Eschewing irony for direct statement, the poems in Tod Marshall's first collection imagistically, musically, and passionately articulate a faith in human transcendence. From the mud of our formation ("Choir") to the dust of our dying ("After Kandinsky"), Marshall's poems lyrically obsess over how the broken and violated can envision and speak a heaven of which we know.
Three long poems that shape the book are formative in this process. From the structured order of Bach's Goldberg Variations looming behind the opening poem, "Eclipse," to the clash of pagan beauty and traditional...
Eschewing irony for direct statement, the poems in Tod Marshall's first collection imagistically, musically, and passionately articulate a faith in...
As a hummingbird beats its wings so that it might be still to feed on a flower the poet concludes, The equation keeps balancing out, and / I m drawn to how it does not settle. Aware of the difficulty of loving the world while feeding upon it, the poems of "Dwelling Song" hope vision is levity as they press language to make sight and song. This writing is a form of mimicry yet an act of dangerous flight. Whether from the voice of a hunter, shepherd, farmer, or bugle-blowing boy on a city street, the song recognizes that moving forward necessitates turning one s back."
As a hummingbird beats its wings so that it might be still to feed on a flower the poet concludes, The equation keeps balancing out, and / I m drawn t...
In his ninth poetry collection, Mr. Ramke exposes the myriad tendrils that bind together to become experience. Both intensely intimate and profoundly objective, his lyrically elegant, vibrantly elastic sentences allow a reader to follow the personal, cultural, literary, philosophic, artistic threads that intertwine to create our conscious understandings. Mr. Ramke examines not only the impact of family, culture, class, gender, historical moment, landscape, but also the ways that the language we use becomes for us the skein of our reality. From inch worm moths to Gregg shorthand, from...
In his ninth poetry collection, Mr. Ramke exposes the myriad tendrils that bind together to become experience. Both intensely intimate and profoundly ...
Drawing upon four decades of his poetry, and beginning with an ample selection of new work, Theory of Mind: New & Selected Poems, 1978-2008 demonstrates Bin Ramke's ability to bring a cornucopia of human knowledge to bear upon the individual's most intimate experiences and most compelling encounters with the world. Whether Mr. Ramke is writing about the exigencies of family life, the complex interrelations of people with environment, or the meaning of work, of health crises, of cultural upheaval, of natural disaster--he is able to draw upon an unprecedented range of social, scientific,...
Drawing upon four decades of his poetry, and beginning with an ample selection of new work, Theory of Mind: New & Selected Poems, 1978-2008 demonstrat...
Aerial is concerned with the sky--its cloud-laden aspects in the first section, its dry realms of severe spirituality in the second. And as poetry is always about attention to language, the words "cloud" and "clod"--a shape of vapor and a shape of dirt--are key to this book's antithetical obsessions. But so, too, are words such as "father," "hunger," and "edge." The implied narrative behind the poems has to do with family, but especially with loss of family members and how the connections they once formed live on for good or ill. The frail human community--always touching earth and touched by...
Aerial is concerned with the sky--its cloud-laden aspects in the first section, its dry realms of severe spirituality in the second. And as poetry is ...
