitude to all who bought copies of my books during 2014. As promised, because there was a profit on Memories in Clay , Dreams or Wolves , a donation of $300 was made to the Germanna Community College Educational Foundation.

What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems by Ruth Stone My rating: 4 of 5 stars “My unknown, my own skeleton, you will take me where the cartilage loosens and the blood dries and I will let go my burning suns. On this fine collection of poems, Ruth Stone shows why she was one of the finest poets of the last century, and why she is too often under-rated today. Stone writes from life but not wallow in herself. She reconnects science with common life experience. And with a common word, she uncommonly phrases for us what we need to have said. View all my reviews

What Love Comes To: New & Selected Poems by Ruth Stone My rating: 4 of 5 stars "My unknown, my own skeleton, you will take me where the cartilage loosens and the blood dries and I will let go my burning suns. On this fine collection of poems, Ruth Stone shows why she was one of the finest poets of the last century, and why she is too often under-rated today. Stone writes from life but not wallow in herself. She reconnects science with common life experience. And with a common word, she uncommonly phrases for us what we need to have said. View all my reviews

The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise My rating: 2 of 5 stars Weise obviously spent time and attention to her vision of what this book should be. It strives to be experimental, a common aesthetic standard today. After Dada, experimental is a hard direction to go and still have something to communicate. In sum, it may just be me, but this collection did not engage me, surprise me, or in any significant way cause me to reread. In fact, I skimmed many after the first few lines put me off. View all my reviews

The Book of Goodbyes by Jillian Weise My rating: 2 of 5 stars Weise obviously spent time and attention to her vision of what this book should be. It strives to be experimental, a common aesthetic standard today. After Dada, experimental is a hard direction to go and still have something to communicate. In sum, it may just be me, but this collection did not engage me, surprise me, or in any significant way cause me to reread. In fact, I skimmed many after the first few lines put me off. View all my reviews

Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr My rating: 3 of 5 stars Orr’s guide is not really a guide to reading poems as such, although the chapter on Form does a bit of that. Rather, it is mostly a guide to the established Poetry Business and to how most writers who aspire to formal recognition play the game, willingly or not. If you love or like some poems, that us, if some speak to you in ways that matter, you may be interested in the oil and grease and gears and noise behind the machines that make published poetry. Or not. If you are wondering, in the words of the last chapter, “Why bother?” then I would not start here. There are several other books that offer you a way into reading poetry so that you might discover the ones that matter to you and are good art: A Poetry Handbook Paperback by Mary Oliver How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry Edward Hirsch And others. Orr offers this humble, and somewhat underwhelming reason: “I ...

Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry by David Orr My rating: 3 of 5 stars Orr's guide is not really a guide to reading poems as such, although the chapter on Form does a bit of that. Rather, it is mostly a guide to the established Poetry Business and to how most writers who aspire to formal recognition play the game, willingly or not. If you love or like some poems, that us, if some speak to you in ways that matter, you may be interested in the oil and grease and gears and noise behind the machines that make published poetry. Or not. If you are wondering, in the words of the last chapter, "Why bother?" then I would not start here. There are several other books that offer you a way into reading poetry so that you might discover the ones that matter to you and are good art: A Poetry Handbook Paperback by Mary Oliver How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry Edward Hirsch And others. Orr offers this humble, and somewhat underwhelming reason: "I ca...

I was deeply saddened to hear of the sudden and far too early passing of Claudia Emerson, past Poet Laureate of Virginia. Her poetry was accessible and real, compassionate and honest. “The is the season of her dying,” she wrote in “ Daybook ,” and you have kept it, I find, underneath the stairs in a box filed with photographs.” Emerson poetry will be the photographs we read to remember her: Artifact Early Elegy: Headmistress She wrote so much about death—but it was always life she celebrated. And so we must celebrate Claudia Emerson’s life at her passing.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the sudden and far too early passing of Claudia Emerson, past Poet Laureate of Virginia. Her poetry was accessible and real, compassionate and honest. "The is the season of her dying," she wrote in " Daybook ," and you have kept it, I find, underneath the stairs in a box filed with photographs." Emerson poetry will be the photographs we read to remember her: Artifact Early Elegy: Headmistress She wrote so much about death---but it was always life she celebrated. And so we must celebrate Claudia Emerson's life at her passing.

Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Leavell’s account of the life and work of Marianne Moore raised some objections that it was unfair to Moore’s mother. The Moore family dynamics were certainly off. But Leavell adds to the case that Moore was one of our most significant American poets. Moore wrote without regard to labels. She was a Modernist who used a precise syllabic form and rhymes. She was a defender of the underdog, an early white champion of civil rights and of black artists and athletes who also voted Republican and defended LBJ’s continuing the Vietnam War, the latter mainly so as not to abandon the South Vietnamese. She wrote “advertising” verse and patriotic poems during WWII. She was raised by lesbians and then denigrated by second wave feminists. Her poetry must be read and dealt with if you care about American poetry. Her carefully controlled poems were often described as emoti...

Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Leavell's account of the life and work of Marianne Moore raised some objections that it was unfair to Moore's mother. The Moore family dynamics were certainly off. But Leavell adds to the case that Moore was one of our most significant American poets. Moore wrote without regard to labels. She was a Modernist who used a precise syllabic form and rhymes. She was a defender of the underdog, an early white champion of civil rights and of black artists and athletes who also voted Republican and defended LBJ's continuing the Vietnam War, the latter mainly so as not to abandon the South Vietnamese. She wrote "advertising" verse and patriotic poems during WWII. She was raised by lesbians and then denigrated by second wave feminists. Her poetry must be read and dealt with if you care about American poetry. Her carefully controlled poems were often described as emotionles...