How Does a Poem Mean? Review

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(More customer reviews)John Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean? is an intriguing, unorthodox, and surprisingly effective introduction to poetry. He argues that the question: "What Does a Poem Mean?" is too often a self-destroying approach that results in paraphrasing and misses the point of poetry. A poem is to be experienced, not simply interpreted. Unlike prose, a poem is primarily a performance.
How does a poem build itself into a form out of images, ideas, and rhythms? How do these elements become the meaning? How are they inseparable from the meaning? John Ciardi's remarkable textbook answers these questions, makes enjoyable reading, and is a five star introduction to poetry.
This text, published by Houghton Mifflin, was adopted by many colleges in the 1960s and 1970s. Inexpensive, used, soft cover copies are still fairly easy to find.
The eight chapters are titled How Does a Poem Mean?, A Burble Through the Tulgey Wood, By Rippling Pools, The Words of Poetry, The Sympathetic Contract, The Image and the Poem, The Poem in Motion, and The Poem in Countermotion.
I encountered many familiar poems as well as others new to me. Among the latter, I list several to illustrate the wide range of Ciardi's selections (and to remind me to return to these poets): The Listeners (Walter De la Mare), Mr. Flood's Party (Edwin Arlington Robinson), The Death of a Hired Hand (Robert Frost), Burning Love Letters (Howard Moss), Snake (D. H. Lawrence), Blue Girls (John Crowe Ransom), Medusa (Louise Bogan), A Subterranean City (Thomas Lovell Beddoes), and What the Sonnet Is (Eugene Lee Hamilton).
Also, I especially enjoyed three closely related poems: Departmental (Frost), Heaven (Rupert Brooke), and A Deep Discussion (Richard Moore).
Like most collections of poetry, How Does a Poem Mean? is best enjoyed if read in a leisurely fashion over several months. The overall time commitment may be substantial, but John Ciardi's fascinating text will reward your efforts. Take your time. Enjoy yourself. Remember, poetry is to be experienced, not simply analyzed. Cheers.

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The Migraine Hotel (Salt Modern Poets) Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this book after watching a brief Youtube video of Luke Kennard reading one of his poems, "The Dusty Era", to a live audience in the UK. There has been quite a lot of write-up about this young poet in England, and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. As a rather jaded and tired working adult, I must confess I can't remember when was the last time I bought a book of modern poems (must have been when I had to study for the GREs?), but I am so glad to have bought this slim volume. Some of the poems are short, episodic prose pieces that are rather like flash fiction, which remind me of how far modern poetry has evolved. Kennard's poems are unpretentious, witty, lyrical, but most importantly, they are sincere. I can't claim to understand all of them, but I am not insecure. I rather like taking a stroll through his delirious world, just like I enjoy walking through the Centre Pompidou and the Tate Modern on a Sunday afternoon. You never know what you are going to encounter round the corner, but you can be sure you will glimpse the inner workings of a fevered artist who spent more time worrying about something that you should be worried about and yet lack the time, inclination, or ability to. In this era of easily digestible and brainless media, "The Migraine Hotel" is sparkling, challenging, and new. Time and money well spent.

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A combination of verse and prose poetry, "The Migraine Hotel" is Luke Kennard's third collection and very much a sequel to "The Harbour Beyond the Movie". The voices continue to explore the territory opened up by "Harbour", at once satiric, stricken, sincere and bitingly sarcastic, combined with a kaleidoscopic range of ways of engaging with a poem as a reader. The prose poems are prose poems in the tradition of Baudelaire, which is to say they read more like grouchy comic monologues with unreliable narrators than prose-verse characterised by excessive lyricism.

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Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison Review

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(More customer reviews)if charles bukowski had spent 7 yrs in prison he might've written a book like this; by turns sardonic, tough, witty, angry, and with an underlying sadness, it is a major accomplishment from an important new voice in american poetry. STONE HOTEL takes the reader on a tour of hell but never preaches or complains or fails to enlighten the reader about what life in a modern american prison at the end of the 20th century is like. this is an important book. i couldn't put it down!

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Raegan Butcher, undeniably influenced by such luminaries as Bukowski and Bunker, manages to find his own voice in these poems and uses it to avoid the clichés of prison writing while delivering a truly authentic record of his time behind bars. His simple and direct style makes his work immediately accessible both to those who shun traditional poetry, and experienced poetry readers alike, and the story told in these pages is as compelling as it is genuine. Stone Hotel is a no frills ride through one man's experience in the United States prison system and all of the lunacy, horror and meditation that entails.

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The Sleep Hotel Review

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(More customer reviews)Traveling the world is one of the best ways to experience it fully. "The Sleep Hotel" delves into the mind and thoughts of Amy Newlove Schroeder as she presents a riveting read of poetry. Her work expresses her feelings as well as offers his experiences traveling the world and gives much for readers to enjoy. "The Sleep Hotel" is a fascinating and highly recommended collection which shouldn't be missed. "Pacific": the water is so impersonal/a stranger to everyone//a child-wind spends itself in the palm/the moon makes endless promises//tonight she's wearing her sailor face,/preparing to cast off.


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Hotel Insomnia Review

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(More customer reviews)Charles Simic, Hotel Insomnia (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992)
If I ever meet Charles Simic, I am likely to ask that one question every author really hates: "Where do you get your ideas?"
It's not that the overarching, grand design of Simic's work is incomprehensible or anything. In fact, in Hotel Insomnia, if anything, it's more noticeable than ever; for once, the book's title really does tie into almost everything in the book. Insomnia is a major theme in these poems, and it runs throughout like a bad infomercial on late-night TV in the background, bleary-eyed, beer in hand, in its boxer shorts, and yet strangely appealing.
No, it's not that. It's in the details, those damnable little snippets of poetry that make Charles Simic's poems little gems of wide-eyed brilliance:
"There's a painting over the cash register:
Of a stiff Quaker couple dressed in black.
They hold a cat under each arm.
One is a tiger, the other is Siamese.
The eyes are closed because it's very late,
And because cats see better with their eyes closed."
(--"Caged Fortuneteller")
This is a guy who knows something about you. No matter who you are. And in every book he releases, he will reveal a little of it, until you're paranoid, hiding in a darkened room, peeking out of the blinds, unable to sleep, just waiting for Charles Simic to come knocking on your door, because you're convinced he's coming for you.
And isn't that what it's all about? **** ½

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The Dig and Hotel Fiesta (Illinois Poetry Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Emanuel is a terrifically strong writer, one America's best young mainstream poets, and this two-in-one volume holds up to -- and deserves -- close and repeated readings. The people who have given this book sophmoric, thoughtless one-star reviews are probably as pretentious and lacking in subtley as their comments.

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