Calvin Olsen’s “Rejoinder” Post 16/31 in my A Mother Here reading series. (Click/tap here to read the poem.) Poem: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/16-Olsen_Rejoinder.mp3 (Direct link to audio file.) Commentary: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/16-Comment-on-Olsen_Rejoinder.mp3 (Direct link to audio file.)
Here’s a link to the poem if you’d like to follow along as Neil reads. Read more about the Mormon Poetry Slam here and see the posting schedule here. Vote for your favorite performance here (the link will go live once all the entries have been posted). Use #MormonPoetrySlam if you post about this in your social media circles.
This past Saturday, my review copy of Susan Elizabeth Howe‘s new book, Salt, arrived. I’ll be reviewing it for A Motley Vision and expect to have my essay completed and posted sometime in the next month or two, but in the meantime I wanted to post my initial response to the collection. While I haven’t yet read beyond the first… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 35/82: Michael Hicks, “Family Tree“ [audio:http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Hicks_Family-Tree.mp3] (My reading of “Family Tree”) In “Family Tree,” Michael’s lines are achingly sparse, haiku-like, even. I find in them a seductive grace and restraint that at once fills me and leaves me wanting. Take, for example, his first section, “Adam” (quoted above). As I read it, the sibilance in the first… Read more »
In which I respond to and remix the first section of Michael Hicks’ poem, “Family Tree.” Scales hoarse as secrets whispered between lovers at dusk, a serpent—and not a serpent—licks at Adam’s dreams, tasting his flesh to test what knowledge had infused the first man in Father’s quickening sigh. Adam hears voices from deep in the serpent’s caress, hears a… Read more »
Poet Highlight: Emily Stanfill, “Then I Became Eve“ What strikes me most about the poem, first, is the way the poet “verbs” the adjective innocent, using it not to describe her Eve—as in, “I am/was innocent/an innocent person”—but as a means of modifying her, as in, “He made me innocent.” This out-of-the-ordinary usage highlights, for me, the possibility of Adam… Read more »
FitP Poet Highlight 11/82: Kristen Eliason, “arms upon arms to an earth“ “Kristen Eliason’s delicious prose and poetry drive a hard bargain between elegy and Japanese wabi-sabi.” So says whoever wrote the bio note on this event page announcing a Kristen Eliason reading at Notre Dame. I nod in agreement: “Yes. Yes, Kristen’s poetry is elegaic, very haiku-like in its… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 10/82: Javen Tanner, Curses For Your Sake “The title of Tanner’s chapbook frames well the experience captured in his lyric narrative poems. Extracted from the decree God directed towards Adam and Eve at the moment he expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the phrase ‘curses for your sake’ (see Gen. 3:17) suggests that moral paradox and… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 1/82: Doug Talley, “Finding Place” [soundcloud id=’41731292′ playerType=’Standard’ width=’55%’ color=’#003366′] (My reading of “Finding Place”) From my preface to Fire in the Pasture: Doug Talley’s poem, “Finding Place,” . . . speaks to the intersection of religious, spiritual, and moral experience with the aesthetic experience inherent in well-crafted poetry. Through metaphors we often use to describe and… Read more »