Poems Books

Rustin Larson's Crazy Star is among the best poetry collections this reviewer has read in recent years... Underlying their sharp-edged cynicism and ironical twists is a heartfelt investigation into what it means to be human... A stylistically diverse collection Crazy Star gives us compelling reason to be carefully attentive to those extraneous forces that would define us. Larson is an essential voice for this new millennium. - W. E. Butts , The Small Press Review

'Like a baseball pitcher with an unpredictable changeup, Rustin Larson's poetry continually surprises, challenges, and rewards the reader.' - Roger Weingarten

'Rustin Larson is a terrific, elegant, original poet whose voice rings so truly we become better people just by reading him.' -- Naomi Shihab Nye

Crazy Star is luminous, delightful, serious yet subtly self-deprecating and quietly outrageous. When Larson is on, as he is in poem after poem in this collection, he is as good as anyone writing today, maybe better. Just read "Woman praying to her Umbrella" or "Tell me about the Wasp Again" and I know you'll agree. -- Michael Carey, poet, editor of Voices on the Landscape: Contemporary Iowa Poets

Rustin Larson's brilliantly crafted Crazy Star will break your heart and make you realize the treasures in your own clearance sale. Make you want to hitch your star to his quiet, sardonic hilarity that's staying home, 'hitchhiking for something divine.' --Jack Myers, National Poetry Series winner, author of 'As Long as You're Happy'

This is a strange and beautiful collection from a gifted poet. Read these poems and be startled.' - Meg Fitz-Randolph, The Iowa Source

(Ken Goosens in Visions International)"'Melons' is zany, original and delightfully absurdist. 'Creatures Nobody Recognizes' does a fine job building on the subject of an empty cicada shell... superior poems."

(Meg Hill Fitz-Randolph in The Iowa Source)"Rustin Larson is a narrative poet who breaks with tradition. A poet whose complex sensibility drives deeper and deeper into the wild and least expected... This is a strange and beautiful collection from a gifted poet."

(from MANDRAKE POETRY REVIEW, Autumn 1997) These poems flow broadly as rivers bearing the exposed flotsam of a civilization toward the tumultuous oceans of ultimate chaos. No appreciation is displayed of a lyrical purity or of a lyrical clarity, and music is a bywater long passed by. Picking the ones that heal, the ones to eat, to brew, to hang for fragrance, I walk with my new wife, her moist palm in mine. The herbs fountain from the ground; sunlovers, shadelovers, those finding it hard. Unnerved by the stranger we married, we search for the right plant to solve us. Here's one, gold and dried, hanging from the ceiling of the herb cottage. We should brew this as tea, bathe in it: its essences clearing our blood, synchronizing heartbeats, and breath. She uncovers a cluster of green, holds it like a bride's bouquet, saying we should both hold on until we trust its fragility in the different seasons: her early spring, my autumn. This example displays his rich voice at its precisest, while he is closest to his words and closest to his essence of sentience. Almost he has become his process. We might notice that he was uncertain whether to say "clearing our blood" or to say "cleansing our blood" and that he opted to stress the achievement of clarity rather than to stress the approach toward clarity. In his attempt to embrace grandeur he chats about his dad's listening to Harry James playing Rinsky-Korsakov while aboard ship in World War 2, and he mentions how we can be comforted or discomforted by our sense of touch, and everywhere his mind reaches like a gravedigger to toss us the bones of thought.

(Ann Struthers in The Des Moines Sunday Register) "Loving the Good Driver" is the first volume from Rustin Larson, Aa Des Moines native. As many contemporary poets do, Larson often utilizes place in his work. Not all the poems in this volume are Iowa poems, because he has obviously lived other places and traveled extensively, but there are a number of locales here that Iowans will recognize, including "The Upper Iowa River Curved Through An Open Valley Flanked by Wooded Hillsides" and "Putting Up," about canoeing the Des Moines River near Bonaparte. Larson writes in free verse, and his similes are especially good. He pulls "the comforter over me/like a lawn..." In the title poem he says, "and you too the marriage//the way a cat takes to drowning..." Later in that poem he watches "the moon//rise like a Bismarck, jelly filled.... In "The Lawn" he finds "white violets/that rest on the thick green like disabled stars." Larson also uses a great deal of free association in his subject matter. In fact, some of the poems are abstract to the point of being Picasso-esque. There is a pleasant vein of humor througout the work, however, In "Melons," he tells how he and his wife try to buy a perfect melon, but the fruits always begin "to shrink from inside/like a consumptive." Everything reminds them of melons and they find themselves thinking constantly about them. "Our shoes became melon rinds, and our fingers, slivers of ripe/yellow melon." Finally he realizes he can no longer "live like a melon...." Then he sits down and holds "my big round head in my hands." The unwritten joke is obvious to the reader. The best thing about it is Larson is making the joke on himself, a nice bit of humility from a poet, poets not know for that particular virtue. If there are grotesques that do not seem charged with the insistence for the grotesque, and abstractions that seem to be left hanging in limbo, still Larson does not take himself too seriously. In this first volume, he has made an excellent beginning.

