TylerComments Off on Still Thirsting for Milk: Danielle Dubrasky’s “Legacy”
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 »
TylerComments Off on “Encounter”: Linda Sillitoe’s Cabinet of Wonders
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 »
TylerComments Off on How Do We Do It?: Jim Richards’ “Cleave”
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 »
TylerComments Off on To Speak the Language of Animals: Marilyn Nielson’s “Sheep”
Anthology Poet Highlight 38/82: Marilyn Nielson, “Sheep” [audio:http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tumblr_lx79b4k4DH1qldxkx.mp3](Marilyn’s reading of “Sheep”) To speak for those who otherwise can’t, to give the unvoiced a voice, the other languaged means by which to understand and be understood by others: these seem to be fundamental functions of the gospel of Christ, at the center of which rests the atonement. In this eternally-in-force act… Read more »
TylerComments Off on The Taste of Gideon Burton’s “Salt and Blood”
Anthology Poet Highlight 37/82: Gideon Burton, “Salt and Blood” [audio:http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tumblr_lwm8nxiPnq1qldxkx.mp3] (My reading of “Salt and Blood”) I like the taste of “Salt and Blood.” No, I don’t live in a coven or avoid sunlight and, although I do like potato chips, NaCl isn’t really my thing. Nonetheless, Gideon’s “Salt and Blood” makes my lyric tastebuds tingle. Hence the audio, in… Read more »
TylerComments Off on My 2012 AML Conference Proposal
I just submitted this proposal for next year’s Association for Mormon Letters Conference. The conference theme: “Going Forth Into All the World: Mormon Literature in an International Church.” I hope it tastes international enough for the organizers’ palate. * * * “Situating Sonosophy: De/constructing Alex Caldiero’s ‘Poetarium.’” Contemporary Utah poet Alex Caldiero‘s performative mode of poetry and poetics, which he… Read more »
TylerComments Off on She Comes Drenched in Associations: Sara Blaisdell’s “Ophelia”
Anthology Poet Highlight 36/82: Sara Blaisdell, “Ophelia“ (This links to an earlier version of the poem.) [audio:http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Blaisdell_Ophelia.mp3](My reading of “Ophelia” [the anthologized version]) Sara’s “Ophelia” makes me a bit melancholy. As does the painting upon which I’m pretty sure it’s based (see above). As does Shakespeare’s lady “of ladies most deject and wretched, / That suck’d the honey of [Hamlet’s]… Read more »
TylerComments Off on The Grace and Restraint of Michael Hicks’ “Family Tree”
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 »
TylerComments Off on Between Michael Hicks and Me: “Family Tree” Remix
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 »
TylerComments Off on Rhetorics of Grace in Sunni Wilkinson’s “Acrobats”
Anthology Poet Highlight 34/82: Sunni Brown Wilkinson, “Acrobats” (scroll down) “Acrobats” explores rhetorics of grace. It contrasts the simple and scripted made-for-TV “piety”—an easily imitated and consumed brand commodified and encouraged by the (early morning? early afternoon?) televangelist—with the speaker’s own halting attempts to “awaken [her] faith” to something beyond play-acting, beyond miming the preacher “in front of the mirror.” The… Read more »
