Sandra Cisneros
12/01/2015
I am disappointed that she is promoting poetry of poor caliber. El que diga yo esto means that I am more loyal to poetry than I am to alleged poetic leaders in what has also become my Raza. Que así sea. Axé.
In Radical Pursuit
10/01/2015
Is it possible that there are different levels of poetry? Poetry that is like commercial pop music, and good in this genre, but that you should not compare to good music? Should we call poetry that aims for a support group level of discourse, poetry? Holden says that in confessional and conversation poetry, the life … More In Radical Pursuit
Holden 1
10/01/2015
Style and Authenticity in Postmodern Poetry (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1986) Jonathan Holden CHAPTER 2 (pp. 33-44) The Contemporary Conversation Poem The most personal type of contemporary poem—personal because in this type of poem we find the poet speaking in his or her own person directly to the reader—is the poem which appropriates, as … More Holden 1
Drummond: “Procura da poesia”
09/01/2015
Do not make verses about happenings. For poetry, there is no creation or death. In her eyes, life is an unmoving sun, Which neither warms nor lights. The attractions, the anniversaries, the personal incidents do not matter. Do not make poetry with the body. This excellent, complete and comfortable body, so unfit for lyrical flow. … More Drummond: “Procura da poesia”
Only one section to go, and I am learning from doing this, and/but is it too negative?
08/01/2015
Writin’ La Vida Loca: Laundry, Poetry, Love Ella qué será She’s livin’ la vida loca Y te dolerá Sí, de verdad te toca –Ricky Martin No one should try to climb this Mexican electric fence –Treviño The title of Natalia Treviño’s collection Lavando la Dirty Laundry (Norman, OK: Mongrel Empire Press, 2013) is most surely … More Only one section to go, and I am learning from doing this, and/but is it too negative?
Lorna Dee Cervantes
08/01/2015
Here is a poem I like. Freeway 280 Las casitas near the gray cannery, nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses and man-high red geraniums are gone now. The freeway conceals it all beneath a raised scar. But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes, in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout, wild … More Lorna Dee Cervantes
This paragraph instead
06/01/2015
I am angry because this is considered prize winning poetry and because writing even a polite review of it takes the kind of effort grading a really bad paper does. These autobiographical poems are stories of the joys and sorrows of women in families – wives, mothers, grandmothers, aunts – on both sides of the … More This paragraph instead
The next wicked comment
05/01/2015
[The] volume is prefaced with five blurbs that indicate the quality of its backing as well as a list of acknowledgments that make it clear the poems were written in a community of friends. This is an old convention – in Don Quixote (1605), Cervantes parodies the custom of prefacing books with long series of … More The next wicked comment
The first paragraph of a bad review by me
04/01/2015
It is good that people write, but this person is not a good poet. It is difficult to come up with things to say that are diplomatic yet still true, and I feel I am putting more effort into the review than the writer did into the poems (as happens with grading papers). Of course … More The first paragraph of a bad review by me
A good review by me, from the past
03/01/2015
A novella in pictures: Lives of Passion Gene McCormick’s Lives of Passion: Edward and Antoinette (Rockford, Illinois: RWG Press, 2013), the author’s thirteenth book, is a series of interlocking prose poems that tell, in seventeen short pieces, the story of an ordinary couple–mid-century figures whose lives have run together–from childhood on. The meanings of “passion” here include … More A good review by me, from the past
