Here’s a link to the poem if you’d like to follow along as Eric 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.
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.
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.
On October 24, 2011, I posted about Michael R. Collings’ poem “Legacy.” Here’s an excerpt from that post and my reading of the poem:; The excerpt: Michael’s longish poem, “Legacy,” breaches the subject of family in a way that neither sentimentalizes the good nor that glosses over the difficult. This is apparent in the first lines in which the poet… Read more »
I’ve started revisiting old posts, adding audio files of me (or someone else) reading the poems I discuss in those posts. Last month, I revisited my commentary on Neil Aitken’s first poetry collection. Today, I’m returning to my thoughts on Marilyn Bushman-Carlton’s poem “Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major. To that end: here’s me performing her poem:
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 »
Anthology Poet Highlight 39/82: Jim Richards, “Cleave” [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tumblr_lxc4b0b5581qldxkx.mp3] (My reading of “Cleave”) I take Jim’s “it” to be, yes, sex—but also more than sex. It take it to be the much deeper state of being, the more-than-intimate connection, the dual state of oneness entered into when partners become more than lovers, lovers more than partners. Such eroticism goes much… 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 »
Anthology Poet Highlight 33/82: Matthew James Babcock, “Moose Remembered” (scroll down) [audio: http://www.terrain.org/poetry/25/mp3/Babcock_MooseRemembered_Terrain.org.mp3] (Matthew’s reading of “Moose Remembered” [from Terrain.org]) This poem features a moose, but it’s about memory: the redemption of past experience. “This was when,” the poet begins, speaking to his wife, I presume, about a Saturday morning earlier in their marriage when he, as a young husband… Read more »