For lovely, introspective moments that will whisk you away from the ordinary of the day, here are five poetry books I highly recommend:
Patchy Ways by Hiram Larew (Cyberwit, 2023). Immerse yourself in lyrical wonder with Patchy Ways. Hiram Larew cleverly suppresses narrative dominance by allowing word play and word craft to dance in our hearts and heads like spells woven by druid-bards.
In these poems, sound devices flourish, capturing the reader in a kaleidoscope of images coming together in newness, originality, and magic.
Feel your mind and soul rollick then settle into meditative musing when you read lines such as:
…In open air is my love
and steps to gathered chores
These sacred now-to-thens embrace
my being’s twine or twirl
or whiff
Or dripping brims —
these bucket years their play
(From “Whiff,” p. 17).
Plants are poems
of the listening kind
all rove and rare
(From “Rove and Rare,” p. 35).
In fact I am a why oh why wager
and like you
have moves that hoodwink me
and ideas that bluff
(From “Bets on Branches,” p. 13).
When Larew does write narrative poems, they are stunning, as well. Check out “Clusters” (p. 77). Wow.
The Phoenix Requires Ashes: Poems for the Journey by Maureen Sandra Kane (Gray Matter Press, 2022). It seems to me that the world can be simultaneously lovely and lacking. When I want to connect with a kindred spirit about this, I turn the pages of The Phoenix Requires Ashes: Poems for the Journey and ponder the poetry of Maureen Sandra Kane.
The blessings of the ordinary — or finding poetry in the prosaic — are key to this collection of forty-seven poems. This collection has the perfect title, The Phoenix Requires Ashes, as each poem shows that within a mundane moment waits the rebirth of strength and perseverance in resurging beauty — we just need another way of seeing to unlock this mystery, and these poems provide those visionary keys.
In “Silence,” Kane writes:
I tried to write a poem about trusting our path
by writing about bumpers on bowling alleys.
…I want to write the poem that will tilt the world
towards love so that path is downhill, not up.
I need the words to make sense of pain
and glorify the meaning we make of tragedy.
The ways we keep going
even when we are sure we can’t.
I need verses that see the unseen
and adorn the lonely
in friendship and comfort.
…Today, all I have are bowling alleys and bumpers.
And silence.
(From “Silence,” p. 6-7).
Kane’s poems seem to say that the low points can be mere springboards to the highest.
The Milk Men by Brian T. Manyati (Cyber Clerical Associates, 2023 Zimbabwe and 2024 USA). Poet Brian T. Manyati writes an exceptional debut of well-crafted poetry. To me, this collection is an expression of human life as being in relationship with all things, animals, land, and, of course, other people. The poet explores the human relationship to animals that are “soulful” (pg. 36-38), his home continent of Africa, an honored spouse, “governance” in every home, poetry, a bed, reality, drink, vices, art, a kiss, those who once delivered nourishment to our doors (“The milk men”), “An epidemic gone rogue” (pg. 26), and ultimately, hunger — a relationship that should not exist.
Personified in Manyati’s verse, hunger looms large, descending upon humans, wanting to win at any cost. As Manyati writes, “No to hunger/Outclassing us!” (pg. 33). In a poignant analogy, Manyati relates people and hunger competing as rivals in a sports event, stating:
We cannot no more
Be seen marauding our
Own goalposts with own
Goals! Instead, our grain stores
Have to fill up, global warming or
Not. Takes slick passes and an
On-point strike force! This
Won’t go to extra time.
(From “Less than 90 minutes with hunger,” p. 33).
Manyati expresses eloquent epiphanies, such as:
There are ways blessings come!
In disguise. In lockdown moments.
Right when hope has almost
Faded away.
(From “Zoom In,” p. 8).
When reading this thought-provoking collection, I ponder my relationship with all in my life through the lens of Manyati’s original and meaningful analogies.
Come Egypt by Teresa E. Gallion (Inner Child Press, 2024). This book is a stellar, visionary achievement.
The poet invited me to write the Foreword; I readily accepted this honor. Here is an excerpt: “If you’ve ever made a wish that you knew the magic words that might transport you in time and space, then open Teresa E. Gallion’s Come Egypt for a wish come true. These are poems spun with magic, elevating your reading moment into a spectacle of awareness arisen from the depths of ancient memories. The poet Teresa E. conjures the mysterious remembering as stunning images, word craft, and ecstatic substance…I read the poetry of this book as incantations invoking goddesses flowing as river muses of mysticism that surround us while contemporary goddesses, often disguised as poets, walk among us. ” (From the Foreword by Mary Dezember of Come Egypt, p. xi and xiv).
Some of the stunning images that Teresa E. Gallion creates in these poems are:
I am a goddess with angel wings
shaking sand off my feathers
as I rise.
Licking the sand
from my hands.
Time is calling.
(From “Come Egypt,” p. 5)
When evening bends the light rays
across the river, the water whispers
just beneath the surface.
(From “Come Egypt,” p. 7)
The ecstasy makes me float like a goddess.
(From “Egyptian Yacht,” p. 10)
Come Egypt is the poetry of adventure beyond boundaries that will transport you — an adventure you don’t want to miss.
The Wisdom of Blue Apples by Diane Wilbon Parks (WilPar Publishing, LLC, 2016). The cover of this extraordinary collection draws me along a lighted path into the woods of trees that create blue apples.
Upon opening the book, the richness of the poetry draws me into a mythical world Diane Wilbon Parks creates of shapes and colors — with an emphasis on blue. Parks conjures images I have not before imagined. The 92 pages of this collection are filled with Parks’ artistic way of seeing. One such example is found in “The Message of Bloom”:
I can tell when flowers panic.
I can hear the loss of air in their leaves.
…We’ve abandoned the message
of bloom. They ease down with
the silence of peace, hand us
the weight of their bloom,
and hope for us to mend ourselves
into something right, into something
as vulnerable as the mist of morning dew.
(from “The Message of Bloom,” p. 64.)
Parks often writes of the purpose and strength of poems, personifying poetry with a resolute character, such as in “The Poem”:
The poem … kneels down on dirty knees/
…takes a stiff bow,
and leaves the room never
knowing if it left an impression.
(from “The Poem,” p. 16.)
To each poem of this collection I say, “Thank you for making an appearance. Thank you for your dirty knees. I tell you, you have left a lasting, important impression.”
To readers of poetry, I say: These are poems to savor, like the juices of blue apples.
Copyright © 2024 Mary Dezember
Dezember, LLC
(My copyright is only of my words in this post.
The lines from poems that I quote are copyrighted by the authors of those poems.)