I bought this book at an airport for my daughter- but I read it out loud to her and her little brother, and we all enjoyed it. The poems are fun and sad and funny and insightful. It led me to seek out other works by Nye and I've enjoyed them all.

"Ringing


A baby, I stood in my crib to hear
the dingy-ding of a vegetable truck approaching.

When I was bigger, my mom took me out
to the street
to meet the man who rang the bell and
he tossed me
a tangerine...

...the first thing I ever caught. I thought
he was
a magic man.

My mom said there used to be milk trucks too.
She said,
Look hard, he'll be gone soon. And she was right.
He disappeared.

Now when I hear an ice-cream truck chiming
its bells, I fly.
Even if I'm not hungry--just to watch it pass.

Mailmen with their chime of dogs barking
up and down the street are magic too.

They are all bringers.

I want to be a bringer.

I want to drive a truck full of eggplants down
the smallest street.

I want to be someone making music
with my coming."

And so she is. And so she does.
A great joy that accompanies a new book of poems by Naomi Shihab Nye is the expectation that she will begin reappearing at national conferences and conventions, reading aloud from her latest collection. The good feeling I've taken away with me from her past workshops is about as close as I get to church these days.

A MAZE ME contains seventy-two of Naomi's latest poems. Younger teens will find these pieces easy to read and relate to. Hopefully, many will be intrigued and inspired by Naomi's ability to create poetry from such sources as a car manual, a newspaper article, a taco sign, "the hair on the head of the girl in front of me in school," Julia Child's patting potatoes, or a vapor trail "X" that a pair of planes have inadvertently left in the sky.

Being a book of "Poems for Girls" there are also the requisite handful of "longing" poems:

"High Hopes


It wasn't that they were so
high, exactly,
they were more
low-down,
close-to-the-ground,
I could rub them
the way you touch a cat
that rubs against your ankles
even if he isn't yours.

So yes I feel lonely without them.
Now that I know the truth,
that I only dreamed someone liked me,
the cat has curled up in a bed of leaves
against the house and I still have to do
everything I had to do before
without a secret hum
inside."

Despite being a guy, I really enjoyed the images and memories conjured up by these poems. Whether reading "Visiting My Old Kindergarten Teacher, Last Day of School," "Turtle" (about the persistent creature that had walked for twenty years), or "Across the Aisle" (about the little girl who coughed "every 30 seconds for seven whole hours" on a transatlantic flight), I've repeatedly interrupted Rosemary's reading on the couch and Shari's grading papers at the kitchen table in order to have an audience with whom to share the poems aloud.
"Big Head, Big Face
(what my brother said to me)


If your head had been smaller
maybe you woulda had less thoughts in it,
maybe you wouldn't have so many troubles.
This is just a guess but seems to me
like a little drawer only hold a few spoons
and you can always find the one you need
while a big drawer jammed with tongs
strings corks junky stuff receipts birthday cards
you never gonna look at
scrambled and mixed so one day
you open that drawer
poke your hand in and big knife go
through your palm
you didn't even know a knife was IN there,
well, that's why I think
it might not be so bad to have a little head
with just a few thoughts few memories few hopes
maybe if only one little one came true
that be enough for you."

Luckily for us, Naomi Shihab Nye has carefully sifted through that drawer to provide an entertaining assortment of poetic images, thoughts, stories, and yoga poses.

Naomi Shihab Nye has a relationship with words and Emotions that few people achieve in their life, regardless of their age. She is my favorite poet as well as my favorite author and I have never dislike one of her poems.

