From the BookshelfBy Alyce Wilson **** Must Read Poetry
Frith strives for clarity and sparseness. His words paint minimalist watercolors of nature imagery, observations of human nature, and responses to photos and paintings. These poems are evocative of Japanese forms, where each word must matter.
Cammer seems to think he's incredibly hip, as this collection of caustic and crude short verse proves. This self-love, however, would best be kept private, as he does everything possible — through language and subject matter — to alienate the reader.
Known in spoken word circles, Gomez's poetry plays off aural techniques, such as repetitions of sounds and parallelism, but also reads well on the page. Like his spiritual forebears in the Black Arts Movement, he sometimes veers too far into the polemical but always brings it back to the visceral and the personal.
Clark is deafblind and his poetry is simple and direct. At times there is a playfulness, as he muses on language and on his tactile way of viewing the world. He makes his world come alive for the reader.
Maddox's God is omnipresent in life, as much in playtime as in prayer time. Ranging from whimsical to contemplative, these poems explore Christian beliefs and their relationship to everyday life.
Koronas prefers a very loose form of free verse, where line breaks often feel accidental and the music of the language is untrained. Her most engaging poems are tributes to famous artists and writers, such as Picasso. But in her personal poems, and in her "language poems" (musing on words), her choices are often too unfocused.
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Drinking
the Light
Madame
Vomitfly
Shades
of Silence
Suddenly
Slow
Weeknight
at the Cathedral
Zero
Boundaries