Anthology Poet Highlight 45/82: Scott Cameron, “Water Has No Memory” [soundcloud id=’58705907′ playerType=’Standard’ width=’46%’ color=’#003366′] I’m enamored of Scott’s description of a restless God, mostly because “a restless God” wasn’t language I’d considered before hearing Scott read this poem at our group faculty reading in June (which is where I snagged the recording). But it struck me as apropos… Read more »
Poet Highlight: Dayna Patterson, “Our Lord Jesus in Drag” In my sonnet “On Crucifixion by J. Kirk Richards,” I use the practice of cross-dressing as an analogue for Christ condescending from godhood to put on mortality: “When God cross-dresses in death,” I say, “does / the universe blush?” In her poem, “Our Lord Jesus in Drag,” Dayna also offers a… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 44/82: Melissa Dalton-Bradford, “House for Rent” (Scroll down, both there and here) Language came to me deeply when my paternal grandfather started to decline, when his body began to give in to the detritus of age, when I was faced with his loss. I’ve noted elsewhere that “our words, we hope, will ward off death. Looking into… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 43/82: Calvin Olsen, Haiku #100 I’ve been fascinated with haiku since I started writing poetry and for a time I, like Calvin, used haiku as a springboard into writing longer poems. I think I was drawn to the form because it’s short, yes, but also because there’s a great deal of intricacy at work in the image-heavy… Read more »
Poet Highlight: Robert A. Rees, “Blind Tears” In “Blind Tears” Robert A. Rees becomes a mother in Cambodia. Speaking from her “I,” he strives to put on this fictive woman’s skin, to walk in her shoes, to see the world through her eyes and thus to connect with her and her world in a very personal way. This effort requires… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 42/82: Claire Åkebrand, “October Plush” (scroll down) Like the violet at its center, the texture of Claire’s “October Plush” is lush, but only fleetingly so. The poet runs her words like fingers over the flower’s petals, pausing in her passing by to notice the beauty of the transient subject at her feet. For although the violet can’t… Read more »
I originally read this essay, in which I officially announced the publication of Fire in the Pasture, at the 2011 conference of the Association for Mormon Letters, held March 26, 2011. I read and commented on several poems in part II of the essay, but I’m not transcribing those readings here; if you’d like to hear them, you can listen… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 41/82: Paul Swenson, “Negative Space” [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Swenson_Negative-Space.mp3] (My reading of “Negative Space”) On the afternoon of the first resurrection, I want to sit on my sister May’s bench and read her new poems. So, maybe, if you’re still around when I go under, I wonder—could you burn me, turn me into ash, and slip me in [the… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 40/82: Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, “Legacy” [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Dubrasky_Legacy.mp3] (My reading of “Legacy”) In Danielle’s sonnet, the poet explores an intergenerational relationship—and the rippling effects thereof—among three women and one man: the poet, the poet’s grandmother, the grandmother’s brother, and the poet’s great-grandmother. This complex relationship is narrated from the poet’s point of view as she observes her grandmother’s… Read more »
Poet Highlight: Linda Sillitoe, “Encounter”“ [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Sillitoe_Encounter.mp3] (My reading of “Encounter”) Linda’s unrhymed sonnet, “Encounter,” takes as its lyric province the intergenerational relationship between people, places, and possessions (yes, the alliteration was on purpose). The poet, born of goodly parents (at least it seems so from the cache of memories stirred up in this sensory experience), begins by lyrically binding… Read more »