A Maze Me is no exception. Every poem sends a strong message or fills you with a feeling or new idea. Each poem is written so beautifully that no illustration is needed, as it probes curiosity and imaginitive explanations. In my opinion, Naomi Shihab Nye is very philosophical, and this thinking appears through metaphors that are evenly distributed throughout her literature.

A Maze Me is an incredible set of poems and your life will not be complete until you have read this.

Once I read Naomi Shihab Nye's introduction, I felt I was about to turn the pages of something very special. I was right. This unique collection of poems gives the reader a chance to look at familiar life in a new way. Full of nostalgia, intimate and humorous, tender and tearful, this is a book I would love to underline and memorize. I look forward to writing in my own notebook, trying to find the poet in me.

This book by the sublime Naomi Shihab Nye is subtitled "Poems for Girls," but I don't think that this charming book should be restricted to one gender. I certainly chuckled, oohed, and aahed a number of times as I read through it. (Still, it WOULD make a great gift for the young girl in your life.)

Shihab Nye has a generosity of spirit that shines through her poetry like a twinkle in a kindly aunt's eye. Here is a little somethin'-somethin' to whet your appetite (excerpted from "Ringing"):

"Now, when I hear an ice-cream truck chiming its bells, I fly
Even if I'm not hungry -- just to watch it pass.

Mailmen with their chime of dogs barking
up and down the street are magic too.

They are all bringers.
I want to be a bringer.

I want to drive a truck full of eggplants down the smallest street. I want to be someone making music with my coming."

oh this book is such a fun read. poems and write with tricky word play and metaphors. a true pleasure to read.
there is a smile on every page from me!

This book provides a wonderful full-throated taste of modern poetry....brush out the cobwebs and breathe in the fresh air...Stephen Colvin grabs you and shakes hard until you listen! Fantastic!

A very intriguing and thought provoking array of poems. An amazing use of a wide variety styles.

Since the day I first began reading Stephen's poems on the Internet, I have become addicted to the work of this poet. He seems to have an uncanny ability to take ordinary events and moments and depict them through his poetic lens, revealing their inner beauty, depth, or pathos.

The first and last poems in the book are dedicated to his earthly Muse. This is entirely appropriate, and quite touching. The rest of the book contains an assortment of his poetry, which I enjoyed reading, although I was not sure if there was an order to the poems or not. There are political poems, whimsical verses, poems about his mentors and influences. There are poems in this anthology which are almost journalistic in their keen observations. He touches upon religion in some of his writings. Sometimes he shows how ancient myths have inspired him. His writing style is quite unique, and sometimes shows the influence of his profession, that of a computer programmer. He is a master of wordplay and his imagery is powerful, sometimes overwhelming.

But trust me please on this one...you need to read this poet's work to understand what I am writing about in this review.

My hope is that this is only the first of many books that we will see written by Stephen Colvin. Stephen, your readers are insatiable and want more!!!

A truly gifted poet. Steven has been a favorite on myspace for awhile now and I am so glad to see his work going "mainstream".

What beautiful little worlds Wislawa Szymborska creates. Miracle Fair is an upstanding collection of her trademark intelligence, and simple yet very deep understanding of the mundane in nature and life's ironies. Her poems typically begin with the smallest of circumstances, and the reader follows it, assured of the simplicity of the theme, and then at the end comes the zinger which, with a line or two, transforms it into a much more complex creation. Which is not to say that her work is inaccessible; Szymborska is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable poets I have ever come across. This collection is a treat for lovers of natural poetry, and is filled on every page with graceful insights to the human condition.

Polish Nobel winner Wislawa Szymborska was born in 1923. She's lived through a lot, and she has a highly developed social conscience. She is concerned about ordinary life, love, war, death, and meaning. In poem after beautifully translated poem, she shows her understanding of the things of this world, the mysteriousness of life, and the things that might matter the most.

I reread these poems after the events of September 11th and was astonished to find so much of use to me in thinking about the unthinkable, really. In "A Thank-You Note," she writes "I owe a lot/to those I do not love." In the incredible "Cat in an Empty Apartment" Szymborska takes a cat's point of view, noting "Something here isn't starting/at its usual time./Something here isn't happening as it should./Somebody had been here and had been,/ and then had stubbornly disappeared/and now is stubbornly absent."

