Proper Noun

Nancy Willard

Tall man in a small place. Do the plants miss the gardener, I wonder of the plants that I am watering for my husband. My sister tells me of an acquaintance who watered their plants - cardamom in their absence with used milk packets dripping water. The poet asks the gardener :

" or are you the pupil

they your examiners"

With teachers too I wonder who is the pupil. With the task of helping the child, they are the examined.

Tree House

A very still life

Walking with glass. Recently at a Pulla Reddy sweet shop, I walked to a tiered display of sweets and banged into the glass.

In Legend of the tangerine, the poet says 'never hurry a tangerine'. Tangerines may be off the hook but the raw green bananas better hurry up.

At the foundry. The poet finds improbable things found only by artifacts. Once she finds them, her ambitions want to overcome the frozen state of the metal and behave like the life of our world - animated, whole and mobile. Her fascination with the magic is reflected in poems like The mirror, Flying Carpet.

Losing compass and Deer in winter - Weather and deer.
Hummock
Foamflower

Poetry exercise
1. The Mirror. Begin with a noun and let a famous quote about be the springboard. Many poems in this book have a clear beginning. Noun or Proper Noun.
2. Some things should never be written down. A title in the book. What are those according to you?
3. Elementals. 'Put on my cap of air..... Put on my shoes of fire...' like the gifts given to Perseus.

From Light to Dark and Back

A poetry exercise

To turn a procedure into a fissile poem

Be scannable might be a good advice for a prose writer. But if the reader of your poetry is jumping a para, theres not much left to scan.

Woman mined. begins with a commonplace

snap you with an ultraviolet camera,
show you what you've done to your skin just
by living.....

Carolyn Creedon has jumped from a quotidian scene in a specific setting, a cosmetic department , from the material to the emotional space of a life time.

Exercise: Take a procedure done at any place that offers service - doctors, hair salon (or car wash) and see if you can hop onto the next circle post leading to the altar at the center of the lake.

Another exercise: Create out of tornado of fish.

Walk 'into' mountain

(Poetry exercise)
1. In Hardy's novels, stretches of path can carry memories of a person, just as a person might of a path.
2. how we are scattered, as well as affirmed, by the places through which we move.
3. He(Edward Thomas? or Hardy) imagined himself in topographical terms. corners, junctions, stiles....
4.For paths run through people as surely as they run through places.
5.what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself.

Machair
William Fox essay - cognitive issonance in isotropic place
NYT review
An example of what William Fox says
Hachure map
Miniature lake of mercury in Chinese king tomb

Syntax virus

What is a syntax virus? In the notes the author says that it is an exact grammatical replica of another poets poem, injected with her words.

Area 25  poem is about a part of brain called area 25 that can help relieve depression for some.  Not until this poem id the book start for me. up until this the list in the poems seemed like
chubby cheeks
dimple chin....
syntax virus of Sylvia plath's You're seemed like that rhyme. The poet does love rhyme's, what with 'the countin sing no 5'. At least 'one two buckle my shoe' reaches the end faster.
In Paradise-Un, not in this book, the poet shows her talent, her ability to be inspired and sustain the journey of that projectile.
Area 25, Still murmur, Riddle in the vein of poems on body.
Playing with words in Self-medication (This article will lead you to raw poetry exercise.)
But it must be with the experimental angle that the poet delivers simple, elegant The Darker sooner

A fan
Review of poets previous book

Adam Zagajewski

Life as a board game

Dots and Boxes is a game like tic tac toe. How does love compare in your life to the claiming of lines that can be connected and the concomitant boxes that can be claimed.

Apophasis at the All Night Rite aid and other poems.

In the Apophasis poem, the poet 'not wanting to be alone' is shown the door to the moon.

Litany by Billy Collins that begins with an exact pin pointing of what 'you' are goes into an apophatic phase with what you are not.

A Brief poetics of the Hinge, an article by the poet Catherine Barnett is her search for hinge in poetry, where there is both movement and restriction like that offered by a tether. In Providence,

some of the best sermons

dont have endings, he said

comes to my mind as an example of the restriction and release. (A poetry exercise, map the dynamics of your poem to a physical object and vice-versa)

chorus is the title of many poems in this book. One thing the title helps with is the conectedness and the identification of the literal chorus for/of many voices. But with so many under that tag, readers will have to remember the first line of the poem for its ID. Couldnt these poems be put into one section with 'Chorus' subheaing and look for any other interesting internal theme.

Agape  is for word lovers, not the ones who like them by sounds but for those who like them for their meanings sometimes only and sometimes many.

Coming to the style of the poems, with so few lines and words, the reader is forced to think what the poet intended instead of just bagging nice phrases as low hung fruit and proceeding to the next poem. Having hooked the reader into the gap of the poem, there is no choice but to fill our thoughts after the question in Inventory, ii

Really, what chance do any of us have 

for moments of bliss?

But proceeding on without waiting for us to come up with suggestions, she  dismisses them.

Inventory

In Old story, The clock doesnt have an amygdala. With no Amygdale, there is no sympathy. As in the warning time and tide wait for none.  Whats natural than time and waves, but the measuring of them makes them so inorganic. In 'to speak of other things' gardens speak in a way reminiscent of the serpent eating its tail. Styrofoam in 'Scavenger hunt' shows an imbalance of  biodegradable activity and chemical nonbiodegradable inactivity.

A review