theKalliope

Tag: #Ecopoetics

  • “Entry,” by Amie Zimmeran

    I should be clear at the opening. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be entering in Amie Zimmerman’s poem, “Entry” (the second of the two published in Mercury Firs 4 is what I’m writing about here). Like is the poem marking each of the situations as places where a reader could enter? Is it…

  • “Feldhase,” by Kylan Rice

    My frame for Kylan Rice’s poetry will always be the piece I read in Colorado Review last year. “Shield or Bee” is this remarkable exercise in density and the sound of density and the sound when making sense amidst a dense phrasing. Like what I could imagine a bee doing. But the poem isn’t “in…

  • “Logical Argument,” by Lisa Lewis

    “It happened” is the first thing you need to know reading Lisa Lewis’s poem, “Logical Argument” (from Annulet 6) What happened? It’s not clear. And it’s not even clear if “it” was the “logical argument” that’s standing at the top of the poem. Maybe “it” is something that happened, and now, following the “logical argument”…

  • “debt ritual: sediment,” by Katie Naughton

    What I first notice in Katie Naughton’s poem, “debt ritual: sediment” (from FENCE 40) is its movement from line to line. What feels like watching a video of industrial machinery shifting an item to its next station. Each line, a shift. The next line, a shift. Not something severe, though. Something that’s assertive and muted.…

  • “Not on Geological Time,” by Felicia Zamora

    Imagine a human body that was mimicking or participating or sympathetic to geological time. The all-time of earth. A human of the earth, born on earth, with biological processes that must be cognizant of earth. Not special among the earth. But special because the earth is present inside her. While she’s looking at a lake.…

  • “Narcissus,” by Jay Deshpand

    Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what Jay Deshpande means in his poem, “Narcissus” (found in Iterant 10), when he’s explaining to the reader, “that field goes moon / and winsome.” Something about a field under the moon, something so calm, appealing. Like maybe an investigation into desire as impulse, and the nature of that impulse,…

  • “The Remnant,” by Kwame Dawes

    Kwame Dawes‘s poem, “The Remnant” (from Kenyon Review: Spring 2023) positions his reader in the horrible middle of the Anthropocene, or the horrible middle of life when you’re entering the Anthropocene. And I recognize there are many poets of his generation (Vievee Francis and Jorie Graham, among others) who are writing so directly into this…