Szymborska knows that there are not only unimaginable horrors in the world, but also "miracles," small truths that are awesome and often wonderful - not because of any religious or magical event, but because they remind us, once again, of our humanity and of what good things might be possible. She treasures ordinary life, love, physicality - and communion. Her poems on love (and lovers) are beautiful, and beautifully simple.

She cautions against war in "The End and the Beginning," reminding the reader that "After every war/someone has to clean up./Things won't/straighten themselves up, after all." She wryly and trenchantly describes war's motives in "Hatred." Hatred, she insists, "is not like other feelings," and "gives birth to causes/which rouse it to life."

Szymborska's vision is one worth taking in, reflecting upon, and learning from. Current events aside, Szymborska's a terrific teacher of poetry.

This is a wonderful collection of poems.

"Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska" is translated into English by Joanna Trzeciak, and features a foreword by Czeslaw Milosz. The book also includes a biographical essay on the poet (pages 155-59). The essay notes that she was born in Poland in 1923 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. The essay also describes the challenges she faced as a writer under the communist regime that ruled Poland for decades. Also featured in the book are reproductions of whimsical collages created by Szymborska.

This is a rich and varied collection of poems. I was particularly struck by the author's wit, humor, and often biting satire. At times her work is graced by touches of the surreal or fantastic. Her voice can be both compassionate towards, and sharply critical of, humanity. Overall the book demonstrates her skill at using a variety of writerly techniques: direct address, personification, parallel structures, historical allusion, dialogue, and paradox. In her poetry she draws on the language of mathematics and other disciplines.

I found some of the most striking poems in the collection to be the following. "Commemoration": written in the form a charmingly iconoclastic prayer. "A Man's Household": a gentle and humorous satire of a man devoted to fix-it-yourself projects. "Starvation Camp at Jaslo": a cutting meditation on injustice and suffering that employs biting, grim satire. "The Turn of the Century": uses personification as a technique to look back critically at the 20th century ("Its years are numbered,/ its step unsteady"). "Torture": employs particularly powerful language as she looks at the title phenomenon.

Also worthy of note--"Water": finds a globe-encompassing revelation in a single drop of water. "A Word on Statistics": a cleverly structured, witty satire that leads to a real kicker of an ending. "Pi": a poem about the mathematical concept of the title. "Miracle Fair": a witty and wonderful piece that reminds me of the style and spirit of Pablo Neruda's great work "The Book of Questions." "Poetry Reading": pokes gentle fun at the poetic vocation.

The book as a whole is clearly the work of a skilled and confident master craftsperson who has a real passion to share her vision. Hers is a complex and compelling voice, at times grimly serious, at times playful and childlike. A number of her poems seem to invite the reader to partake of a dramatically altered, even magical perspective--a fresh and even radical new way of looking at the world around us. Her poems on violence and human suffering have a political edge and moral power that remind me of the work of Audre Lorde. And some of her poetry reminds me of Buddhist or Taoist thought--specifically, of teachings on emptiness and nonstriving. At her most luminous, Szymborska strikes me as firmly in the great tradition of poet-prophets exemplified by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and other great voices.

Wislawa Szymborska (pronounced Vis-wah-vah Shim-bor-ska) is one of the few women to win the Nobel Prize. She won it in 1996 for her poetry. What makes her poetry that incredible is that, in simple terms, she is able to convey universal thoughts. Although Szymborska is Polish, her poems are not restricted by Eastern European culture. They are universal. To start, I recommend you read her poem entitled, "Hatred." I showed that one to several people who alleged that they disliked poetry because they could never understand it. However, by showing such poem, each one of those people that I showed that poem to not only understood it, but recognized her genius. This won't be the case for all of her poems, as a few are abstract for the pleasure of abstract thinkers. If you enjoy this collection of poetry, look into Szymborska's other collections of poetry. You won't be disappointed.

This is a splendid collection of verse. Szymborska's work is insightful and remarkably deep. This collection has a Forward written by Czeslaw Milosz, who comments that "Szymborska offers a world where one can breathe...."

Miracle Fair begins with "Commemoration" and "Openness," which attempt to situate mortal beings in a natural world full of splendor, mystery, and awesome wonder. This is a lovely collection, which includes "A Dream," "Cat in an Empty Apartment," and "Love At First Sight." There are other moving and poignant poems here, such as "Starvation Camp at Jaslo," and "Turn of the Century."

