books

I have read the Oct. ’08 issue of Poetry feat. Sarah Lindsay, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell. The first collection by Sarah Lindsay is interesting. She speaks in a personified third person a lot as if the subjects, being animals, plants, or items, have conscious thoughts, or thoughts that are too advanced for the animal. One poem that I want to make special notice of is Uncouplings by Craig Arnold. It uses words and then breaks up the letters to make meaningful other words. For example, “there is no we in marriage, but a grim area” and “There is an I in family, also my fail”. This is a style that I find very intriguing and I enjoy. Although there are only two poems by Craig Arnold in this collection the second poem, The Invisible Birds of Central America, is a very cool and different style as well. I would absolutely suggest people take a look at him because of his unique style of poetry. Many of the other poems in this mag are what you would typically expect to see in a magazine like this. There are poems about sadness, mourning, specific times in the authors’ life, and all sorts of stuff. However, not much of anything else really stood out like those specific poems. I feel like not many people, especially this class, would be into it but there is a segment of three or four poems by Eric Ekstrand which are translated from a Japanese collection. All of the poems are titled Appleblossom and reflect a very East Asian and zen style. For those interested I’m sure you can get a lot out of reading these types of poems, but personally contemporary poems appeal to me more.