~ Frederick Seidel, Ooga Booga (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2006)

Seidel is wildly imaginative, and he makes the difficult leaps without leaving the reader behind.  The book was a wonderful read.

            ~T.M.

            ~Joel Brouwer, Centuries, Four Way Books 2003

This scene seems absolutely fitting around the holidays with so many functions filled with “gigantic children.”  Not to mention it’s a darn good prose poem.  I enjoy Brouwer overall for his lively spirit and inventiveness, and specifically, I enjoy this poem for that last moment when “[e]ven the mice know you’re lying.” 

            ~T.M.

            ~Charles Wright, China Trace (Wesleyan Press, 1975)

This poem is taped on the wall behind my office desk, and I can’t make heads or tails of why I’m so drawn to it.  I suppose it’s what sometimes attracts us to the things we like most—the fact that something is unresolved, that we don’t have a fixed grasp.  All I know is that “I [too] am weary of daily things” every day, without fail.

            ~T.M.

  ~ Steve Scafidi, Sparks from a Nine-Thousand Pound Hammer (LSU Press, 2001)

I don’t know why, but this poet was on my mind today when I woke up.  The book was a real pleasure for me to read, and this is one of its gems.  Enjoy.

            ~T. M.

The Old World

                   for Dan and Jeanne

I believe in the soul; so far

It hasn’t made much difference.

I remember an afternoon in Sicily.

The ruins of some temple.

Columns fallen in the grass like naked lovers.

The olives and goat cheese tasted delicious

And so did the wine

With which I toasted the coming night,

The darting swallows

The Saracen wind and moon.

It got darker. There was something

Long before there were words:

The evening meal of shepherds…

A fleeting whiteness among trees…

Eternity eavesdropping on time.

The goddess going to bathe in the sea.

She must not be followed.

These rocks, these cypress trees,

May be her old lovers.

Oh to be one of them, the wine whispered to me.

          ~Charles Simic (The Voice at 3 A.M., Harcourt 2003)

It’s amazing how Simic can balance the abstraction of the first statement, with such clear and engaging imagery.  “I believe in the soul; so far/ It hasn’t made much difference” seems like an interesting observation, and alone, it might work as an epigraph or opening to a philosophical essay of some sort.  But here it works and resonates as the perfect opening to this poem, buttressed by the Sicily that follows.  God I love this poem.

            ~T.M.