Blank space is inviting when you read poetry. It is not surprising that a majority of the poems in the Winter 2019 edition of Comstock Review edited by Betsy Anderson use forms that have blank space. Blank space serves as a pause while reading and offers the reader to have time to think about what was said. Blank space also acts line a connection line between verses that is soft rather than direct leading to forms that allow slipperiness in meaning, the quality of being imprecise and marginally connected. I found many poems that were praiseworthy in this edition devoted entirely to poetry. It also serves to showcase winners from the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest. Blank space acts like negative space in photography which is often used to write messages or advertise so is valued for what it isn't more than what it is, as seen below. Blank space equates to breath and we all like to breathe plenty of oxygen that wakes us up and allows us to think. So I will showcase the  poems that use couplets.

In "A Little Book on Form" by Robert Hass, he introduces the couplet with the idea that "two lines introduce the idea of form as the energy of relation." Some couplets are rhymed, some are connected thematically, and some follow what he calls a question, answer format. So it will be interesting to see how this is handled by the poems I selected.

Pinatas by Melinda Thomsen uses an open ended couplet, so that the ideas presented cascade from thought to thought showing a great deal of slipperiness, a quality that is often valued in modern poetry. Her poem deals with strikes upon herself and family, like slaps or an owie received from a slammed door. Here it is very ironic since pinatas are used in party games and people blindly hit at them until the candy is released. When it comes to personal pleasure in families, kindness is more the norm than seeking pain, but here it is used in a surprising fashion with the metaphorical pinata helping to build and clarify the conclusion. Her poem is an honorable mention.

The Coyotes Hunt in Open Light by Megan Merchant uses a closed form of couplet. The title is one line of the first couplet that uses a comparison to bring the sound of coyotes to the readers ear in an effective fashion. She uses a series of couplets that bring to the ear sounds that moves from hearing to sight into emotion, then cycles back to the beginning images to nail down how we relate to nature and society. It is a cool poem with slipperiness that slides in from the initial close couplet to more open couplets, perhaps freeing her to play with the ideas that come out. 

I played many games of cards when I was young and babysitting for the neighbor while she worked. So the next poem seems to fit the above photograph as well as my memory.

Solitaire Confinement by C. Fausto Cabrera uses both open and closed couplets in a straightforward fashion that follow the way solitaire is played. The open ends of the couplets allow him to be precise about the way the game is played, using pauses to put down cards or think. He is mildly ironic in showing the game has a high cost. Then he combines the couplets to offer up commentary in the form of a final quartet.  

I'll Whisper You a Quarter Cup by Betsy Anderson is a series of closed couplets that explain what she doesn't want to do, offering it to other readers, poets, or those in a relationship, the most open part of the poem is exactly who she is addressing, or referring to with the he, possibly God, possible the god of poetry. She makes her seduction first with title then with all the promises she won't do before finally offering up that quarter cup. So the slipperiness is in the language and the connections between seductive things.

To An Iris by Michael A. Sickler is also a seduction of sorts that opens with a closed couplet and then slides between the relationship between love and jealousy and between humans and nature. He closes with a play on words between miserly and misery in the closing stanza.

Signatures For Susan Tepper by Jeff Santosousoso uses the two halves of couplet in the form Robert Hass mentions, question and response, to showcase the differences in the way he and the woman addressed, Susan Tepper, communicate. The poem slips from the personal to the interpersonal, interrelationship to offer commentary on communication. It is an homage poem in the sense that he shows his understanding of their relationship together.
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We Must Learn to Praise the Mundane by Heather Hallberg Yanda is an amusing poem that cycles from the beginning to the end back to the beginning in order to complete. It starts in narrative mode and slowly becomes more concrete. The references seem less personal at first but become more personal as it goes along. Discoveries in ideas and reality surprise by the end of the poem.

This is just a subset of the couplet driven poems. A couple of the couplet poems use a single line interspersed between the couplets to effectively act like a tercet, offering commentary on the previous couplet, but act almost like a stop or yield sign, directing the pace of the poetry. Two of the winning poems use tercets which are almost as visually airy as the couplets.

Overall, this edition offers a suggestion to poets, if you haven't played with couplets in your poetry and haven't allowed poems to slip from idea to related idea, maybe you should.

“Adore” is a chapbook of first poems by Madeline Walz, who offers the confession that she never meant to be a writer but felt called to testify her faith and what came out is sixteen poems that offer up her experience with Christian life. The chapbook is attractively designed with a green marbled cover, the simple title “Adore” and a dark green cross.

