Tag: #Impressionism
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“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…
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“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…
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“Ekpyrosis, the Watershed,” by Joe Hall
Ekpyrosis, according to the Internet, is an Ancient Greek term that means “conflagration.” And, according to Google’s number one search result, Plato and the Christian Bible claimed the world would burn during a great apocalypse. It’s important to know this for Joe Hall’s poem, “Ekpyrosis, the Watershed” (from Oversound 9), because it’s not entirely clear…
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“Elliptical,” by Kristen Steenbeeke
Do you remember when every interesting poem was labeled “elliptical,” because it did this thing with juxtaposition or parataxis or dysjunction, and the subject matter or the poem’s voice was just spaced differently. And that made it more interesting. And God bless Stephanie Burt for setting those poems away from the LangPo and Narrative “in-fighting”…
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“Summer,” by Celeste Pepitone-Nahas
What can anyone say is contained in containers? In a plastic bag? In the image of a man who’s merely identified as a “composer”? In America? Like the whole country of America should be looked at as just a container. Like a backyard with statues in it. But if that’s the image associated with America,…
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“From ‘Long Life,’” by Lesle Lewis
What always fascinates me about Lesle Lewis’s poems are their iteration. Like the poem is this activity we’re in the middle of with the poet. I’m in the moment with her as I read any given line, like her composition and my reading were simultaneous. Then the line ends, and I’m floating above the moment…