Author Archives: Tyler

E.S. Jenkins’ “Weary”: Sorrow, Greatly Multiplied

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Anthology Poet Highlight 25/82: E.S. (Sarah) Jenkins, “Weary” I counted them as they came—sons and daughters who didn’t count. I counted their limbs, perfect limbs, like their father’s— nothing so imperfect. I found him perfect, my one week of us, my one weak husband. In her moving elegiac poem, “Weary,” Sarah highlights a less than pleasant aspect of the woman’s… Read more »

The Lust that Flowers on Timothy Liu’s “Tree that Knowledge Is”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 24/82: Timothy Liu, “The Tree that Knowledge Is“ (scroll down) This short poem illustrates Tim’s double-voice as both a gay and deeply religious poet. As Bryan Waterman observes, “A number of signifiers [in the poem] resonate with a Mormon audience: God’s ’still small voice’” “a favorite Primary phrase” with considerable cache in the Church’s pedagogical culture. Additionally,… Read more »

But We are No Eden: Emily Stanfill’s “Then I Became Eve”

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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 »

Language—and Beyond Language: Lisa Bickmore’s “Dog Aria”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 23/82: Lisa Bickmore, “Dog Aria” Lisa’s poem is about a dog. And not about a dog. On the surface the poet narrates her dachsund’s relationship with water and with song, showing the canine “baying adagio,” swimming “among the staves”—the movements of the sprinklers, the dishwasher, the washing machine—as the hush of water grows thick in his ears… Read more »

“The Points at which My Loves Fell from Me”: Philip White’s The Clearing

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Anthology Poet Highlight 22/82: Philip White, The Clearing In this book dedicated to his late father, mother, and wife, Philip invites us to feel our way around in the soul-space excavated by love and life, loss and death. Framed, then, as elegiac meditations on the loss of persons beloved, the poet lingers on these moments of departure—what the speaker in… Read more »

Contemplating the Sharpness of God’s Gaze: Marie Brian’s “Spindrift”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 21/82: Marie Brian, “Spindrift“ When I first read “Spindrift,” it caught me off-guard. The first thing that struck me first about the poem is its (Emily) Dickinsonian style: seemingly random, mid-sentence capitalizations, the hyphens, the brevity. The tone, however, is a bit more hopeful, more reverent as the poet’s mind reaches through the sea spray, contemplating redemption,… Read more »

Alex Caldiero’s “Seeing a Body”: The Shape Sound Makes

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Anthology Poet Highlight 20/82: Alex Caldiero, “Seeing a Body” This poem, which I’ve taken to calling “Seeing a Body” for ease of reference, melds performance and content in order to compel an awareness of the body’s connection to the earth and to language and sound—even to compel an awareness of the body’s connection to the earth and to tradition through… Read more »

We Shall Not Cease: Darlene Young’s “How Long”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 19/82: Darlene Young, “How Long“ Humanity’s stories are often filled with desire for something more, with homesickness, a wanderlust that leads characters to leave home and to enter the wilderness—whether physical, psychological, or emotional—in search of true belonging, something they’re never quite able to find. This yearning and its subsequent lack of fulfillment are illustrated well by… Read more »

Fleshing Out a Sublime Flatness: Willie DeFord’s “St. Teresa of Avila as Middle Manager”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 18/82: William DeFord, “St. Teresa of Avila as Middle Manager” [audio:http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tumblr_lu3wg4OFMa1qldxkx.mp3] This is me, reading and briefly commenting on Willie’s poem the day I broke Fire in the Pasture on the world. Willie is Sally’s beau. They live and write and play music together somewhere in Colorado. And, coincidentally (or not), they’re both poets and both included… Read more »

Sally Stratford’s “Inheritance”: What Holds Us Together

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Anthology Poet Highlight 17/82: Sally Stratford, “Inheritance“ The most striking thing to me about this poem are the images that suggest being clothed/covered/dressed in one’s legacy; or, in the poet’s words, that imply “wear[ing a] name” (line 1) that’s been passed between generations. There’s the “two carat diamond / which, like a heavy rock of salt, / falls to the… Read more »