The poetry.... of events.
934146
From Yeats to Neruda, the poetry of events has  escaped our finest wordsmiths.  Finally, Dirk Diggler gets it right.  Rock on!
4385409
As a reader and lover of poetry, I am particularly fond of anthologies. There's a thrill that comes with discovering a new poet, or seeing a favorite poet in a different context and setting. That's why when I got my hands on Persistent Voices - Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, a wonderful collection edited by Philip Clark and David Groff, I was eager to spend some quality time with the likes of Tim Dlugos, Essex Hemphill, and Reginald Shepherd. I was also delighted to be introduced to poets who were unfamiliar to me, such as George Whitmore and David Craig Austin.

The poems in this anthology bring forth a myriad of emotion. Some capture the burn of physical pleasure. Some sing of the universal joys of love. Some represent the foreshadowing of their poets' deaths. Their common thread, sadly, is that these poems leave us wanting more. We want more from these poets, who left us too soon. We want to call them and discuss mood and meaning. We want to hug them and nod together in recognition. We want to pre-order their next book. We want to learn from them, to comfort them, to gain strength from their poetic fierceness.  We want them. And sometimes, proving the true power of poetry, we are them.

Persistent Voices is more than a catalogue of strong poetry by poets who were equally strong (in many ways). Persistent Voices reminds us of the importance of poetry, of its place in society and of how it creates a degree of immortality. It teaches us, again, of how, with pen and paper, the truly persistent voices of these men and woman (yes, there are female poets included here) continue to be heard, to change lives, and to touch souls.

Many thanks to the poets, to their families and estates, and to Philip and David for sharing and preserving these gems.

This book receives my highest recommendation.
2318104
Great poems, along with a few that are stretching it.  Poems like "Narrows," "Ballads," and "Pray without Ceasing" are worth the price of the book alone, but "Coward" and "Poem" are hardly professional.  Overall, a good complilation.
4015290
Initial disclaimer: I know the author. That said, I like this poetry collection very much. I had naively planned to write comments about the poems that I particularly admired and liked, but, since I annotated over forty poems as especially fine, I shall have to be more discriminating. Cavalierly clumping poems into groups, there were six poems with a light frivolous flavor that I loved: "Hello," "Carnegie Library," "Nudge," "Poetry Defined," "Rubaiyat LXXI, Revised," and "Appropriate Salutaions." All excellently executed. There are science fiction poems and science poems, including "Checklist," "A Fire on Ganymede," and the beautiful "A Universe." There are many excellent romantic-relationship poems, with repeated themes of the narrator reflecting on his love being rejected or undervalued. My favorite of these was "For Love, This Cup," which is specific yet universal, tender, and haunting. Two other relationship poems, though not romantic relationship poems, also stood out to me: "But will they come when you do call for them?" which is about the narrator's parents, and "Photonic Relationships," which is about his brother. (At least, that is how the poems are presented, but they may be fictitious rather than autobiographical.) One poem with a clearly invented first-person narrator, "All the Important People #2," deals with ageing, and is tender and moving and among my favorites in the book. Many of the poems are clever; many exhibit the author's breadth of knowledge. Some, even though I may like them, remain at least partially cryptic to me, including the opening poem "All the Important People #5." (I find many poems cryptic, so this may reflect upon me rather than upon the poems.) Even though I found it somewhat cryptic, I loved the poem "At the Mountain Inn, Shaded by Broken Pines," and wished there were more in that voice or world. The endings of the poems are often wonderful, sometimes turning the poem in a new direction, for example the skillful and witty "Supplementary" shifts (for me) toward yearning in the closing two stanzas. There are two variants on the title poem, both of which I liked very much, but the second slightly the more, because of its final four-word stanza. Quite a few poems are pointed, and I particularly liked both the points being made and how that was achieved in "We Used To Have Faces" and "Famous Poet, Rant, Point of Order." A very fine collection.
1412038
Poems from the heart.  Poetry with a philosophical bent.  Words that say something. It's all here.  From Joy to Pathos between the covers of a single book.  A trip to inner thoughts and feelings, emerging at the end refreshed and replenished.  Old timers and youngsters alike find excellent reading in this book.
2625959
This poetry collection is "all currents, eddies, tides and whirlpools". It uses descriptive phrasing to describe a number of sexual encounters, which gives the collection the feel of being one continuous poem, instead of several separate poetic works, or an epic poem, if you prefer that description.

It has a strong use of language that makes even girdles seem sexy.

In a few words, this is narrative poetry. It describes events or happenings more so than feelings or inner workings.

The poet sometimes uses more traditional rhyme schemes, like abab that gives a few poems an almost Shakespearean feel. (The first three quatrains of Shakespeare's sonnets are written in abab rhyme schemes followed by a couplet.)

Because it feels like one continuous poem, it comes across as more of a sensual epic than a poetry collection. It is easy to get lost in the sensual descriptions and difficult to distinguish between poems.

