Medusa's Head

Again, I have to mention this project is from Dana Guthrie Martin at My Gorgeous Somewhere if you want to do it too! The third month's challenge? To read a book written by a poet who has a movie made about them. As with last month, I have several of these books on my shelf already: Aurthur Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath, and Dorothy Parker. I've read Plath a number of times, and would rather read Parker, I think.

Why is it so hard to find a poetry book recommended on a blog? I follow poet's blogs, but I really had to look around. Note to self: reccommend more poetry books on my blog! Thanks to Diane Lockward's post about an Ars Poetica anthology (which I am too cheap to buy at 24$) I found a Copper Canyon Ars Poetica anthology for 4$ which I will read in February. Thanks to Sandra Beasley's blog post on Jehanne Dubrow's From the Fever-World, (which I found for an affordable 5$) I'll be doubling up on February's 12x12 poetry challenge. Yes!! I feel sparkly all over with my poetry bargain reading list!

So I've finished American Primitive by Mary Oliver, a book published (in one of its editions) the year of my birth! What makes me sad is that the first thing I landed on when I was looking for the cover art for this post was another blog saying they didn't really care for these poems or for nature poetry (maybe) in general. While the line breaks are short and certainly seem to reflect a more "vintage" aesthetic, this the book of poetry that I luckily avoided during my MFA program. Because Mary Oliver's voice, what she seeks to do in poetry and what she accomplishes, where she looks for truth, are so similar to one of the strains of my own writing that if I had found this book then I might never have found my own voice. My first, egotistical, thought when I finished this book was "she reminds me of me!" Mary Oliver's poems are infused with a bodily sensuousness, a preocupation with the bodily and the natural. She looks unflinchingly at the blood and g...

It comes as no coincidence to me, at this time of New Year's Resolutions, that I would find something to reinspire my poetry give-away project. Thanks to Dana Guthrie Martin at My Gorgeous Somewhere I'm going to read at least one of my collections a month this year and challenge myself to give them away when done. The first month's challenge? To read a book published the year you were born. I thought this would be a major challenge, but after a few pages of searching on Amazon, I discovered the last book I bought, Mary Oliver's American Primitive, was published the year I was born! Other years too, but this counts for me. Maybe as I read these books, I'll be able to figure out how to fix my one-trick poem ending, which is making my book manuscript sad.