Category: Poetry

The Totally Not Boring Book Of Feelings by Jolie Taylor & Brandon Dorman

What a delightful way to get kids in touch with their feelings! And this, mind you, is said by someone who has definitely given books about feelings, especially those targeted at kids, the hairy side eye, usually for being too sappy and twee. This collection of roughly 40 poems easily avoids that pitfall, while being …

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Reborn by Abraham Rodriguez

On the one hand, I’m happy for the interest in poetry that the viral success of Rupi Kaur has brought mainstream. On the other, well, you get the feeling that everyone feels that they can write poetry now. And yes, to a certain extent, everyone can write poetry. But too often writers confuse epigraphs with …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/16/reborn-by-abraham-rodriguez/

The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson

The Iliad by Emily Wilson

Introducing her translation of The Iliad, Emily Wilson gets right to the heart of the matter. “The beautiful word minunthadios, ‘short-lived,’ is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life. Yet through poetry, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/31/the-iliad-translated-by-emily-wilson/

Gay Poems For Red States by Willie Carver

or Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr as he’s credited on the cover of this volume. In 2022, Willie Carver was named Kentucky Teacher of the Year. A homophobic vendetta led by just one woman caused him to decide, only months later, to leave the public school system, but not before testifying before Congress about the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/15/gay-poems-for-red-states-by-willie-carver/

Under Her Skin edited by Lindy Ryan & Toni Miller

A Women In Horror Poetry Collection, Volume I Usually when I read poetry, I read in great big chunks, especially when reading a collection from one of my favorite poets. Even larger anthologies from different writers go by quickly, or at least in big thematic pieces. So I was a little surprised, but not in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/12/under-her-skin-edited-by-lindy-ryan-toni-miller/

Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

So here I am at the end of Seamus Heaney’s major collections. I came via the sideways path, the one that starts with his Nobel lecture, which is brilliant, and has repaid many re-readings. It took me through Finders Keepers a collection of his prose, and then through his Beowulf. I no longer remember just …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/04/09/human-chain-by-seamus-heaney/

District and Circle by Seamus Heaney

District and Circle by Seamus Heaney

Things, moments, people, poems. Heaney finds inspiration for the poems in District and Circle in things that he encounters or imagines, moments he hopes to preserve or evoke in others, people he remembers, and poems he either recalls or translates. Places, which loomed larger in other collections, are less present here, though of course they …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/01/29/district-and-circle-by-seamus-heaney/

Electric Light by Seamus Heaney

Electric Light by Seamus Heaney

At age 62, some 35 years after publishing his first book-length collection, six years after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Seamus Heaney might have settled into a particular style of poetry. In Electric Light, though, Heaney forges onward. The volume features at least three eclogues (a short, pastoral poem, often in dialogue; I had …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/11/electric-light-by-seamus-heaney/

I Don’t Care by Julie Fogliano, Molly Idle & Juana Martinez-Neal

This sweet picture book on what it means to be a true friend is a delight for adults and children both. The poem by Julie Fogliano tells the tale of two quite different children who don’t seem to be getting along. But as the book progresses, readers see that the kids, who seemingly began by …

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The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

The first time I read The Odyssey, I was on a bit of an odyssey myself: from Budapest to Helsinki, and thence to DC via London. It didn’t take ten years, and I didn’t feel the need to plot a bunch of murders when I reached my new home. Nor did I lose my ship …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/05/the-odyssey-translated-by-emily-wilson/