Tag Archives: reading

‘I Handed This…Singular Life Over’: Kate Asche’s ‘[Untitled]’

Posted on August 30, 2024 by JMN

The words of Kate Asche’s poem “[Untitled]” (Poetry, May 2024) enact a sac-like image on the page. Leapfrog the spaces between them and they (the words) hang together as if magnetized, flowing into shattering assertions. A life is lost in … Continue reading →

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On Rhyme and a Little Bit of Rhythm

Posted on August 28, 2024 by JMN

Reading current poems, I notice how rhyme seems mostly a thing of the past. Occasional rhyme and near rhyme can land felicitously nowadays, but when deployed lockstep it’s often noisy and distracting. To some degree the same is true with … Continue reading →

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‘I Said Hello. Then You Said You Said Hello’

Posted on August 13, 2024 by JMN

I’m guessing you think there’s a typo in my heading. I know! The use of repetition in “The Renaissance,” a poem by Trey Moody (Poetry, May 2024), was a hook for me. The thirteen-line poem starts here: I said hello. … Continue reading →

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The Few, the LOUD

Posted on August 1, 2024 by JMN

The elbow room in ivied halls of bard raptureHas the vastness of atomic space.Let ring lute! — Recorder, mandolin and dulcimer.Let move your lips with mine while reading silently.Let BE our noise! Be louder than it sounds! A sub-segment of … Continue reading →

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‘Tested in the Wrack Wrack of the Parlance’

Posted on July 20, 2024 by JMN

… I want to say / this is how it started: / there was a mystery / it begged / to be stroked(Alexis De Veaux, “For my love at the time of our ceremony,” Poetry, July-August 2024) “YxzY” by Ronaldo … Continue reading →

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Raise Your Hand If You’re Up for a ‘Variety of Irreconcilable Points of View’

Posted on July 10, 2024 by JMN

Rooky move: I responded to the first page of Meghan O’Rourke’s essay “On Ambivalence: To Be, but to Be How?” (Poetry, June 2024) before I had finished reading it. I caught the wave generated for me by her allusions to … Continue reading →

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Un-Contained

Posted on June 25, 2024 by JMN

The text is Marvin K. White’s “From Containment to Expansion: A Tenderloin Meditation in Two Parts” (Poetry, July/August 2024). Part 1 contains 82 the’s, 41 does not contain’s and 41 pairings that span the elemental (sun-fire), the metaphysical (circle-infinity), the … Continue reading →

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Protect the Rim, Kill the Note

Posted on June 15, 2024 by JMN

I got a charge out of Ernie Barnes’s painting titled “Protect the Rim.” The surreally long figures, the lofty rustic hoop, and even the knocked-together frame all have a quirky charm. In a parallel world, my grandmother’s capacious lungs powered … Continue reading →

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Raise Your Hand If You Know What ‘Paratactic’ Means

Posted on June 12, 2024 by JMN

In an essay, Meghan O’Rourke writes the following: Ambivalence is, like so much poetry, paratactic. (Poetry, June 2024) Ambivalence is a state of mind characterized by mixed feelings. Parataxis is a rhetorical move. It daisy-chains independent clauses, leaving it to … Continue reading →

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Hilltop Experience

Posted on May 28, 2024 by JMN

There must be a type of experience that isn’t uncommon among folk, yet is felt individually as epochal and singular. I classify it as contemplation of a certain prospect from a particular height in circumstances which combine to induce a … Continue reading →

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