Tag Archives: poetry

Pronoun Rebellion (2)

Posted on January 24, 2022 by JMN

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2022/01/22/pronoun-rebellion-1/) Wallace Stevens said of his poem “On an Old Horn” that, if he had succeeded in saying what he had to say, the reader would get it. “He may not get it at once, but, if he … Continue reading →

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Pronoun Rebellion (1)

Posted on January 22, 2022 by JMN

It’s apparent that contributors to Poetry magazine compose their own biographical snapshots, which allows for a gamut of voicings and modes of self-assertion. A grammar nerd notices how these established and establishing technicians of the word mold language to their … Continue reading →

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A Confounding Clarity

Posted on January 16, 2022 by JMN

Proliferation of phrases: — A turn of speech makes my point vividly — I’ll use it. But this other phrase is pungent — I’ll use it too. Yet another is incisive; and one is innovative; and one wry; this one … Continue reading →

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Broken, Dejected Reader of Poems

Posted on January 15, 2022 by JMN

<p. 137> “World Breaking Apart” by Louise Glück (“Poems 1962-2012,” 2012) I don’t care if this post is preposterously long. It’s a barbaric yawp anyway. My original title for a comment about “World Breaking Apart” was “Inconclusive Antecedence.” It was … Continue reading →

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Rewarded With Provocations

Posted on January 8, 2022 by JMN

It helps me read contemporary poetry to conjure the mindset of an athlete in the elite sport of pole vaulting. The bar sits there at a distanced height. I summon latency, coil with icy focus, charge the standards, launch myself … Continue reading →

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The Struggle to Lose Control

Posted on January 1, 2022 by JMN

To All a Good New Year! Audrey Petty describes her first one-on-one conference with her poetry teacher Agha Shahid Ali at the University of Massachusetts. After she read her draft to him, he reviewed it and said, “What if you … Continue reading →

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The Moons of Poesis

Posted on December 25, 2021 by JMN

When reading poetry I try to think like astronomers. They are a doughty lot, trucking with the unexpected, stalking questions that defy asking. “What I really hope for is something we don’t expect” [John Mather, Goddard Space Flight Center, on … Continue reading →

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Mean or Not, It’s a Feat

Posted on December 12, 2021 by JMN

Can a poem hurt the reader into glimpsing its cargo? The poem discussed is ‘From “Banana [ ],”’ Poetry, December 2021, by Paul Hlava Ceballos. I encounter poetry I perceive to be all kinds of icky: cryptic, elliptic, hierophantic, delphic, … Continue reading →

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‘Except for Perhaps Poetry…’

Posted on December 5, 2021 by JMN

In 1970, David Godine started a small publishing company in an abandoned cow barn in Brookline, Massachusetts. After a distinguished history of publishing select titles in well crafted editions, he has sold the company. I enjoyed reading what he did … Continue reading →

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Poetic Researches

Posted on November 14, 2021 by JMN

Is the soul our dark matter — pervasive but undetectable by any instrument we possess? If there’s a part of me that isn’t glia, neurons, and enzymes, it has found a modicum of rest in the revelation that John Ashbery’s … Continue reading →

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