Want to discuss more poetry? Hear some read? I’ll be at the Lazy Lion Bookstore tonight (10-20-11) from 6-8 along with two other featured readers. Fuquay-Varina here I come!
–oh and today is National Writing Day!
Once again I am preparing to review/discuss two poetry books I recently finished reading that are oh so very different. But, are they?
First up is the shorter of the two: Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained by Ben Nardolilli (2011, Folded Word Press). This concise chapbook is gorgeously designed with the cover, fonts, and interior images tied expertly together. The poems also cohere well although these are a bit more on the cerebral side of poetry than I normally read. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but if you are a reader who likes to ponder a poem; who really likes to dig into extended metaphor then this one is probably right up your alley.
My favorite poem was the shortest. At two lines I’ll produce it in its entirety. From “Cardiac Manifestations” A thing of so many compartments / Demands a thing to hold, or it breaks.
That’ll leave you thinking for quite some time.
The longer collection I finished was the prize winning Family Matters: Homage to July, The Slave Girl by Shelby Stevenson. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Stevenson at the NC Writer’s Conference and I very much enjoyed chatting with him. He is one of those poets who you can tell gives a great deal of thought to story, line, and sound when constructing his work.
After reading these poems I debated researching the actual characters who appear in the text. I definitely get the impression that these are poems based on actual people (Stevenson grew up on a farm towards the coast of NC) who lived, worked, and died in and around the time of slavery. There is a multi-generational feel to this collection as the speaker looks back on his own memories of the former slaves as well as stepping into the voices of those who lived during slavery and reconstruction.
That is the impression I get from this book, but I don’t know how real these people are. They are definitely draw to be real. I did find, at times, that I wasn’t always as sure about who was speaking. There are quite a few characters in this book, and sometimes I felt a bit lost. There is a Whitman-esque grandeur to this book, however, that always brought me back to the words themselves such as this short bit from “Your Name is July”: Monuments – unheard, still.
That line is still resonating with me.