“Adore” is aptly titled because the poet clearly adores God and puts her faith into her life as shown by these poems. The poems range in topic from health issues and healing, conversations by a child, the need for friends and family especially love, storms, losses and many more. It is easy to connect how the poet feels and her experience with your own life. The collection offers her testimony of wonder and experience but ends with a call to action, which is easy to take up.

The poetry is mostly free form, allowing the words to direct the shape. The use of repetition as a device often appears from poem to poem so that they all connect by technique as well as topic. I think this chapbook is a strong beginning from a new writer that offers something for everyone. Although many wonder what Christian faith feels like, her words offer the strong sense that she is being guided by her faith and love. Those who lack faith might find answers to find faith in these words. And those who have faith will understand what the poet feels with ease.
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I wish this poet good luck with her writing and hope to read more from her someday. She also has a book out, you can find it on her webpage. Below is a video Madeline Walz made on the costs of distracted driving.

Robert Krut's book of poetry titled “The Now Dark Sky, Setting us All on Fire” is set at first in the night time city streets. Fire is a consistent theme throughout the book. It starts with a hand that holds fire and ends pretty much the same, one almost thinks of light sabers. The fire sits on the edge of good and bad, once mentioned as demon, at other times as ghost, jellyfish, sometimes animate and other times inanimate, being neither one or the other because somehow the essence of being human and tied to a body slips away.

Above, a recent picture I took at dawn captures what I think the poet means at first read, namely the changes of lighting we experience and how it alters our world view.

Sometimes the breakage between physical body and inner essence in the poems is deliberate as in “Dissipate and Obfuscate” where the poet is “learning/ to let my limbs/ float away” or when “The Cost” when “you can leave/ this room/ but have to put/your hand inside--//the mouth closing/ cleaves it” where the cost of leaving this inability to be heard in a room trapped requires giving up the hand (with or without the fire is unstated).  Just in these few lines the reader can see consonance at work, connecting in direction the poem will take.

I can interpret the work in many ways but escape into a different realm and the power an unnamed “You” holds over the poet are strongly tied together. Experience by the poet also is a strong element, with strong use of details that highlight a changing reality from the concrete block being carved, to windows, cars, formaldehyde cylinders, clocks, watches, beetles, and much more.

"You" in the poems can be interpreted many ways, being both singular and plural. It can be some unnamed significant other, the reader, God, the devil, or even poetry muse. It doesn’t seem to matter which the reader attaches; what matters is the clear emotion connected to “you” being present. 

​Fire appears in many ways, as heat over the body, as light from the sky, from city lights, from reflected lights, from matches and fireworks. However, the meaning of fire is very much connected to the poet and his experiences within each poem.
These three elements, fire, you, and escape from the body, connect the collection together as it works its way through dark city nights, through creatures both imaginary and real. Often the poems feel deeply symbolic more in line with the dream world than reality. The reader follows along with the shifts the poet makes primarily due to the language connections and those three elements. I wanted to discover why, but perhaps the journey was the only part the poet could provide concretely, maybe it will take more books to dig out what is the root. Overall, I found the poetry easy to read and follow and a pleasure to read.

The title “Sistas Stay Strong” by Eric Reese feels somewhat misleading when written by a male poet, but it does explain the content of the book of poems. The use of the word "Sistas" is slang for sisters and conveys the African sense of sister meaning family women and women friends. It starts by using consonance and addressing black women. The book provides homage to what black women have endured while using the reinforcement of command to continue with encouragement. Courage is needed as many of the poems show.

Most of the poems read as if the author had read the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters at some time in the past, because they bare the same resemblance to gravestone inscriptions, that tell a brief moment about an individual or providing witness to some event. The poems are all short, tight, discussions that often start with an address to a person and then ends with a sharp note of wisdom at the end. The hooks are in the tight start, the cliffhangers beat a drum, meaning they often have a real impact on the reader.

​Topics vary throughout including the #Metoo movement, prostitution, rape, slavery, media, hair, skin, babies, equality. So as you can see, the poems offer why encouragement is needed. Examples from Sistas Stay Strong:
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OF COURSE!
 