S's verse is very human in the sense that it reminds us of the smallness of daily existence and the saving grace that can be found in the 'whispering trees.' It also has a vision of historical integration, whereby the ghosts of unfortunate memories speak to us softly.

Observations in prose are woven into revealing poetry, yet it reads like a diary; I couldn't put it down. At times very personal, at times universal, it made me contemplate my own life and the paths I took, or might still take.

A book to truly savor and read over and over again. It touches one in so many ways. It is beautiful and sad and hopeful. I hope my review, in some way will encourage others to read Moments and More by Brandon Jones. I look forward to reading more from this up and coming author.

What a truly inspiring book of poetry. I enjoyed the stories detailing what inspired each poem. lt seemed at times I was there with the author; on the beach, in the hospital room and in Italy. The poems and stories about forgiveness, love lost, the value of art and the author's philosophy on life makes you evauate you own life and the paths you've chosen. I was captivated by the author's use of poetry to help explain his philosophies formed by life experiences and paths chosen. I don't normally enjoy poetry, but I was able to understand where the author was coming from and would recommend this to many.

I have read quite a few selections from this book and I truly felt I was right "there". The descriptive writing makes you feels so in the moment, I know that is a trite saying, but it is so true. This writer has the ability to make you feel what he feels and see what he is seeing. I took a very inexpensive tour of Italy and California just reading. I love the idea of the story and then the poem. I finally read a book where I got what the author was trying to convey in a poem. Wonderful read!!!

I read this delightful book cover to cover in one sitting. Every vignette/poem duo is completely captivating! I was so impressed by this fresh take on poetry that I took it into my classroom (I teach 9th-12th grade English) and used it to jump start a poetry/creative writing unit. As an English teacher I found the book to be particularly helpful when teaching my students imagery and theme as the book is filled with beautiful and poignant descriptions of the world we live in and life experiences that all can relate to on one level or another. I highly recommend bringing this beautiful piece of literature into your home or classroom.

I am definitely charmed by Lilian Moore poems, but I also want to tell few words about illustrations.
First thing I noticed about illustrations was... that I could not find them. They just were not separable from the poems in the book. One body and soul, one true love, one poetic story of the city (big or small) for a child (big or small). And this very fact, I suppose, is the greatest success of Roman Karas - extremely gifted artist, who managed to not only reveal his artistic talent but also do it in a very "understanding" manner. Neither did he overpowered nor yielded to the strength of Lilian Moore's poetic images - but matched and mingled his own into, creating, this synthetic artwork, that is greater then just text plus illustrations.
As the good theater starts from garderobe, this book captures the reader from the title pages. No poems were read yet, but the story has started with the image of the house-book - very poetic and very precise concept of the whole book. The book in which turning the new page is like opening new door (painted wood in the background is another grate tip carefully left by illustrator). The house, that opens it's pages letting out it's characters so resembling yourself. Or may be you are the one to step into?
I want to thank Roma for this creak of old doors, smell and touch of old paint, fairy tale of window reflections, that adds it's voice to the poetry of the book.

The Mural on Second Avenue reminds me of the beautifully illustrated poetry books I had as a young child in the 1950's. I remember the pictures inspiring me to memorize, recite and fantasize about the poetry. The Mural on Second Avenue has that same quality. The illustrations using wonderful colors and textures contain little surprises at every turn. A truly charming book for all children.

We liked poems very much, and how artist, Roma Karas,illustrated
them. "Mural on Second Avenue" looks very colorful and "fresh".
We are very glad that we ordered this book.

A delightful book for the whole family. Beautiful illustrations by Roma Karas bring wonderful poetry by Lilian Moore to life. Feel the "silence in the city hushed by snow," look at "how roofs design a sky," "fling yourself into the tree's great pool of shade." Enjoy!

This amazing book happened to be the last for poet Lilian Moore (who died at the age of 95 in 2004) and the first for a young artist Roma Karas. No wonder it combines wisdom and youth, experience and freshness, mystic and realism. Written for kids, the poems and images will remind you of your own childhood, no matter how old you are. You will recognize your own native town in images of New York, no matter what part of the world you were born in. And you will smile at the end of this book, no matter what...