The poet offers some interesting wordplay, puns, and lovely created words like "fleshed".

It also uses slant and subtle rhyming for a softly musical feel.

There is even some very biological and anatomical language like "cerebral cell" that adds a kind of scientific romanticism to some of the imagery.

The collection lacks cohesiveness as a work though here and there it contains some lovely phrasing and imagery. My favorite images include:
"made us monsoon adandonment"
"so now undo me, see legs first"
"I'm delicate/with zips and buttons"
"let's make each other beautiful"
"and be my dizzy charge"
"A whispered, tiptoed entry"
"Sweet juggling of the elements: /Water to fire and earth to air"
3928902
I'm not one to generally sit down and read a book of poetry, but that's exactly what I did when I picked up this anthology of poems. This particular book called out to me, perhaps because I enjoy reading things of the WWI time period. The poems collected in this book all reference to World War I, penned during the years of 1914-1917.

"Rubadub! Rubadub! Wake and take the road again,
Wheedle-deedle-deedle-dee, Come, boys, come!
You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again,
Fall in! Fall in! Follow the fife and drum!"
[The Toy Band by Henry Newbolt]

I have new favorite poems, whereas I never had any favorite poems before. I've become quite acquainted with writers I had not known before, in addition to seeing familiar names such as Robert Frost, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling.

"Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight,
The lean black cruisers search the sea.
Night-long their level shafts of light
Revolve, and find no enemy.
Only they know each leaping wave
May hide the lightning, and their grave."
[The Searchlights by Alfred Noyes]

I so enjoyed this charming book! I could definitely see myself going through the entire book and reading them all again someday. Also, the poems in this book can be read online on websites such as Bartleby.com if you're interested.

"God rest you, happy gentlemen,
Who laid your good lives down,
Who took the khaki and the gun
Instead of cap and gown.
God bring you to a fairer place
Than even Oxford town."
[The Spires of Oxford by Winifred M. Letts]
599836
An enjoyable poetic experience that reads as a sign of the times. That is not to say that the poetry fastens itself to a temporal identity, but the poetry does dynamically speak to some of the current realities of interpersonal relationships and cultural phenomena.

The word play is humorous, descriptive and daring. It's lyrical prowess is to be taken at face value as the author is clearly humble and does not take himself to seriously. Yet, the content of these poems are highly relatable and even entertaining.

I highly recommend this lovely book of poems if you enjoy poetry, lyrical intelligence and witty writing.
809738
Sometimes dark, sometimes comical, sometimes existential; a portrait of the world is painted by the poems in this compilation. The author often employs a delightful technique wherein he explores a significant life moment by focusing on a microcosm of that moment. "The Bridge of 61 Breaths" takes me back to a time when getting home meant crossing a bridge in the middle of nowhere, an inescapable moment of every day that I'd promptly forget. "I Found My Jill on Lemon Hill" reminds me of that one unforgettable lust who got away. "My Native State, Virginia" -- a beautiful double-entendre -- also evokes missed/lost love, still remembered after a long passage of time. The anti-reductionism of "Powdered Water" and the invocation of Sagan's garage dragon in "Sin -- It's In" evoke an ongoing debate about the nature of the universe that the author and I frequently have. This compilation paints in broad and subtle strokes, and I recommend it to any fan of contemporary poetry.

Abyssinia,
the reader
1051647
Beautifully written collection of poetry. The author skillfully takes you through the emotions & thoughts experienced in specific life events shared at one time or another by us all. A good read.
3441580
Rawlins has a great grasp of language and place--his words interweave emotion and location (mainly Wyoming and parts of Utah) well, well enough to evoke the same. His language at times is a little too abstract, where description goes on without the reader knowing the subject. In these cases, consideration of the title or a more careful reading usually helps to decipher, but I am fan of more concrete language and symbolism in poetry. That small critique aside, this collection of poetry is wonderful. I have a particular attachment to these locations, the scenery, the lifestyles and people, and Rawlins' love of these things is evident. I am ready to pick up another of his collections.

--- ---

"'Love's a debt,' / ... Tin cup to catch heart's blood." -- "Late Friday, in December" (21)

"Sometimes, this is all we have-- / strong drink, the bump of bodies in the smoke, / voices sounding twice off varnished pine" -- "Late Friday, in December" (21)

"I know / the price of knowing" -- "On Knife Point Glacier" (39)

"In love or dream the world, / if we are lucky, is begun: / ... a wish that one thing live / for one thing left undone." -- "'Enter My Dreams, My Love'" (65)

"Too cold / to stand, let alone to think, / ... night composes night, / half darkness and half sense, / blooms in the willows, / bleeds into the water, / ... the first star swims up into view." -- "The Mink" (51)
4304406
There is so much in this book of poems that I don't even know where to begin. This is some beautiful stuff!