Was accused of murder
when she was just
avoiding rape.
 
and an example of encouragement:
 
SISTA GO GET IT
 
She didn’t know anything
other than being in the kitchen
but wasn’t intimidated
when she discovered that
she had the same power
to generate money in it
like her white counterparts

​Most of the poems brought back memories for me, the latter of working in a restaurant which has the equality of being where the unskilled first start out. The former "Sista Go Get It", reminded me of the terrible trial I had sat on during jury duty, where a woman was accused of killing her significant other with a kitchen knife. I hadn’t qualified for the jury because I had had previous experience of assault in my history. Later, after the trial finished and I was still on jury duty, I learned from a jury member the murder trial victim had previously killed other partners in self-defense, a psychologist explaining why this often happened. In the murder trial, the woman was black, my coworker’s daughter was white. Regardless of the race issue, the issue of violence, especially toward women is apparent throughout the book.
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The situation of violence that I was aware of that disqualified me for the jury happened to a daughter of a coworker had stopped to help a man who stopped on the roadside in front of her. When the man came to my friend's daughter's window which she rolled down partially, he punched her in the face. Luckily, the daughter had pepper spray in her car and was able to get away. The police found he had pictures of her in his apartment, he’d followed her for some time.

So my long-winded set of examples is leading to a point, namely that poems don’t exist on their own. They feed from the world we live in, and feed back through the words to the community members, providing tales we can relate to and providing the music of verse to reinforce that things need to be different and can be different.

If you suffer from abuse in your relationship, please read "The Truth About Abusers" an article at Psychology Today.
 
Poems also connect to each other, forming a pattern and texture almost like cloth, that paints a picture that each instance can apply to more than one individual to create the sense that not just one person was wounded, we were all wounded.
 
My view of this collection of poems is that Eric Reese went beyond the Spoon River Collection that captured individuals in a graveyard, to capture the society of living and dead in our society. It connects and reconnects throughout, while being easy to read and understand.
 
In conclusion, this is one of the collections Eric Reese has written and has an opening dedication written by former President Obama. Eric Reese writes from his home in Philadelphia. It will be interesting to see what moves him to write in the future.

How to get back to work after a break?

A teacher. The line, haiku, the two line form.

Samples:

Smoky sunset: marshmallow, chocolate, easy sleep.

Sense memories squeeze between the sleeping bag of time.

Photograph of swampy area near Huntsville, Alabama

The most notable things I liked about Sheryl St. Germain’s “Let it Be a Dark Roux” starts with the title, and then continues on to let us know by details about place, family life, that she is rooted in Louisiana culture. Roux is explained in the poem, “Making Roux”. One especially noteworthy poem, “The Lake” describes Lake Pontchartrain, and its evocative details, “rotten smell”, fish … open-eyed to the surface, dark waters and gray-peppered foam, remind me of some of the swampy places around Orlando and really paint the differences parts of the south have compared to many other environments. I like it that this element, the Cajun culture, is used as an outer theme, although other themes also exist such as that of family addiction problems, desire, and her need to become somebody she wanted to be.

Her use of repeated elements, there are many open mouths for instance, also food, pepper, fish, water which connect the poems and resonates between them. Many times her use of her Catholic upbringing shows up in small details. For me, the open mouth reminds me of being fed the Eucharist instead of receiving it in hand, and suggests to me, the poet’s ability to receive in an open fashion and also as an expression of desire.

Some of the poems have distinctly feminine points of view that I think are quite original; such as the need to find solace in making love after a funeral, while memories compete seen in “Deathbed”. Another good example is in the poem, “Thinking About Being a Woman as I Drive from Louisiana to New Mexico” which mixes in some of the less appealing cultural practices like the wearing of girdles or the binding of women’s feet in China.

Photograph from New Orleans area from my time in Alabama

So structure wise, I read this collection as primarily linear in time although in certain places the poems return again and again to different stages in her brother’s heroin addiction (link takes you to some unpleasant images of how addicts live) or her own use. Even though the first line of “Flambeau Carriers” is “Red-eyed and sweating whiskey”, the repeated “I loved” has an enticement into a different milieu and then the next poems reinforce it. It also ends with “Joy” and the sense that the author has come away from a previous life into a new one.

Here's Sheryl St. Germain Reading "A French Mosquito Defends Itself"

Well, I envy Robert Hass’ relaxed contemplative style of introspection in Sun Under Wood, but I fear that I will never match his style—I think his voice is quite unique. I also like his sense of humor, for example, the title My Mother’s Nipples and various asides and incongruous images like the yellow panties.

