It’s an understatement to say that poetry is very much not my thing, but friends kept telling me that I HAD to read Brown Girl Dreaming and now I’m telling everyone here that they HAVE to read it. Well, no one’s going to make you, but you won’t regret it if you do. A book in verse sounds ominously pretentious, but Brown Girl Dreaming ended up being a refreshing and honest coming-of-age tale, simple enough for middle schoolers to understand and complex enough for adults […]
Poems from a Renaissance Man
In honor of National Poetry Month, I have reviewed several collections of poetry throughout April. You can also read my reviews of Michael Gilmore, Billy Collins, and Jack Kerouac. John Koblas was a renaissance man. He was a doo-wop musician, an historian, an author, a consultant for the History Channel and PBS, a script-writer, and also a poet. In other words, he was an interesting man. He died in 2013, a mere two years after Letters from the Moon was published. Death is an important […]
the soul burns out the eyes
Reading Pomes All Sizes feels like watching Birdman or Whiplash. It’s drunk, jubilant, sweaty. The collection is manic, exhilarating, confusing, fun, heartbeating, a little sad. You’ll find friend poems, wine poems, God and Buddha poems, and a few poems about girls. The subject matter isn’t that different from a hundred other poets, but the delivery is something else. Kerouac’s voice and playfulness and mindfulness read unlike so much of what came before. For me, it just rings clear like a bell through shelves of mumbling, […]
Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.
In honor of National Poetry Month, I am reading and review books of poetry. Last week, I read fellow Austinite Michael Gilmore’s Restless Astronomy. This week, I am reviewing Billy Collins’ Picnic Lightning. The book came out in 1998, but I received my copy around 2005. My college roommate, a mountain man/physicist/poet, gave me the book as a birthday gift. (He also gave me Heart of Darkness; what this says about our relationship I do not know.) As far as poets go, Billy Collins is […]