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Editorial
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Voices Owned by Coleen Shin sends shivers up my spine every time I read it which is a surprising reaction for me. My reaction tends to decrease with more exposure due to short attention span. But there's something about small children singing out their hearts and the deeper underlying threat of exploitation that just grabs me each time. I hate to think that this poem would ever be overlooked because it sounds "pretty" but the message is far more insidious. Note words like, darkness, cut, knife and you have a skillfully woven poem that dares to tackle corruption of innocence at the expense of adulation. That poem is exquisite. "Measure this," Koromilas writes. Ah, the beauty of connotation and all the sexual innuendos contained in that one imperative sentence only to find out that we're measuring the metaphor for love. Talk about twists and turns, "Love and Thick Metaphors" by Kathryn Koromilas is full of surprises, energy and just pure fun. I love it when a poet plays with language. This one promises and delivers in an inventive way and what more could a reader ask? Just a little more tightening, perhaps less repetition of the word dapple and it's a given that the poet will get what she asks for in the last two lines, "call me poet/and love me for it. Ask for imagination and you get, "To Children We Give Brightening" by Philipe Nicolini. A poem delivered as a speech and the way it engages the reader is pure entertainment. It may not be as smooth and polished as many other poems out there, but quite frankly I'm tired of reading the "perfect" poems-Those that have the insignia of "workshop" imprinted all over them. It was really delightful and satisfying to read a poem that offered raw talent for a change. You have manufactured silk, and then you have the raw silk of silkworms and it all comes down to taste. I can appreciate both, but the poem that captures the mysterious quality of nature tends to rule my taste. This one does it for me every time. Good God, when you read a poem like "A Colic in Breeding Mare. The Third Night, Third Morning" by Jan Iwaszkiewicz, it's like having a shot of caffeine, a jumpstart to your day after you get past that lengthy title. I'm complaining a little bit here I know, but long title or no, "Colic" is absolutely a thrill to read. The language spells poetry all the way. It's lyrical, suspenseful and tells a wonderful event that occurs in three days. The relief at the end is tremendous and when a writer can elicit a response as strong as relief with held breath, it's accomplished. Debi Faulkner's "Nameless" is as about clear and simple as you can get when handling a very disturbing and complex subject. One of the most difficult things a writer can do is to remove one's self from a very touchy and emotional topic and Faulkner does an adept job of capturing a tough audience. How she found the right balance between over sentimentalizing and over rationalization is quite amazing. One could have easily been pulled in the direction of tugging too much at the heart strings, or removed so far that the poem could have been left cold. Something I don't find much in well-established writers is diversity. Seems like once a writer has established a well-liked, recognizable voice, he/she sticks to and no one can really blame them. If it works, why fix it? But I am adamant that one should always explore their potential, that they test their boundaries constantly. Even if one style doesn't work, that's the chances one takes. Jim Fowler has become one of my favorite writers because he's one of the few writers WHO is willing to take chances. Just read all that he offers and note the many different styles, subjects, voices he takes on. Granted some are more solid than others, but I absolutely adore every poem that is in this issue. Fowler is an absolute must-read. Rae
Peter Diego's poem is unabashedly male, with all of the bravura and arrogance which that implies, and yet we laugh with him, not at him. The poet through his own expression of outsized ego has presented us with both the grandiose self, and the parody of that self. We see both sides of our own egos reflected here, the part that wants to declare itself as master of the universe, and the sly trickster behind the curtain, just waiting for the right moment to prick its own balloon. This poet has presented us with a classic vision of love. Love as that part of a person which the beloved consumes, feasts upon, and through her intake transforms. Love as the very air she breathes, the wine she drinks, the body she eats. Love as a mirror of the love of Christ to which these tropes allude, a redemption provided by the poet himself. We are being shown the argument for romantic love as an alternate path to the spirit. The very model for this poem is indeed a biblical one: The Song of Solomon. Sarah Wilson is above all else a storyteller. Her tale contains elements of both the fabulous and the mundane, of beauty and ugliness in equal measure. She finds her dramatic tension in the contrast between what is dreamed and what has been lived, and her characters possess the qualities of Greek heroes and heroines, seeking one thing and doomed to find it's opposite. The effect is powerful and often jarring, but also cathartic, as the best of Greek tragedy intended.. Angelina Looks For a Roommate is my favorite poem of hers. It is easy for me to identify with the work of Pris Campbell. In every line one reads is an honesty and integrity of expression that gives one the sense that here is a poet who knows what life is and is not. Read her poem, Denial, and you will see, not a poet playing with words, but a woman sculpting her own life, both its elements of grace and failure, into an art which is as compelling and real to you as your own dreams. You cry when you are through, not knowing if the tears are for her or for yourself. That is her poetry in a nutshell. This is a woman with the rare gift to make her readers feel themselves a part of her culture, even when it is as far removed from their own as one described in a science fiction novel. Her gift is to make her readers fellow Cubanos with her. She doesn't explain, she doesn't teach, she doesn't lead you by the hand. What she does is immerse you in her language, her family, her food, her music and her spirit. She recreates her world in a poetry which places you there as if you have always belonged, as if it were your abuela too that she was describing, your childhood, your soul being parceled out to feed the multitudes. How she does this is a mystery, but