Book Review and Sample

In bringing together From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright (Lost Hills Books, Duluth MN), I was pleased at the number of women who became involved in the project. Helen Ruggieri’s contribution echoes one of Wright’s poems, although her statement is all her own. Both are part of an ancient tradition of poems about the poet’s craft. Here is Helen’s:

The Kind of Poem I Want

I want poetry from a grown woman

who’s forgiven her children for growing old

I want poetry sure as a peeled bud of garlic

hot on the tongue—strong on the breath

I want poetry from a woman who smiles with her teeth

you know her—she thinks like a man

I want poetry damp and shady:

trillium, bracken, and fern

The kind of poetry I want takes my shape

not even knowing my name

It is a debt forgiven

payment in kind, unkind, lonely, true

The poetry I want is high priced

And tightly wound, mean and free,

hawk high, duck deep.

I want it all in my feathery palms.

            Now Barbary Chaapel’s (she's well-known on Gather) collection of poems from Appalachia, Estuary, is available from Lost Hills Books (www.losthillsbooks.com ), and soon a chapbook by one of our most distinguished poets, Gibbons Ruark, will be ready. Gibbons’s book will be called Staying Blue. Please consider giving books from Lost Hills for birthdays and Christmas. The hills are alive!