Is it me, or is obsessive compulsive disorder having a bit of a moment? It could be me. I struggled with symptoms for 15 years without saying a word to anyone, not knowing it had a name. I’d heard of OCD, but just the pop culture version – obsessive hand-washing, obsessive cleanliness, and I didn’t have either of those problems. I finally realized that unbreakable routines, magical thinking, intrusive thoughts, motor tics, needing to do things an unusual number of times until they feel “right” […]
CBR9 #6 – Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto
In which Siege returns to ramble aimlessly about a museum visit and her new favorite poet.
Accessible Poetry Bursting with Heart
Poetry is something that a lot of us probably want to like, but we just can’t quite get there. Poets either write too much about flowers, or the writing is so opaque and pretentious that it’s pointless to try and decipher. It’s like reading a technical manual on how to fix an industrial HVAC unit – it’s another language entirely. Poetry should be the best of our language. It should sing and kick. It should change the way we view the world around us, even if it’s […]
They Can’t All Be Howl, I Guess
This is my first Ginsberg collection, and I’m not sure how many more I’m going to try. While the percussion and the music of some of the poems were fun and exhilarating, I found most of the book to be boring and tedious. Not all of it is Ginsberg’s fault. The book only covers the mid-1970s, and I wasn’t yet born, let alone sophisticated enough to understand world events via poems. I’m sure they would’ve hit me harder as a contemporary. What I did appreciate in […]