Why do I fear I will never match his style? In some ways because his style, a sort of free write flow of thoughts are often based on knowledge about something that he uniquely has studied. Two poems are like this, Jatun Sacha and Regalia for a Black Hat Dancer. I especially like it when his details are more fantasy or emotion driven than exact such as in Seventh Night’s Hi dreamer, Hi mortal splendor. And from Jatun Sacha, “It was a gold thing, her singing.”

I am not free writing at the moment. I am collecting evidence around situations I have experienced. It is very time consuming and frenetic. There is nothing frenetic or insistent in Robert Hass’ writing, except perhaps a persistence of thinking around his mother’s alcoholism. 

What I found especially attractive about Thomas Centolella’s poems in “Lights and Mysteries” is the strong sense of emotion leading to a more analytical, detached view of some ideal, be it love, relationship, God, or reaction to an earthquake.

I didn’t mind the wordiness of the poems in the collection because they were rich with detail, enough so to keep me reading on to the next line and next.  Some examples I particularly liked are the rich details about being at the race track in “Perfecta” since I’ve gone to the race track many times and the opening line to Mountain Town, “Sometimes hell looks beautiful.”

I have a harder time with some of the longer selections such as the poem “Lights and Mysteries” where I have to show patience to find the connections between sets, often because when I read poetry, I want to be able to take a quick read of one poem and set it down and walk away, while the longer poems require a deeper, longer immersion. I am attracted to the idea of how some of these poems work and using them in my own work. I’ve noticed that there are different ways that poem series are made, i.e. connected times as in the poem “Light and Mysteries”, or with a personal connection as in “Sister”, or associated ideas like in “On My Street” where each stanza addresses a different aspect of life on the street.

The photo above is the beautiful Seattle harbor with a view of the street from the sculpture garden. Seattle for me could be hell anytime I needed to commute but most the time the beauty paid for all the trouble to get there.

Most of Thomas Centolella’s poems do tell a story, all with a reflective moment that said, what I am doing here, and how I’m reacting are larger than the immediate sensing and why. The twists often come related to that why, by this I mean the poem changes with this understanding of how emotional state relates to an ideal state. A good example of this is The Orders which has two turns, first when two buddies are talking together in a car when God “put a gun to the head of my friend” and then a second time when their neighbor’s arrival saves them and between there, the poet realizes “Suddenly time was nothing.”

The first poems all relate to a love relationship where the narrator and a woman seem to share a sense of love and experience but they don’t quite know where it will go. As It Was in the Beginning seems to show the narrator and his lover mid love making as a form of prayer. Toward the end of the section, it is clear that the relationship ended, but the narrator is still in touch with the poetry inside himself. So this section seems to be linearly arranged in time, i.e. this happened, then that.

Two poems I found I liked to use as emulations include Addis Abada, and In the Evening We Shall Be Examined on Love; here's a link to Thomas Centolella's readings of these poems.

The next section opens with the poem that titles the collection and it is one of the longer poems series narrative tales where the poet seems to be going back in time to his childhood experiences via maybe a visit to his former school. In this poem, Lights and Mysteries, the narrator is reflecting on the question of what makes life matter, if we’re all going to die anyway, as seen through various a series of incidents that occurred, perhaps linearly in time. 

I think here, the meaning of the title becomes clearer. Where the poet is mystified about some aspect of life, he delves deeper into the question, either by sharing what he learned from an incident or discovered along the way. The first section appears to be the mystery of what makes a relationship work and how do you let go once a relationship doesn’t work or ends. The second section appears to be linear, with a gradual progression in life leading to interest in spiritual matters. A key turning point occurs with the poem, Gentleman of the Century which concludes, “… so I’ve become human again.” I think these words seem to signify the poet is able to connect his desire to connect experience to feelings to a search for more meaning found in poetry or meditation.

Kim Addonizio’s poetry in “Tell Me” reads more like prose than poetry. This is not a fault or a benefit, it serves more to establish her voice, for me. Many of the pieces seem stream of consciousness—she doesn’t seem to edit out the unpleasant from her thoughts, such as a poem titled “Garbage”, a very unique look at humanity and what we value and do not that has a political edge to it rather than ecological. She in fact seems to specialize in the nitty gritty of everyday life, those details stood out as different from say, a nature poem and they add the richness of experience and reality to the content.

