Spring cleaning has begun at my house. The contents of an entire jam-packed closet have spilled out onto the office floor;
new organizational items are being purchased and installed; boxes of unused things are being carted off to storage. Before long, it’ll be yard sale season: time to shuck off our once-precious belongings in return for a little cash or someone else’s spring-cleaning shuck-offs. I’m hoping to get rid of the As-Seen-On-TV pasta cooker we bought at a yard sale a year ago, but I’m guessing my boyfriend won’t go for that. I may have to sneak it into the pile so it can become someone else’s new memory-making (and chewy pasta-making) tool.
Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois, brings us five fine poems this month, one of which involves a subtly painful yet luscious yard sale romance. Mr. Stein’s every line, even in his interview, is graceful. I adore him for writing in my interview with him, “But only in risking largely may our inevitable falling-short make a worthy poem.” Kevin has done just this and come away with a vast volume of worthy poems and projects. His poems are layered in such a way that they engage me and demand my attention, attention to the poems as well as to my own life and the world around me. Don’t pass up that experience.
This month, we are privileged to have translations of three poets’ work. Claudia Serea and Adam J. Sorkin have translated Emilian Galaicu-Paun’s astonishing poem “passagère.” The poem is searing blood-red with a pressing pulse, and it ends chillingly. I wish I had another hour to sit here and read it over and over because every time I read it I find more that both entrances and horrifies me. I lust after the poem as the poem’s speaker lusts after the woman he describes. But, please, don’t take my word for it; you need to read this for yourself.
Liliana Ursu’s work, translated by Tess Gallagher and Adam J. Sorkin, feels to me like looking at stars through mist: radiance through pain’s dampening: the pains of loss, captivity, denial, and age. The cutting insights at the endings of her poems took my breath away. “Tell the others, too, that the birds / really have babies, . . . / even here in captivity,” Ursu writes, and her poems are testimony to just that.
Mihail Gălățanu’s work, translated by Petru Iamandi and Adam J. Sorkin, is almost hypnotic with its repetitions of lines, phrases, ideas, and lives. The repetition and the sharp focus of these poems builds tension like sunlight under a magnifying glass. These poems remind me of something I heard Dan Aykroyd say: that everything we do creates a wake that still exists somewhere. These poems confirm that, and confirm it, and confirm it. They are entrancing.
Nicelle Davis brings us two poets, with fabulous interviews as always. Nicelle writes:A. Molotkov and J. Bradley are masters at writing poems that perform what it is to be human. It is hard for me not to look at A. Molotkov’s playful line breaks and J. Bradley’s wit and not think of a theatrical performance. These poems bring words to life the way an actor brings a character into being. The page sings with these poems as though paper has been transformed into a full-fledged voice. Great thanks to A. Molotkov and J. Bradley for sharing their voices with Connotation Press.
Monica Mankin also brings us two great poets this month. She writes:Thomas Reiter’s two narrative poems first captured my attention with their rhythmic and impressive tensions between line and sentence; and, from this intertwined music of poetry and prose sounds the voice of a genuine storyteller. Reiter, whose poems have appeared with Connotation Press before, generously provides an interview this month wherein he discusses the techniques at work in his poetry. And Angie Macri’s five poems, through their figuration of nature and images of personal history, usher us unfettered through life’s turbulent moments to a place wherein it becomes easy, desirable to stand still and look toward Spring--a noteworthy feat when here in New Orleans, with the departure of a late Mardi Gras celebration and the arrival of anticipatory St. Patrick’s Day parades, March is a month full of distractions. As I write this, I am missing the chance to have flowers and kisses bestowed upon me by (usually) good-looking (albeit sometimes drunk) men and to dance in the street to a brass band’s beat. So, who'd trade a parade for poetry? I would. Besides, there'll be another parade next week. Enjoy the poems!
So, welcome daffodils, tulips, and forsythia; good-bye pasta-cooker; and welcome to our spring poets. Enjoy.