Steve Potter Reviews Purr and Yowl: An Anthology of Poetry About Cats

Cats are the stars of most poems in Purr and Yowl: An Anthology of Poetry About Cats. In a few, though, a cat is a character actor in a supporting role or merely passes through for a brief cameo. The anthology includes work from more than one hundred poets selected by editor David D. Horowitz. It includes poems in a wide array of styles, including haiku, tanka, sonnets, free verse, and more.

Purr and Yowl is full of reminders of why so many of us are fascinated and enamored of felines. It's a perfect gift for the cat and / or poetry lover in your life.

book reviewsPhoebe BoscheDecember 23, 2023Raven Chronicles Pressraven chronicles, book reviews, steve potter, poetryComment

Steve Potter Reviews Heller Levinson's SHIFT GRISTLE & QUERY CABOODLE

Heller Levinson continues his Hinge Theory-fueled explorations of life and language in two new collections of poetry from Black Widow Press. He includes four epigraphs at the beginning of Shift Gristle which give an indication of the concerns he will engage with, and the modes of engagement in the book. They include quotes from Walter Benjamin, John Gardner, Walt Whitman, and this one from Matthew Prichard, writing in regard to the paintings of his friend Henri Matisse: “There are certain truths which transcend the power of the intellect to grasp, which can only be conveyed by evocation.”

The Orphic, epistemologically inquisitive poems in Query Caboodle put me in mind of Zen koans and Pablo Neruda's The Book of Questions. The questions in the book are not questions to be answered so much as they are questions to be dwelt on and lived with in order to deepen one's awareness of how language operates.

Steve Potter Reviews I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer by Robert Lashley

An epistolary novel, the story is told via a series of letters the protagonist, Albert, writes to Professor Thompson, a counselor at the college where Albert is a freshman. A few letters written by Thompson addressed to Albert are also included. Albert expresses his opinions on social issues in his letters to Professor Thompson but always in relation to events in the story. He never goes off into rhetorical generalizations.

Albert is a former member of the Crips who spent time in juvie for running drugs and robbing old ladies. He gets a second chance at life thanks to the intervention of some community leaders and mentors. I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer is, among other things, a redemption story. It's also a grief-driven tragedy, a love story, and a work of social realism with some of the qualities of a picaresque novel.

book reviewsPhoebe BoscheNovember 3, 2023Raven Chronicles Pressraven chronicles, book reviews, steve potter, robert lashley, novelComment

Steve Potter reviews Larry Laurence's THOUGHT DESPAIRIMENTS

If one were to devise a big feels vs. deep thoughts metric for works of literature, one might be tempted to place Larry Laurence's collection Thought Despairiments on the deep thoughts end of the spectrum, but it actually straddles the entire range . . . Thought Despairiments is a collection both thoughtful and despairing, full of experiments and explorations that will reward you with thoughts of your own.

book reviewsPhoebe BoscheSeptember 23, 2023Raven Chronicles Pressraven chronicles, poetry, steve potter, book reviews, larry laurenceComment

Steve Potter Looks at 5 Poetry Collections from Charles Potts’ Hand to Mouth Books

The varied terrain of the Pacific Northwest—from the Salish Sea/Pacific Ocean to the Olympic/Cascade Mountains—is a common point-of-focus among four of five poetry collections from Walla Walla, Washington's Hand to Mouth Books. They feature poems with titles such as; "The Snake River, June 2nd, 2012” (Joshua Lew McDermott), “Cannon Beach” (Teri Zipf), “The View from Manashtash Ridge” (Stephen Thomas), and “Walking Along a Nature Trail in Wenatchee, Washington, the Poets Speak of Unimportant Matters” (Dennis Held).

Kudos to poet, editor, and publisher Charles Potts for creating Hand to Mouth Books centered in Walla Walla, Washington. He is doing a commendable job presenting poetry from our northwestern corner of the nation to the world.

Steve Potter Reviews 2 Books of Poems by Jeremy Springsteed

The poems in the first two sections of Jeremy Springsteed's collection Salt, Weasel, Corpse, and Other made me think I'd like to declare the existence of a heretofore unacknowledged genre of English language poetry and edit a selection of them along the lines of Carolyne Forché and Duncan Wu's seminal anthology Poetry of Witness. I would classify these poems of Springsteed's as belonging to the tradition of the poetry of fascination. Whereas the poems in Poetry of Witness deal with firsthand accounts of cruelty, oppression, religious persecution, war, and slavery, the poetry of fascination is about wondrous and mysterious people, places, and events usually seen from a greater distance than firsthand.

“Seven Strikes,” in Springsteed's collection A Guide To Getting Lost, is a darker example of the poetry of fascination. The source of fascination there is lightning. The poem weaves personal reminiscences of his childhood fascination with those astonishing bolts of electricity from the sky and strange historical incidents of the phenomenon.

Steve Potter reviews Poetica Dystopia and I Feel Your Doughnut Pain by Stephen Roxborough

Where do poems exist? I thought about that and about reading versus listening and writing for the page versus writing for the stage while simultaneously reading and listening to poems by Stephen Roxborough. Fourteen poems on his fine new cd, Poetica Dystopia, also appear in his book, I Feel Your Doughnut Pain. I've heard people say they like poetry that lives on the page, marking a distinction between sit-and-read-silently-to-yourself poetry and performance poetry. I get that and would classify myself with poetry on the page over poetry on the stage if I really had to choose once and for all, but, in the end, no poem actually exists on the page or stage. They all only truly live in human minds. A poem comes to life in the mind of one human, the sort of human we, therefore, call a poet and is then transferred into the minds of other humans via written and/or spoken word. I think it was Charles Simic who opined that no poem is complete until it is read by someone other than the poet himself. It's the 21st Century, though, so let's change that to her/him/themself lest we exclude anyone. Furthermore, I'd add or heard after read.

Steve Potter reviews Maged Zaher's On Confused Love and Other Damages

Like an experienced stand-up comic, Maged Zaher knows to pause and let the audience laugh before he moves on to the next set-up and punchline. Like a good performance poet or storyteller, he knows to pause to let the audience experience the grief described vicariously before plunging on. Zaher's book is full of funny moments but also deeply sad ones. They often occur simultaneously. That is the nexus where so much magic happens in art. The Beatles' song "HELP!" came to mind while I read the book the second time. I remembered the day in childhood when I first paid attention to the lyrics, after hearing the song many times without focusing on them. I remembered the disjointed feeling when I realized how depressing the song was. How could such a sad song also sound so fun and upbeat at the same time? Zaher's book has some of that same quality – smiling through the tears, accepting the dark beauty of melancholy.

Steve Potter reviews Steven Creson's BIG DAY, NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

Steve Creson's collection of thoughtful, introspective poems, Big Day, is arranged into five sections presented in reverse chronological order from 2020 back to 1988. The book ends with an afterword by Creson's long-time friend, the poet and multimedia artist, Jim Jones. Jones writes that:

Creson's lifelong project is to imagine how his past determines the quality of the unfolding present. As Kierkegaard remarked in his journal, 'Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.' The attentive reader, then, will not be surprised to find so many references to dates, days, and even specific hours and minutes. The poet tries to pinpoint experiences that have some bearing on what he is living as he writes each poem. The result is a kind of bilocation, a feeling conveyed to the reader of being in two places at the same time.

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