Medusa's Head

Photo by Steven Bullhoes

Picture by Carine de Maijer

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!

I'm a little concerned to post this, thinking my husband may put two and two together about his Valentine surprise. But I don't think he reads my blog. I found the motherload of vintage valentines , and some of them are just too awesome. Heart on barbeque spit? Amazing. These scans aren't good enough to use as clip art, but they are fantastic inspiration.

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...

Photo by Phillip Rassell

I'm a member of a women's poetry listserv called Wompo, which is sometimes amazing, sometimes really not. One of the plus's is that some really cool people, and some kind of famous people are on it. A few months ago Peggy Shumaker posted something to the list and noted that she would be going to her favorite bookstore in Phoenix. I saw Peggy read at Desert Nights, Rising Stars while I was an MFA student at ASU, I had bought her book and pretty much thought she was awesome. Two days before her post, I'd been cleaning out my garage and found a Changing Hands book club coupon. I'd already mailed off a couple other ones I found to my friend who had since moved, so I had stuck it on my fridge to think about who was still in Arizona to send it to. It seemed like quite a coincidence so I emailed Peggy and asked if she wanted it. She said sure and I thought, hey that's cool, and that would be the end of a cool story. In the mail today I found a package from Peggy with t...