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The Language of Dreamers - Page 2

© Kay Day

we, as silence
slowly
opens
another
born
being

Kloppenborg puts his own stamp on poetry, sometimes with humor. One of my favorites, " I Will Write a Good Poem", begins with a declaration that the poem will be clear skinned, and without rhyme. Yet this poem, set in quatrains, rhymes throughout, and mentions that the poet is typing from inside a womb, that the poem is breach and visible--heady imagery there, imagery that takes us straight to the heart of the writer himself.

In his introduction to the book, poet Doug Tanoury describes Jennifer Ley's poetry as having biological vitalism. Not only in this anthology, but also in her poems that are published elsewhere, Ley includes themes from nature, phsyics, astronomy, and even primitivism. Her poetry is always interesting in a sharp and cutting way, and it is eloquent without being poetic in a showy manner. One of my favorites is the first of her selections, "This is the Art". The poem relates a slice of a relationship, and it is one of those poems that you can remember, with its short, decisive strokes and unpretentious language:

This is the art
of the aside
a whispered confidence,
what the bulbs
seek to say
to the sun.

Another of her poems, "Mourning Water", pulls us into the death of her mother; "The Physics of Fame and Gender" offers discourse on the relative benefit/of fame in parallel universes. Ley writes the sort of poetry that is thickly layered, yet concisely molded. She crafts well, and every time I re-read her work, I come away with yet a new idea about what I read.

David Hunter Sutherland's poetry renders classicism in modern formats and language, yet with lofty verbiage that delivers drama. He may inject his verse with Latin, or internal rhyme, and his stanza forms include couplets, quatrains, and longer line segments as well. One poem, "Bury a Sister", delivers impact clothed in graceful language and varied meter. It is a memorable poem, for many reasons, as evidenced by the second stanza:

We moved earth to bury sister.
Not for the chorus of buffoons handling knobs,
And not for tradition or pomp could we
Balloon up to fill your passing or tether
You down against lid and cask.
And should your memory escape through rock and earth,

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