First, I want to praise slot for her narrative arcs in poems: Many of these poems (though certainly not all) are driven by her talent for crafting a narrative, but never falling into the trap of being chopped prose. Even with the story, the breaks are carefully chosen, the metaphors vivid and meaningful, and the places the poems take flight from and land to are always surprising or meditative and meaningful. For instance, her poem "The Architects: Guests of Perspicacity" details a speaker and husband finding a nest while gardening and watching the hatching and growth and disappearance of the birds through the spring. The poem ends: "In three short weeks, they are issued an order:/one by one they depart,/until we are again just two,/leaning against each other, staring at an abandoned home,/haunted by what was granted,/what we took, in those few/ weeks of spring." One can't read the end of this poem and think it's only about the birds anymore, but about any kind of nurturing and the loss of it in your life, the swift passage of time.

But narrative is not Slot's only talent, she also writes lyric in a passionate and confident style. The whole book is woven together with lyric prose poems about drowning and rescue. The narrative is not clear: who is drowning? The speaker, a child? Is this a birth poem? Is the person rescued? None of it was ever discernible except for the terror, the haunting, the passion to survive, the struggle to rescue what you treasure: the clarity of the emotion makes the series a typhoon in and of themselves--you can't stop reading them.

Additionally, I just loved Slot's range in topic matter. I generally prefer books that are cohesive in theme and even narrative, and Slot has a loose cohesion in terms of the quest for beauty in the abyss, but she looks for it in all sorts of places: motherhood, a marriage, Greek Mythology, an urn, a robin's nest, even Ars Poeticas. And she explores them all well: she reveals a strong poetic range in technique and an insatiable curiosity with the world, which is the mark of a true poet.

I could go on; there is a lot to praise here. And I have a slew of favorite poems. Just get the book: it's incredibly satisfying and beautifully crafted.
2319031
An interesting collection of poetry that initially starts slow and then scatters frequent gems to show the poet's underlying talent.

Poetry, in general, explores similar themes and sentiments that take a skilled author to capture the attention of the reader.  The themes here are of love, religion, life, art and nature in both senses of the word.

The poetry here uses a non-rhyme style that plays the usual fine line of touching close to prose. This gives the closer feeling of the poet writing directly to you.  The poems in relation to real life showcase the talent of the poet to excite in her writing.  'Charisma Lady' being the first gem that flows extremely well after the slow beginning I earlier mentioned.  Capturing urban life and displaying a wonderful sense of rhythm with perfect pacing.

Poem selection is frequently the hardest area to get right for a collection as you inevitably have weaker poems following stronger pieces.  This is the case in this collection as there is often a stop and start feeling while reading.  That can deter the natural poetic flow.  The poems themed on religion, in my opinion, are much weaker.  Losing the imagery she portrays in other poems. This may be the case of the subject being too close to the heart of the poet.

The collection is just a fraction too long for all that is trying to achieve and this is mainly due to poem selection.  However, putting these critiques aside it is an enjoyable varied poetry collection.  There is a subtle urban feel, which brings that real life aspect where the poet shines that is mixed with a more traditional abstract poetry.  Certainly recommended for reading and a poet to follow who can clearly develop even further.
4558620
I enjoyed the poetry and liked that there was a mix of old and new.  The hand of Keillor is ever-present and I several times I found myself imagining his voice reading the poems :-)  The drawback of that is the poems tend to have a similar flow and pace so there are sections in which the poems are lacking in variety.  There could be a few more energetic poems and a few less of the wistful and breezy ones.  But that's just quibbling...all of the poems were good reading and I can see how when read in isolation they could be ear-catching.  I read the book on an extended bus trip and gobbled two or three chapters at a time which accentuated any common elements.  Thumbs up and I'm glad it (and the other "Good Poems" books) are on my Kindle.
2288733
This is a lovely book. The author, a writer and musician, combines a love for the poetic word with a sense of the poetry in the observed world. Each poem (right-hand page) is accompanied by a photograph (left-hand page). The images and poetry play off one another in ways that surprise and which call one to re-reading and re-examination. The fact that this volume has served as my first serious introduction to a place I had not really known is a bonus. I plan to give this book for Christmas. http://vimeo.com/108142113
1630455
Even in translation (although I wish this were a dual language book) a very distinctive use of repetition and very tight construction shines through.  I would call the work less "political poetry" than "poetry of human relationships that have a political context".  Even poems of anguish regarding the Argentine "disappeared", have a universality rather than a stridentcy.  The poems include exquisite turns of phrase that make reading it a pleasure of waiting for the next magnificant phrase.
4711586
Rhythmic & Provocative. I wouldn't say these poems are dark. They are more like a rawness that hasn't quite healed. Many of the poems are lengthy, for my liking, and this collection has over 100 poems. However, the rhythmic flow to them, carry the pages effortlessly and you find yourself wanting to keep reading.

It was the depth of the poems that captured me though, and many I could relate to. I particularly liked Chapters: 10, 23, 33, 46, 65, 86 and 95. Each poem is called a chapter and has a title. Most of the poems have edgy metaphors and I liked that a lot.

Definitely a good poetry read for the poetry lover.