If you are a children's literature fan this is a MUST have in your collection. Worth finding the collectors books because Maya Angeleou will forever hold a place in children's stories. The first editions of this softcover are going to be harder and harder to get. It has vivid photographs of the Ndebele people. Thandi the main character tells the story of her people and family and her best friend who is a chicken. She crosses culture lines and she will win the heart of anyone who has a child's heart, and the chicken is cute too. Great teacher's book, bet for under 5th grade, ESL is a great fit because the words are BIG and easy to recognize.

Reading this book my daugther(6yrs.) and I enjoyed a special moment learning about how beautiful are the simple things. And gave us the oportunity to learn how easy is to celebrate life and love.
The most important lesson of all is to be proud of what we love and care.

I bought this book today and read it with my 10 year old niece. It has exceptionally beautiful photographs of the Ndebele people. It is a story that reminds us that the simple things in life are the most precious. Thandi tells the story of her people and family and her best friend, a chicken. She is a proud and pure hearted child that shares the culture of the Ndebele people with us. This is a lovely story that is a fun, educational, easy to read one that made me feel young at heart again. I'll be needing an additional copy to share with my grandaughter.

I am a senior in college, and an elementary education major with a minor in anthropology- when I found this book, I was estatic. Its beautiful photography is greatly complimented with Maya Angelou's flowing words. Humor, color, and the similarities with the Ndebele girl (Thandi, which means hope) are sure to attract children. They will learn that even though Thandi is across the world, all children share many similaries- a lesson that should be remembered, especially in modern times. I will definately use this in my classroom someday. Never have I seen such a great childrens book that is infused with anthropology and the study of a culture!

As a reading tutor, I have enjoyed sharing this book with my 4th grade students. It examins the differences of people, our different cultures, and is a colorful and enchanting story. My kids, both boys and girls are facinated by this book, and we always continue a dialogue with it. The recognize the author, as one their parents respect, and enjoy talking about it and laughing about the silly chicken.We have talked about trying to paint houses with a chicken feather, and may jsut try to do this during black history month! I adore this book!

This New & Selected by one of our finest poets, is a must-buy. Lyrical, tender, profound--his images will linger with you, and you will find yourself rereading and later quoting his lines.

Stanley Plumly isn't just a great poet. He is possibly the greatest American poet writing today and this compilation is a journey through some of the best poetry of the past thirty years. The depth of thought present in this work and the manner in which that depth is conveyed hold ground by even the most demanding poetic standards. Having interviewed him in the past, I can vouch for Plumly's genius. One look at his writing is all that the reader needs to vouch for his talent. A talented writer when he began, he has honed his skills over the past thirty years to a level that borders perfect. This books belongs on the bookshelf of anyone whose tastes include good poetry. You won't find a better volume of modern American poetry around.

I attended Plumly's reading here at Grinnell College two days ago. His voice was intoxicating-- sort of an articulate growl. I had to buy the book (and get it signed, of course). One of the most striking pieces, I believe, is "Wrong Side of the River," an excellent demonstration of his simple prose and resonating imagery. Beautiful.

Stanley Plumly's poems could be described as quietly magnificent. There is an amplitude and gracefulness to the work that hearkens strongly back strongly to the nineteenth-century Romantics, in particular Keats: "Like some dreams, they appear, then reappear, / cloistered in the space of their own wounding, / their public mourning, their gravity's gray coat. / Even at a distance, as if drawn by being seen, / they come straight at you, the almost elegant woman / in the aisle, the tall young birdlike silent / weeping man . . ." (from "Grievers").
Yet Plumly never sounds antique. Reading the poems in this new, retrospective collection is an experience in following a thought process that is physically embodied in phrases, complex sentences and vivid images embedded in articulate lines. Doubters who question whether any of today's poets have schooled themselves sufficiently in the hard apprenticeship of Yeats and other poetic forbears should listen and take heart: "Sound of the breath blown over the bottle, / sound of the reveler home at down, light of / the sun a warbler yellow, the sun in / song-flight, lopsided-pose. Be of good cheer, // my father says, lifting his glass to greet / a morning in which he's awake to be / with the birds . . ." (from "Cheer").
Plumly's poems are muted in manner yet never tentative; sonorous and fluent while refusing to be merely beautiful. He persists by searching out new ways to see, new ways of grasping what it means to be alive in these drastically fragile bodies. His book's title alludes to a strangely ambiguous evocation of parent and child lying beside one another - perhaps a small boy and his father, but more likely a diminished and failing father whose still vital son is recognizing in their unaccustomed intimacy a rare bridge across distance.
One of the wonders of this selection of Plumly's work drawn from thirty years is the way the book is arranged as a continuous sequence "in reverse chronological order," with only a brief author's note to indicate the original book titles. It is uncanny to see how comparable in acuity and eloquence the early and later poems really are in this fresh reading. The book lingers in its look back, filled to the brimming point with birds, trees, and people that are gone, all gone, residing now only here. Truly, a life's work.
Plumly has never been prolific - three slender books in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, and only one in the 1990s. Yet his ode-like soundings of mortality have accumulated in power and resonance. His voice is; the care with which these poems were made is evident in every line. This, then, from "Doves in January": "Long o's, long o's, long o's, and then a pause, / a whistle more like someone's voice than song, / as if in a moment a day could pass // from nothing's grief to some becoming grace.

