First person to comment or email me gets a brand new copy of 1999 The Iowa Poetry Prize winner Try by Cole Swenson, for the price of shipping, $2. Try comes in a square format which accomodates the long line that many of her poems play with. Looking at poems like "Prologue," you might describe Swenson's work as multi-genre, verse mixed with prose that I would not call prose poetry. It is like a nonfiction essay with bursts of lyric poetry at intervals. Try is a great collection for anyone who enjoys ekphrasis. There are a number of different approaches to writing about/in conversation with artwork, and Try illustrates, at my count about four, each reflecting something of the nature of the artwork in a nice organic way: complex and layered, streamlined and focused, ironic and casual, metaphysical and earnest. The main themes of the collection are religion, hagiography, art, the experience of art. Long sequences, short lyrics, prosey bits. My favorite poems in this collecti...
Feminism, poetry, poetics.