Yesterdays Poets

Ok, I've really been delinquent where it comes to posting my readings. So sue me! LOL

Yesterday, I did read poetry and these were the poets:

• Shaker Abdurraheem Aamer
• Paul Muldoon
• Abdulaziz
• Elizabeth Macklin
• Cate Marvin

Reading on the road...

This week I've brought we me on the road some Frieda Hughes, Charles Simic, a book with a number of local poets from the KC area. I'll update the of all the poets tomorrow.

This week I've read a poem here a poem there... not nearly as many as I might like to have. I've had my nose in other things including some of Dana Gioia's essays. But I have managed a few reads. Hopefully more this weekend.

• Dana Martin --> a brilliant pantoum... they're so challenging
• Carol Muske-Dukes [Passport: A Manifasto] --> loved this
• Kevin Young
• Czeslaw Milosz
• Ted Kooser

Week in review...

This past week I read poetry from the following poets:

• Donna Masini
• Anne Sexton
• Margaret Atwood
• Carol Ann Suffy
• Donald Hall
• Victoria Radel
• Charles Simic

Weekend of July 7th & 8th

Over the weekend I real work from the following poets....

• Charles Bukowski
• Joanna Gardner
• Richard Fein

Simic & Gluck

I've spent some time last night reading Charles Simic and Louise Gluck.I received two poetry books in the mail courtesy of a very kind friend. I have not been especially familiar with Simic till recently and had only read a couple of his poems. A Wedding in Hell is the book I am reading and I bravo! to his work. I've read only about 8 of the poems so far and hope to sit down with the book again this evening.

I particularly enjoy Simic’s blending of simple things with a more complex storyline.
Two poems I have especially taken pleasure in have been Tattooed City an Miracle Glass Co.

As for Louise Gluck, I've read more of her in the past. I did read a maybe three or four poems from her book Descending Figure and they were only first reads, but I found these to be a bit different from another book of her I have and I rather prefer what I've seen in this one.

Kumin's Extraordinary Rendition

In reading from the Pushcart Prize XXXI Best of the Small Presses I was interested in Maxine Kumin's poem Extraordinary Rendition that appeared in originally in The American Poetry Review.

Maxine Kumin deals with a provocative topic. The final stanza: Extraordinary how the sun comes up / with its rendition of daybreak, / staining the sky with indifference.

She utilizes the oak and beech tree leaves - their lingering bruised colors, creating a very powerful visual.