Jim Schley, who lives in Vermont, is the author of a poetry chapbook, One Another (Chapiteau, 1999).

Plumly's newest book brings together some of the best poems of his career...some of the best poems written in America in the last 30 years. I've read over ten volumes from April's "National Poetry Month" and nothing makes me wince more than those poets who feel the need to end each poem with that cryptic/cute/"stunning" last line that veers away from the poem's topic and story in an attempt to be wise. Plumly is in control of his material; even when he sums up a poem in a final line, it fits, it flows, it adds to the sum of the poem rather than leaving the reader wondering.

Family, images of the natural world informing and reflecting the subjective human world, words and form often perfectly wedded: Plumly, nominated for the Natl Book Award in the past surely must be recognized alongside of Merwin, Pastan, Gluck, J Graham, Levine, Kinnell as one due further recognition and awards.

I have just "discovered" this poet and reading his poetry over and over again means rediscovering language, sound, wit, and everything else that I love about poetry. I consider his language Old English, with pastoral themes in a post-modern context. Very interesting.

"MC-S is an Englishman who has worked in the US for some years and perhaps the transatlantic shift underwrites the quick-change dialect of these poems--they ARE dialect poems of a kind, although they skate across a variety of vernaculars; grammar fractures without undue force, fragments of older written English float through. Quasi-folk-rhymes break up narratives, the 'songs' seem ghosts of untold stories. The title sequence formalises the multivocality by identifying speakers in the manner of a play, introducing a disjointedness I feel uneasy with; there is a more flowing transition from the opening Songs to the impressive closing sequence To Absent Minister. Good balance between sound-control and unruliness. I can't identify all the voices and prefer the mystery of it anyway, but Clare keeps turning up (rhythms and textures of the journals rather than the poems) and I hear David Jones now and again. And nice to meet Mr. Beddoes on page 16.

For some tastes, the playful mode of nonsense verse which Corless-Smith often engages in might wear thin. Yet with a little patience (and a dictionary), even the most dense passages prove inventive and rich. The style of Of Piscator is highly original, and even idiosyncratic. Given this fact, it adapts to a remarkable emotional range

"Sounded along dove dove" begins one of the best poems in this first collection. Like Hopkins, Corless-Smith moves by sound, the poems diving like kingfishers after particular fish. Syntax and spell-check, however, are pure First Folio Shakespeare--he who wrote "Hey nonny nonny" ditties into his plays. And play matters here: "the was necessity/and in the play/there was necessity." "Play" of words. Sexual "play." And, of course, theatrical "play"--most explicitly in the eponymous "Of Piscator: Five Acts" where disparate voices well up line after line. Together, the voices sometimes sound like a wild meadow chorus, and sometimes merely jangle. Whatever its consequence, the lack of design is by design, for order opposes live growth: "by order circumstance/is to be reduced." Corless-Smith's language is often dreamlike in beautiful opacity, sometimes as straight-up as Clare, but always it is after Nature, The Sublime. Starring such creatures as mud, motherchild, diablo, fence, sycamore, and cockatoo, these difficult lyrics offer a good road through difficulty: "We come to grief/here is one green leaf."