Even though her poem’s format seems to imply line breaks, I feel they are superficial, not always breaking to make a point or to lend emphasis, same way for the indents, sometimes they start a sentence, sometimes they end a sentence, other times words trail off not so you’d ponder the words more, but so that maybe it fits neatly on the page.

When I mentioned this to my classmates, they disagreed, and I admit that there are many places where her use is specific and important, however, that was my initial impression.

The formats are pretty much the same throughout the collection and serve as a visual tie for the poems, without even looking at content or thought or anything else. I think this format was chosen to help prepare a prose piece into a more poetic form, allowing space into a dense passage that would keep a reader from delving into the material (many people I’ve run into say dense blocks of text are skimmed or feel unapproachable and this format works to avoid that problem).

Again, I had argument about the idea that her poems were primarily prose. I guess, that is why the exercise of looking at other poet’s work is important since it helps to identify how impressions change with different people.

I felt the collection was about her broken relationship with her husband and with addiction and what comes after it. Many of the poems feel isolated and lonely or full of pain, such as “Collapsing Poem”. The follow on poem “The Divorcee and Gin” seems to indicate there is a tie here between the two. 

My emulations tended to be from less personal issue areas. I didn’t relate personally to some of her topics although I could understand them and empathsize, I can’t say I’ve ever sat looking into my glass of whatever in a bar as in “Glass” yet it finds more content than I would imagine and I have to say, the concluding line was a situation I ran into a time or two. My curiosity is sparked by the unusual topic. I found her poem “Spider” amusing and sweet, the relationship with her daughter seems wonderful.

The title poem “Tell Me” is wonderfully revealing and inviting (like a desire to step away from loneliness and reach out), and seems like a turning point in the collection. Rather than being mid center, it sits toward the end. 

Many of the poems connect to bars and drinking and the problems they cause. The many poems on this topic change from relationships, to what happens, to a father’s problem with drinking, to social engagements, to addiction, to winding down after a class. They pop up throughout the collection so one is aware of it and you feel sad, but it doesn’t overwhelm the collection.

Why did I feel empathy for her poems, what happened in the poem to cause this feeling?

The emotion I felt via her imagery primarily, but I think the empathy came from the collective sense running through the pieces. It sort of says that even if we have emotion at some point, there's a greater humanity to a person than just the moment they cry, sort of like, its the sum of her experiences and willingness to dig into the world around her which feels gutsy given the pain she feels and her willingness to see people inside of people where many don't look such as the poor, the drunk, the woman on her doorstep, and how that same return look isn't guaranteed by others. So, "Tell Me", is just that demand, do you see more? given to her audience as a challenge to give back to her what she's given them.

In comparing Kim Addonizio’s work to Robert Hass’, I felt Robert Hass' work went beyond prose, to more complex contrasting imagery and thoughts. His works had emotion, but held at check, while the ideas came from many directions as if they added up to a bigger understanding. Kim Addonizio's is quite different, she's dealing in moments often, and what is at the surface at that time, very carefully examined. Not all of them are prosaic, some like Tell Me and What Women Want, are quite refined down to the nub, while others have the sharp details of capturing everything in a moment.  But many, seem to fall from one idea to the next.  I think I use it because much of her work seems to come in complete sentences.

More on Robert Hass' writing in another post.

I haven't worked much on LinkedIn so when the Poets and Editors group said let's do a challenge of writing a poem a day, I opted in. My poems for this exercise are found:

LinkedIn National Poetry Challenge Poems by Sheri Fresonke Harper

They'll probably disappear off the web and I'll have lost my first publication rights on them, oh, well.

Meanwhile, I'm exploring poetry writing apps including Prose, Poet's Corner, Poeemms, and just installed the Poet Tree. Will let everyone know what I think.

Meanwhile I'm finishing up for the semester at Ashland University. I've submitted my four packets, had feedback from my mentor Ruth L. Schwartz and worked on expanding my memoir with better imagery about place, time, setting, etc. We've also worked on writing poems in emulation of other poets and on using a line from their poems. The theory behind this process is to develop stronger sense of voice in others and in your own writing. When you can compare yourself line by line to another poet, you can say, 
1. am I making as good of a sentence?
2. using as rich details
3. making as big of a leap
4. dig deep enough into thought and emotion
5. finding other ways to structure material
and other similar questions.

I've read poems by Ruben Dario, famous Nicaraguan poet, and some on two separate collections of French poetry in preparation for a visit to France.

I have lots of edits to do out of the material I wrote in class before they're ready to be submitted anywhere.