Friday Nov 22

On Hiatus

A Note From Kaite Hillenbrand, Poetry Editor: November, 2012

Sometimes life is so overwhelming and stressful that I want a prince charming to sweep me away. Luckily for me, there are some prince charming poems. Don’t get me wrong; these aren’t poems that make everything better. They’re poems that so completely encompass me that everything else falls away. Poems that, like a favorite song on full blast, can fully book my brain while they last. That’s what I wanted this month, and boy did I find it.
 
Miguel Murphy’s poetry gripped me like an obsession. Like a rollercoaster. Once you’re on the ride, you’d better strap in and hold on. There’s a high-energy mania to much of this work, and it touches on my own fears and obsessions – death of a loved one, for one. It also spoke to ways of thinking that are familiar to me – for instance, thinking of a body as something inextricable from ourselves and also as a thing we live in. As I read Mr. Murphy’s poetry the first time, I realized that it was affecting me the way music does – I wasn’t always paying attention to every word, but I was pulled through the emotional current of the poems like I would be pulled by a river’s current or a ocean’s tide. Miguel also indulged me in an interview. In this, he wrote of his poems, “the attention in them is to the feeling of an experience.” That is exactly what I felt while reading these poems: the feeling of an experience. Check it out; strap in and hang on; I bet you’ll feel it, too.
 
Associate Editor Mia Avramut brings us poetry by two poets this month, with a knock-out interview with Richard Foerster. Mia writes:
 
Richard Foerster, the Maine award-winning poet, is an alchemist, a contemplator, a voice given to nature when it needs to word loss, crisis, and transformation. His authenticity of expression stuns. His language captures and releases you into rhythms you did not know existed. For me, interviewing him, getting a glimpse of this complex personality, may well represent a perspective- and poetry-changing experience. It will transform you, too.
 
Leah Umansky’s work is one of stark authenticity, polar opposites and controlled defiance. Contrasting, sometimes harsh poetic textures envelop a militant feminine essence. Read her poems, and you will find yourself on the edge of fear and alienation, on the shore of this metamodern audacity to live, with the nagging sensation that you have arrived.
 
Associate Editor JP Reese brings us a stunning interview and poetry this month. She writes:
 
I am delighted to present work from poet John Olson this month.  I blundered onto one of his incredibly adept and intriguing prose poems as I was reading on the web and couldn't believe work this good was floating around out there, created by a writer about whom I was unfamiliar. Olson deserves to be better known and more widely read by anyone who appreciates excellent poetry. Steve Fama, in a review of Olson's work, quotes Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia, who said Olson's work is "…the greatest prose poetry [he'd] ever read." After reading Olson's work, I agree completely. Olson's is a poetry of the highest order, and forgive me for overindulging in superlatives, but to me, his work deserves such high praise.  His poems are enchanting, magical, and like nothing else out there. These are poems that one must take down to read and reread. They are grand and meaningful, lovely and wild, sad and exuberant.  Olson is truly unique, and I am excited to present three of his incredible poems to our readers. From his poem "Geography," published here at CP: "…There are maps, but the ground continues to change. Everything grows. The sky argues with the ocean. The ocean argues with the sky. Thirst is a constant. A wing stirs. An eye opens. Desire cracks its shell…" Dive in. Swim about in this incredible sea of words. Enjoy.
 
Associate Editor Doug Van Gundy brings us work from three brilliant poets, one with a great interview. Doug writes:
 
Terry Ann Thaxton’s poems in this month’s issue negotiate a lot of heavy weather, as we discuss in the accompanying interview. Thunder, rain and hurricane punish the body from the outside – grief, memory and regret fuel an internal tempest. And yet, there is remarkable resiliency in the face of these storms.  Is there anything to fear in a universe that hums like this?
 
A lot of poetry that resonates with me these days straddles the divide between skeptical science and mystical wonder. Both poems from Virginia poet Elaine Fletcher Chapman in this month’s issue gracefully negotiate that tenuous stance.  The natural world, whether domesticated into garden plot or ragged wild as the Atlantic shore, provides a lens through which to take a closer look at how we are broken, how we are confused, how we are nourished in these spare, quiet poems.
 
“Oracle” is a densely musical poem from Tyler Mills that explores the junction of the ancient and contemporary, the mythic and the commonplace, and will appear in her forthcoming book, Tongue Lyre, out in 2013 from Southern Illinois University Press.
 
We’re also lucky to have three poems by David Campos. I love the beautiful, colorful, gritty imagery in David’s poems. I love their sharp stabs and breathless moments. I love the intricate stories Campos manages to tell in just a few lines. There are phrases in these poems that reach right into my chest and grab me. 
 
Whether you’re in need of a prince charming or whether you’re just in the mood for some amazing writing and stories, welcome. We’ve got some grippers and grabbers in the column this month – you won’t be disappointed.