It's as if the poet managed the almost impossible: to make contemporary techniques combine with the traditional in such a way that he turns on his head both the old and the new. If the Charles Bernsteins and Bruce Andrews of the Language poets make you long for song, for feeling of the old poetries, you must turn to Martin Corless-Smith. You will not miss the disjunctive, discordant alogical manipulations of contemporary poets, but you will also hear the rich sounds of a language achieved by a poet who is as steeped in the solid rhythms of Old English monosyllables--"hound heavens house"--as in the sonorities of Chaucer...It is that retention of music in his lines that makes Corless-Smith a most uncanny, original postmodern poet, singing the contradiction and disorders of the millennium.

Many decades ago as I was standing in a seemingly endless line at the college bookstore waiting to pay for my texts, I happened to pick up a copy of Kenneth Rexroth's 100 POEMS FROM THE JAPANESE and started thumbing through it in order to kill some time while I waited...and waited...and waited for my turn at the register. By the time I finally made it up there I couldn't have cared less, I was totally engrossed in the small volume that had been meant merely to keep me from thoughts of violence as I continued to wait...and wait...and wait. I knew that I had to have this book, I had fallen in love with Japanese poetry. Since that day I've had 3 copies of the book in all. The first was stolen by a "friend", the second died from over-work, and the third is sitting in front of me as I try to cobble together this review.

I had long hated poetry since its writers tended to exhume every archaic word they knew and went on for as long as they possibly could until they had finally beaten what ever sentiment, or thought they had tried to express into into a gelatinous pulp and left it and the reader whimpering on the floor in helpless submision. Writers of Western and European poetry that is. For when I openned Rexroth's book I learned there was an alternative to the pompous florid verbosity of Western poets and it could be found in the powerful, exquisitely crafted yet extremely economical poetry of Japan.

There are several different poetic forms and a great many shadings and other things to be concerned with, as in the works of all poets, and Rexroth deals with these things both in his introduction as well as in individual notes in the back of the book. He explains everything you need to know in order to understand these poems if you're interested in going beneath their surface beauty. Each poem is presented in romanized Japanese as well as English, which is a nice bonus, and each poet has his own little section. Every poet's name is presented in calligraphy down the side of each page.

This is an extraordinary collection of poems translated by a man who himself is an extraordinary poet. Perhaps the best way to convice you might be to offer one or two of my favorites and let you see for yourself what treasures this book has to offer.

A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror. HITOMARO

Although I hide it
My love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
"Are you thinking of something?" TAIRA NO KANEMORI


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He has gathered a wonderful collection of quiet often powerful poems. I used to always keep a copy at my desk at work when I needed a break from programming. I think everyone who loves poetry should have a copy.

This is one of the greatest "small" books I have ever read. Rexroth conveys a good bird's eye view of classical japanese poetry, with poems selected and translated by him, mostly from the Manyoshu (A.D. 759) and Kokinshu (A.D. 905)compilations.
You will be surprised by the intensity and sensibility that these short poems reflect. Also you will be delighted to read the different depictions of states of mind and heart in this poetry which will eerely convey the atemporal dimension of sorrow, pain, joy and appeasement to the contemporary human being.
An example of what to expect:
The flowers whirl away
In the wind like snow.
The thing that falls away
Is myself.....(Prime Minister Kintsune)

Rexroth neither adds or takes anything away. The book is brilliantly styled, and his notes are truly informative. A definite must have.

In freshman year of high school, I went through an "Asian" phase, I guess, and this was one of the books I bought. The poetry carried me to a world (or rather, Japan) of times past. It's amazing how such short pieces could impact so much. I especially liked that Rexroth included the Japanese words with the poems (even though I know about 20 words of Japanese). However, then (and now), many of the references to various objects and places in the poems went over my head since I have little background in Japanese history or literature (everything I know about Japan, I learned from anime and the three week unit on Asia in World History class). For instance, I never heard of the River Izumi and plains of Mika nor did I know the importance of the Isle of Awaji (let alone where it was). So some of the poems, though they sounded beautiful, were little more than entertaining to me. I lost the significance and meaning. Fortuneately, Rexroth provides a guide in the back to the poets and some of the works in this collection.
If you've never read Japanese poetry before (or read very little), this book is a good introduction. However, having familiarity with Japanese places, literature and symbols helps, since you won't have to flip to the back every other poem.