Between Michael Hicks and Me: “Family Tree” Remix

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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 »

Rhetorics of Grace in Sunni Wilkinson’s “Acrobats”

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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 »

Disturbing the Dust on Emma Lou Thayne’s Jar of Rose Hips

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Poet Highlight: Emma Lou Thayne, “The Rose Jar“ Disturbing the dust on a bowl on rose leaves . . . –T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton“ In the opening section of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton,” the poet muses on the interconnections and “unredeemab[ility]” of time (line 5): “What might have been,” he says, “is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual… Read more »

“This Was When”: Matthew James Babcock’s “Moose Remembered”

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"Moose in the Neighbor's Yard"

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 »

Airing the Cultural Laundry: Laura Baxter’s “Take Care of Your Soul—It’s Flapping in the Breeze”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 32/82: Laura Nielson Baxter, “Take Care of Your Soul—It’s Flapping in the Breeze“ “Take Care” is an exercise in absurdity. I mean, a neighbor airing his soul on a clothesline like recently washed laundry then leaving it to dry for a few decades? How absurd! But this premise hasn’t been pushed to absurdity just for absurdity’s sake. This… Read more »

On Serrano’s Piss Christ and the Work of Mormon Poetics

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Anthology Poet Highlight 31/82: Tyler Chadwick, “Submerged: Two Variations on Serrano’s Piss Christ“ (on page 72) The central method of gaining knowledge we have is our language. I do not think it is the function of the poets to give us little homilies in it, but to try to work the language to the limits of its resources, because when… Read more »

The Flesh is Charged with the Grandeur of God: On Elaine Christensen’s “Sermon on Manchac Swamp”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 30/82: Elaine Wright Christensen, “Sermon On Manchac Swamp” Ah, “[t]he world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.” So Hopkins, for whom “nature is never spent.” For whom creation is a living fountain of… Read more »

Jonathon Penny’s “Confession, after battle”: A Soldier’s Litany

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Anthology Poet Highlight 29/82: Jonathon Penny, “Confession, after battle“ At first glance, “Confession” seems a simplistic poem: the poet repeats the same structure for four, essentially five, stanzas, changing only a word per stanzaic turn. The structure is thus something of a template— I’m sorry that I killed your ______ I did not know he was your ______ I only… Read more »

Clinton F. Larson’s “City of Joseph”: This Soft Array of Leaves and Light

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Poet Highlight: Clinton F. Larson, “The City of Joseph“ While “The City of Joseph” is obviously meant as inspirational verse (especially considering its venue of publication: The Ensign), I don’t find it sentimental in anyway. In fact, the language and imagery and the way Larson binds them together in his poetic vision are quite striking, quite accomplished. In fact, I… Read more »

The Urge and Urge and Urge of Danny Nelson’s “Creation”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 28/82: Danny Nelson, “Creation” Danny’s “Creation” revises the Old Testament’s opening text. As such, it delves deeply into the “procreant urge of creation,” a phrase straight out of Whitman. Indeed, in Danny’s poem, as in Whitman and, I would argue, most poetry, I find this “Urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the… Read more »