Every now and again someone on a listserv or blog makes a call for more negativity in poetry reviewing, but only rarely does anyone pick up a poison pen in response. This state of affairs would seem to suggest that…
Tag: National Poetry Month
The Heavy and the Light in Poetry
I am troubled and challenged by Hannah Gamble’s How to Write a Good Rape/ Suicide/ Break-Up/ Genocide Poem, or Lightness as the Necessary Companion to All That’s Sad and Disturbing. Troubled because if we react to unrelenting sadness and…
Poem: On Not Writing about the De Anza Rape Verdict
I’m not going to write about it because nothing changed today another woman sent home with nothing more valuable than limp, wrinkled tissue and I’m not going to write about it don’t ask me to ask what it means that…
Poem: Furniture Endures
tonight the old couch with new cushions holds red feathers between its seams seems like it could fly or stretch talons into black stilettos of matching leather thrown out of the bedroom the boa was discarded before the chain on…
Poem: Laundry Day on the Balcony
we are separated by damp slacks, damper jeans, sweaters, slips and bras one woman charged w prostitution and false reporting handcuffed in the hospital after a man after a party held her to the bed and she only c(oul)d remember…