I have been crazy, mind-numbingly busy for months – law school does not kid around.
Now that finals are over and the workload has ebbed, I get to relax with the people I love most in the world. I can’t remember being more grateful to sit on a porch and watch the dogs play. Since exams ended, I’ve painted a cement gnome that my best friends Kristen and Anita cast for me, gone to the best farmer’s market I’ve ever been able to call my own, been kayaking through the canals in Naples, CA, eaten the creamiest, most delicious homemade pistachio ice cream I’ve ever tasted, played a little tennis, hung out with family, and bought some new shoes. And I got to watch my favorite person in the whole world get a huge, squinty-eyed grin on his face when the world’s happiest puppy jumped on his lap – and what’s better than watching your favorite person get overwhelmed with happiness? What a joy when life pays you back for hard work. Ahh. Another margarita, please?
It’s such a pleasure to have Claudia Serea back in the column this month, this time as a translator of two playful, thought-provoking poems by Adina Dabija. Claudia answered some questions I had about translating work, something I’ve been really curious about but have never done. Her answers are insightful and gave me a new perspective on translating. The poems themselves are fresh and vibrant, magical and delightful. It’s fascinating to me how many meanings they have – I find something new in each poem every time I read them. Come “get lost in the green” of these wonderful poems!
Mari L’Esperance brings us two stunning poets this month. Mari writes:What drew me to Laurie Blauner’s poems is her seemingly natural facility with juxtaposition and surprising metaphor, as well as the hint of menace that’s threaded throughout. Phrases/lines like “A day went missing. / Then another,” “He had fallen from the dark throat of a device,” “Rain stumbled across his face,” and “Sky turned away, ribboning end to end” (from “Personal Catastrophic”) or “I was rusting inside. I was still full of birds and small animals” (from “how are you?”) are deeply satisfying and lack the willful overreaching for the self consciously quirky effect that I too often run across in poems. The “oddness” of Blauner’s poems feels embodied and emotionally true—which makes her poems delicious to experience on the page. I’m with Christian Ward when he wrote at Rattle.com about Blauner’s “refreshingly original voice” and of the “unflinching honesty in her writing”. These are poems that linger in the psyche, “Alive, somewhere, seeing what would happen next.”
In Irish poet Niall O’Connor’s poem “Ballyferriter,” we are invited into a world where humans live in intimate contact with the earth, sea, and sky—where the elemental and its ancient mysteries and deep truths take precedence over the ego-based jockeying and maneuvering of cities. There is a pleasing juxtaposition of raw physicality and ethereal dream in O’Connor’s poem—qualities enhanced by minimal punctuation and lines of varying length—lines that mirror the ocean waves, gusting winds, and undulating hills of O’Connor’s native landscape. This poem transported me to O’Connor’s “otherworld / out there where the holy ones sent their / sacrifice and prayer”.
J.P. Reese introduces three poets to the column this month. She writes:This month, the trio of poets I chose all write pieces that deal with both survival and how an individual must come to terms with inevitable endings, some swift and surprising, and some, though expected, still catch the speaker unprepared.
Anthony Cappo's poem, "Funeral" addresses the struggle between the desire to believe in something greater than oneself while the secular within denies any possibility of magical thinking. The poem is real and stunning in its honesty.
Daniel Saalfeld's poem, "Extinguishing" deals most directly with inevitable endings, both of the self and of the dependable world that makes up everyday life.
Dennis Mahagin was kind enough to allow me to interview him, and he opens up about his love of form and his background in music, which ads substantially to the jazz-like phrasings in his work. Whether narrative in style like his poem "Confundida," or a more formal and lyrical treatment in his villanelle "Repetitive is the New Novena, " Dennis always includes a bit of humor amid his recounting of the pathos of human frailty.
The poet Mary Leader once told me that the subject of all poems, whether explicit or implicit, is either love or death. These poems are about death, but because they offer a new take on an old conundrum, they show that even when the subject is one of darkness, there is often beauty present to help ease the way.
Nicelle Davis brings us a series of poems by Elizabeth Savage accompanied by an interesting, lively, fun interview. These poems are wide-ranging and surprising. Nicelle writes of them: If you love grammar, and by love I mean a well placed verb makes you scream, you will love Elizabeth Savage's poems. They play, dance, and leap with grammar personified. For the love of language, read her poems!
I hope you have a gnome to paint and a basket of sticky-sweet farmer’s market strawberries, and I hope you have the best people in the world to share them with.