Did you hear that tree speak to me?
It did not make an eager plea
to help it step out to the quay
so it could set off ‘cross the sea.
Tree’s don’t dream of mobility,
except perhaps windward to lee.
Trees seek only food and water,
and hold the hope of harmless squatters.
I cloned your soul
and put it in a jar.
Sometimes I take it out
but it never goes far.
If, someday, a wind should catch it.
There’d be no way for me to fetch it.
It’d ride the wind
and rise up to the sky.
And we’d finally see
how far a soul can fly.
do you know the way it flows
the glide it rides from highs to lows
coiling left to unwind right
weight of water, strong or slight
twisting, turning, a fire burning
riding tides and then returning
do you feel the way it flows
sometimes it speeds, most times it’s slow
little monkey, where are you?
do you live in the same zoo?
did they give you a tire swing?
or just duvets and napkin rings?
useless crap strewn floor to ceiling
judging by your giddy squealing
i think the former, not the latter
ah, to live a life of monkey matters
destinationless pilgrimage
no step more sacred than the last
spiraling into midnight
sore feet = shoes abandoned
every step one slides a mile inside
monsters marching in the night
sinking into shadows against wan moonlight
you’ll know them by their low growl
when they slink behind you on their nightly prowl
the street is striped
in chaotic echoes
of alternating amber arc light
&
leafy breeze-twisted shadows
from hardwoods lining the way
pre-dawn sweepers
scratch out a living
wisping leaves and debris off the walk
leaving wavy dust patterns in Zen garden fashion
that side street seems so long at that hour
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This collection of poems is quite similar in format and subject to Kaur’s more recent work “The Sun and Her Flowers” (which I reviewed recently.) This book also gathers short free-verse poetry (with the occasional prose poem) together with line-drawn artworks by the author. The subject matter includes: sexual abuse, parental relationships, love relationships, and self-image problems. My likes and dislikes for this collection are much the same as they were for the more recent work, as the two books feel like volumes in the same work.
The book is divided into four parts: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing.” One will notice the roller-coaster effect implicit in that organization—like alternately drowning and bobbing up for air.
Kaur is bold in her poetry. It’s daring in its confessional nature and courageous in her willingness to be so intensely feeling in a society that gets cynical of emotionality fairly quickly. (It almost feels like a JP Sears caricature of itself sometimes–particularly it the lulls of melancholy.) It also has the condensed effect that comes from a sparing approach. Both the art and verse take a minimalist approach, avoiding getting lost in complexity of form and presentation, and they are all the better for it. This simplicity doesn’t mean that Kaur doesn’t offer some clever turns of phrase. On the contrary, it gives it all the more punch. The words and drawings frequently form a synergy.
Both the poet’s courage and her sparse and simple cleverness overwhelm the collection’s downsides. Said weaknesses include frequent bumper-sticker truisms that feel a bit preachy and / or banal. As I hinted, sometimes the book feels a little bit like the “No, I just have a lot of feelings” girl from the movie “Mean Girls.”
I enjoyed this collection for its poetry, its art, and—perhaps most interestingly—the interplay between the two. I’d highly recommend it.
Great Short Poems by Paul Negri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I like short poems, and not just because I’m attention-span challenged. Short poems have punch. They are condensed emotion, and it’s rare to be able to keep beautiful sound resonating throughout long verse. So, it’s not a surprise that I would enjoy this anthology of brief poems from over 80 poets ranging from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries.
There are between one and four poems from most of the poets included. I’ll list some of the poems that are particularly popular, personal favorites, or some combination thereof.
– William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 [Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day]
– Robert Herrick: “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
– Anne Bradstreet: “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
– William Blake: “The Tiger” [often written “The Tyger”]
– Robert Burns: “A Red, Red Rose”
– Lord Byron: “So We’ll Go No More a-Roving” and “She Walks in Beauty”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways”
– Henry David Thoreau: “I Was Born Upon Thy Bank, River”
– Walt Whitman: “I Hear America Singing”
– Emily Dickinson: “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died”
– Emma Lazarus: “The New Colossus”
– Francis William Bourdillon: “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes”
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “Solitude” [Laugh and the World Laughs with You…]
– A.E. Housman: “When I Was One-and-Twenty”
– Gelett Burgess: “The Purple Cow”
– Stephen Crane: “In the Desert”
– Robert Frost: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken”
– Carl Sandburg: “Fog”
– Wallace Stevens: “The Emperor of Ice Cream”
– William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”
– Joyce Kilmer: “Trees” [I think that I may never see…]
– Edna St. Vincent Millay: “First Fig”
– Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
– Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
If you like short verse, you’ll enjoy this Dover Thrift Edition. It’s all works in the public domain, so don’t expect to find present day poets in the anthology. Also, probably all of these poems are available on the web for free, but the price is minimal to get them collected together.
monster tonic sells by the gallon
glugged, while grasped in a talon
it promises to topple empires
but what it builds is dirty liars
who pitch their forks into the fire
and listen to the awful sizzle
as the fat melts into a drizzle
after its prey’s fight long fizzled
oh, the foul. oh, the fair
it catches monsters by the hair
oh, the wild. oh, the free.
you can sip it in mid-winter tea
