books
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I think I read this book right before or right after a painful romantic split. The ex-lovers in this book are harsh but fair, honest, unrelenting, and the mythic overlay of the story of Odysseus are brilliant. Circe’s Power: “I never turned anyone into a pig. / Some people are pigs; I just make them
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More echo of myth. Although I never thought this was my thing until I sat down to do this, and now I see, looking backwards: breadcrumbs. H.D. made films. Not many people know this, but it was one of the things I like about her, that she put into practice what I have only considered,
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He was the first poet I read exhaustively. He was like my first poet love in that way. He was strange and unknowable and I was excited by his sudden confessions, which seemed improper, too intimate for our level of familiarity. I met him in a college poetry class. My teacher Jennifer Willoughby brought in
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I love this book because it does not let go–of its concerns, of the reader. I love this book because it tells the same story any number of times and each iteration is unique, horrifying, ruining. I love this book because it tries to be sexy sometimes when it thinks you’re looking at it. I
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I was already a fan of Adrienne Rich when I read this book, but it became the book that, for me, solidified my connection to her. Reading it some thirty years after it was written, I felt like I could see some of the work in it, some of the intentions, some of the politics,
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Another grief sequence today, but this one is somewhat different. While mourning the loss of a father, the speaker of these poems turns to the natural world, where memories of animal encounters and dreams of animal encounter abound, as well as subtle explorations of flowers and plants, all leading toward a zen understanding of the
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