Green Revolver by Worthy Evans
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I look back at the notes I took while reading Worthy Evans’ prize winning poetry question, the one word that keeps popping up is Voice.

Now, if you write at all (or have taken a writing class) you’ve probably been admonished to find your voice which – as I recall – felt extremely puzzling. Of course I have a voice? I’m writing, aren’t I? But, Worthy’s poetry collection really stands out for its distinctive voice. SO, perhaps the best way to teach someone about what voice is is to show them a book like this compared to say Whitman and let them just see/hear what different voices can do.

Worthy uses a very simple, conversational tone throughout these free verse poems, yet the poems also feel mysterious. Take the poem “Sunset” where he writes: The man and his wife walked up to the / canyon lip and he said “It’s good, / not great. But the book said to do it / so here we are.” The man said he and / the wife got married and later looked / to the west. . . This poem is in a very distinctive setting, yet I wonder about time. Did the man and woman go there before marriage? After? What book? Maybe it is just me, but the poem made me pause to ponder. I love when that happens; when a poem requires more than one reading; when I ask questions.

This matter-of-fact, yet distinct tone is present throughout this collection of poems that seem to contain speakers who are unsure of something even as they try to do the right thing (whatever that is).

So, I leave you with my brief interpretation which includes a note to myself to ask Worthy about how he choices his linebreaks. That was the only stylistic question I found myself coming back to. But, again, I love when a poet has me asking questions and isn’t just telling me what to think.

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Jam Tree Gully: Poems by John Kinsella
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a pleasure to thoroughly enjoy a book so different from anything you would normally read. I have a tendency to read the poets from the contemporary American South (where I live), but this time I dove into John Kinsella’s rural landscape of Western Australia where I still found myself feeling at home.

The dedication and table of contents of “Jam Tree Gully: Poems” set up a chronology of place. Kinsella’s poetic speaker is moving to the Australian countryside where he and his family must contend with the wildness of nature as well as the urban (and/or unsavory) parts of life sneaking in to their Walden.

My reference to Walden is no mistake because even if Kinsella never quoted from Thoreau (he uses several quotes as epigraphs for this poems), you’d still get the sense of the man trying to find peace with nature that definitely resonates with the famous essayist.

Kinsella is skillful as he plays with free verse, rhyme and intricate word play. It is hard for me to pick a favorite piece because this is a pretty good sized poetry book with a wide variety of poems, but I want to mention “Greedy after this gossip” because it is so fun to read out loud: We don’t need to meet each other // to know each other. Sheep at goats far down low / are suddenly bleating at your door though // nowhere to be seen.

I found myself writing down page after page that I enjoyed, especially in the first 3/4 of the book (which is impressive) but the final 1/4 seemed to become a bit repetitive which is pretty understandable given the heft of the volume at over 150 pages, but stick with it to the end. You will enjoy the journey, the landscape and especially the Red Cloud poems that close out the collection.

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