Organized in six distinct sections, this debut collection still resonates with an overall cohesiveness. Its poems are original and contradictoryearthy, cryptic, and exquisite. They beautifully utilize the lilting phrase, are attuned to the day s inflections, and have a gentle ebb and flow, which is often echoed visually by the way the poems are laid out upon the page. The lyricism isneither fragile nor overly lavish and often a marvelous stanza is undercut. Sounds are deliberately thrown askew by a laconic expression or a surprisingly forthright final image. Experimental in form, this is...
Organized in six distinct sections, this debut collection still resonates with an overall cohesiveness. Its poems are original and contradictoryearthy...
"Halcyon Ghosts" presents 13 poems--13 shapes of knowing--from the cinematic reel "The Kid," splicing stills of the poet's grandmother and Charlie Chaplin, to the re-verse soundings of "Six Reels of Joy," celebrating the birth of the poet's daughter. The title poem displays a ghostly counterpoint of birds and words in flight; strikethrough poems are threaded through with runes of fact and fiction. Language, Sampson demonstrates, is as particular and transitory as the patterning of the natural world. Poems layer, link, and break apart, sampling and echoing other texts--whether the everlasting...
"Halcyon Ghosts" presents 13 poems--13 shapes of knowing--from the cinematic reel "The Kid," splicing stills of the poet's grandmother and Charlie Cha...