then a magician doesn't need to have her tricks explained for her audience to appreciate her, does she? The poems of Jim Amos often contain a contrast of traditional and avant garde elements. Lyrical flourishes compete with raw and unexpected surrealistic twists, compounded by the use of space on the page to further add layers of complexity to his words. Yet at the core of his poetry is his simple desire to experience the beauty of this world. Lady Icarus, his poem in this edition, is a perfect example of his art of presenting fragments of this world in all their chaotic splendor and offering his readers the opportunity to discover the deep pattern within. Jack Anders is the consummate poet of everyday experience. His poetry attempts to model reality as he sees it and lives it. Anyone and anything to which he comes in contact is fair game for his art. His poem in this edition of MiPo's best is Jack at his best: in the moment, painting what he observes as he sees it, as it affects his sensibilities. And we are right there with him, amazed that such a small scene can hold so much. There are two stories here, in Mustansir Dalvi's "Edge"; two difficult relationships - husband and wife, parents and child - and both are uncomfortable, both are edgy, sharp like a knife. The sharp edge of a letter opener becomes the muted symbol of communication within this family: the child clutches it; the mother snatches it away and the father retrieves it, again. In writing, Dalvi's method is like the archaeologist's. While the archaeologist silently unearths entire cities under our modern ones, Dalvi unravels the layers of our very own human psyche. He takes a situation - here, how to parent an autistic child - and digs and digs deep into what we all know is lurking there within us, but can't articulate. Well, Dalvi can and does. All there senses are invoked here. Laine writes as if with eyes closed, feeling around the thing, prodding it, smelling it, tasting it, walking through it until she can see it. She writes with her mouth, finger tips, ears, so that we can see the thing with words. Laine is the epitome of a sensual poet, clever without letting her head get in the way of what is real. "Perfume", naturally begins with smell -- the perfumed body luring the speaker, and reader, into a magical world. This is a strong and well-executed invocation of biblical Moses to describe the astonishing power of a lover's entrance and ongoing presence. Stuart understands that embedded in the erotic is intelligence and her work exhibits a refined eroticism that begins in the head. She has a delicate understanding of nuance and rhythm and rhyme, which makes the poem just roll off the tongue, a pleasure to read and hear. It's the poet in love.with writing and reading poetry that is extra exciting to read. The poet in love, like anyone in love, is ferociously curious, always scratching the surface of the loved-one, discovering different ways of seeing the loved-one, learning the different faces of the loved-one. Trying this, and trying that, while reading all of this and all of that, the poet in love reinvents genres, experiments with structures, plays with rhythm and tense and word and meaning. Nights' two poems "4 haikus (after Kerouac)" and "Elegy for Adelaide" span the poetic continuum on which this poet dances. From succinct and clever observations using the haiku form to the meditative "Elegy for Adelaide" that soothes and resonates, inviting the reader into the space, the very silence invoked in the absence of the loved-one. To hell with cliché, John Eivaz is magic. What else to say of a poet who creates a dazzling tale about a "sober gentleman" who "drove home in reverse" and writes a breathtaking ode to the "bug on the ass of a germ"! It's probably in the fact that he both disdains the 'art' of poetry (mocks tradition for the sake of tradition) and yet adores the craft as a means of going about this business of being human. It's when he crawls into his poems, fiddling around with the words and phrases and structures and tenses and rhythms that he begins to understand the mysteries of men and women and love and sex and food. And we can too, that is, if we 'listen' to him. Mia writes poetry with the eye of a painter; words are splashed on the page like a brushstroke of unique colour. Her poems are vivid; not cute, not clever, but difficult journeys into the human psyche. It's as if she's painting right before us, each line an essential splash of the whole image, unveiled stroke by stroke and yet made more complex by each layer of colour. Take "Not my Father" for example, the characters move and speak as if they are alive on a stage - can't you just feel the sting of the father who 'grunts' "with the back of a hand"? And what of the reluctant daughter/speaker, who loves him anyway, even if her own song will be as rock-hard as her father was towards her? Birch's work is a ongoing experiment and it's fascinating to behold. There's always something new - a line break that makes you stop and meditate on a word in a different way, stanzas that seem to tackle different subjects but when put together shine light on a topic as if looking at it from many different points of view. Take the two pieces in this issue: one is heavy and physical, all about touch and desire. The potter's hands mould clay but desire the food in the brown bag and the touch of a woman's body. The other piece, wonderfully titled, "seven blue lyrics framed by the darkness" sucks entire philosophical moments into a series of dense and precise thought capsules. It is how Lori Williams ends "Seventeen" that is most remarkable. Until the final line, the reader, albeit uncomfortable, is a distant witness to this terrible tale (probably thinking while reading, "Lucky it wasn't me"). But then something happens - "Forgive her", demands the poet and suddenly the reader is whipped into the story, set face-to-face with the protagonist and asked to respond, to judge, to form an ethical opinion. It's precisely this final shock that makes this piece memorable. "I compose a poem from small pieces", writes Mienko, luring us into her poem with the curiosity prompted by an unfinished puzzle. When I read this poem, I find myself whispering it's end -- "I Zen rake, lovemaking you in" -- over and over. It's a magical line and comes from a poet who plays with poetry as if on an otherworldly level. Mienko's poems hover above the literary plane, they are playful and yet serene meditations on beauty, both physical and spiritual. |
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Third Edition ~Editors: Mia, T. Birch, PJ Nights and Kathryn Koromilas ~ |
