Category Archives: Poet Highlights

Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World: “An Economy of Grace”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 13/82: Warren (Scott) Hatch, Mapping the Bones of the World Although it might seem contradictory to suggest that Mapping the Bones of the World, a collection of long narrative poems, is economical—as if the poet had composed from a frugal rhetorical budget, determined to compress experience into as tight a linguistic vessel as he could craft in… Read more »

Breaking Bread with Laraine Wilkins: “Make Yourself at Home”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 12/82: Laraine Wilkins: “Make Yourself at Home“ (scroll down)   While Laraine Wilkins has passed on and while I never knew her (though we did share a few brief emails when she was editor of Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film and I’d submitted some poems for publication), I believe her impact on the world… Read more »

Finding the Immutable Wayplace of God in Kristen Eliason’s “Arms Upon Arms to an Earth”

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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 »

“Not Satisfaction, but Its Proxies”: Javen Tanner’s Curses For Your Sake

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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 »

On Karen Kelsay’s In Spite of Her

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Anthology Poet Highlight 9/82: Karen Kelsay, In Spite of Her In her chapbook of narrative poems, In Spite of Her, Karen explores the relationship between a middle-aged woman and a world that changes and moves on “in spite of her” (“In Spite of Her,” line 11). These poems become acts of mourning mixed with moments of acceptance of and resignation… Read more »

The Blessing and Curse of Michael R. Collings’ “Legacy”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 8/82: Michael R. Collings, “Legacy“ (My reading of Michael’s poem.) 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 says, “By all accounts my great-great-great / was / a thorough-going bastard /… Read more »

Elizabeth Garcia Talks “The Semantics of Blessings”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 7/82: Elizabeth (Cranford) Garcia, “The Semantics of Blessings“ (My reading of Liz’s poem) Liz’s unrhymed, free-variation on the sonnet, “The Semantics of Blessings,” took an Honorable Mention in Segullah‘s 2007 Poetry Contest. Cranford also took First Place in this contest with her poem (another sonnet), “Reproach.” Both, I think, are excellent poems, tightly crafted and nuanced enough… Read more »

Ah, To Live for Dizziness: Mark Bennion’s “Still Life”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 6/82: Mark Bennion, “Still Life“ (Scroll down) (My reading of Mark’s poem) Mark Bennion’s first collection, Psalm & Selah is a great example of what a good poet can do in response to the Book of Mormon, which is to explore the stories many Mormons know so well in ways that shed new light on them, in… Read more »

The Deep-throated Ache of Marilyn Bushman Carlton’s “Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major“

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Anthology Poet Highlight 5/82: Marilyn Bushman-Carlton, “Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major“ (Here’s a link to my reading of Marilyn’s poem.) Music, as poetry, has power to bind us through and with the body’s rhythms. Marilyn Bushman-Carlton provides a case in point with “Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major,” a fairly short poem that shows the… Read more »

“How We are Saved” in/by Neil Aitken’s Lost Country of Sight

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Anthology Poet Highlight 4/82: Neil Aitken, The Lost Country of Sight Neil’s first collection begins with a poem—“In the Long Dream of Exile” (hear Neil read it below)—that marks the solitary nature of the poet’s vocation. Pointing to this call to wander rhetorical landscapes in pursuit of, among other things, what poet Adrienne Rich calls “the dream of a common… Read more »