Pages tagged "Poetry"

Sliding forward, upward pucker soft and fresh, pore to first slick of spring dew.

 

A Small Steadying Sail of Love by Nancy Gibbs Richard

Artists and poets are fond of irony and William H. Matchett is no exception. The title of his selected poems refers to an editor who commented in 1872 that Emily Dickinson’s poems reminded him “of air plants that have no roots in the earth.” Well, I would note that there are at least two levels of irony here: Dickinson’s poems are deeply rooted in her New England soil of hymns, history and experience; and Matchett’s poems are deeply rooted in his location outside of Seattle, Washington, overlooking a fiord and the Olympic Mountains. In fact, exploring the irony even further, one of the underlying themes of these selected poems is Matchett’s deeply rooted celebration of place, including its geography, biology, birds, soil, plants, and their meanings.

At Home on the Slopes of the Mountains By Sharon Snyder

Psalm 46:10

Dear Editor:

In the author statement that concludes Eleanor Dart’s latest book of poems, Before the Monsoon, Dart writes, “I don’t want to leave my writing buried in filing cabinets when I depart this life. Hence, this book.” I imagine her poems being rescued from papery depths, freed from the ponderous weight of file folders and metal drawers. Perhaps these poems once lived among tax statements, instruction manuals, love letters, but in this volume, they live together without any trace of compression or randomness.