David Given Schwarm

Married, Father, United

Tag: Poetry

  • News of the World by Philip Levine

    I picked this up from the Newport Beach Public Library new book shelf–they continue to get fantastic modern american poetry. I really liked the cover and was excited that Levine was still alive–I had thought he died in the 1980s.

    The book is excellent, but rather pedestrian–a lot of New Yorker style poems without much to challange the reader or remind one of why Levine was such a great poet initially–those working class americans who do not really work or something seem to be missing, if that makes any sense. I did like the last poem about unloading box cars with zoo animals.

  • Substrate by Jim Powell

    I was very interested in this book of Poems. Lots of Hippie California stuff–a poem to Jerry Garcia Dancers, Native Californians, and a fantastic cover image.

    I really liked “Paisano” and “Terms of Employment”, which were not the type of poems that I was expecting.

    I will definitely read more books by this poet, I have a feeling that this was not his best work.

  • Sestets by Charles Wright


    I got this from the Newport Beach Public Library, whose modern poetry section is completely amazing these days. I really liked the simple cover–the book was also very well put together–nice font, great paper, etc. However at twenty bucks for less then one hundred pages this is a little over priced–I would really like to see poetry books come down in price again.

    My review when I finished it was very simple. Sestets is a fine book of poems with some really great lines. The poems are very much about mans relationship to nature or the natural world. They all start to sound the same.

    pg. 8
    Ends with an emotional knock out vacuum punch.

    pg. 12
    “No matter what any one says,
    life and death are
    not equal”
    Simple and strong, I like this kind of writing.

    pg. 13
    “The dogs have stopped
    barking”
    what else do dogs do in modern poetry

    pg. 15
    “Stuck to your business
    boys I forget the
    dawn below”

    pg. 18
    “Sunlight is lie
    saran wrap it preserves
    the world for tomorrow”

    At this point I started trying to draw up a list of interrelated themes:
    VACATION
    raven
    river
    grass
    tree horse
    needles–a syringe

    Epiation–to atone for, make amends, reparation

    pg. 53
    “There must be a cheese
    character for this–a
    simple one”
    I do not think I wrote that down right…

    pg. 55
    “The past becomes such a
    mirror–we’re in it,
    and then we’re not.”
    Again, the simple stark beauty of his writing.

    “Amber does not remember the pine”–I love that line

    Pg. 58-59
    likely my favorite poesm in the collection

    pg. 63
    “We line in a post passionate
    world.”

    Over all a good book. I will read more from him.

    There is also a good review here:
    http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2009_03_014273.php

  • Chronic by D. A. Powell


    >

    I got this book from the New Book shelf at the Newport Beach Public Library, which continues to provide amazing poetry. I read most of it in the morning with Cody laying on my chest–he was asleep, I was not.

    I really liked this poem. I liked the Author photo:

    I liked th congested language, the lack of poetic convention, the very SF vibe of the book. It did not read like academic poetry to me at all–it was fast and subtle and full of meaning.

    The poems themselves were all of a similar language with similar theme (which may not be the right word), but the style was very very unique through out the book.

    I plan to get Powell’s earlier books–a very good collection of poems.

  • Jaguar Skies by Michael McClure

    This is a great book of kind of late period beatnik celebration.

    I got it from the Newport Beach Public Library (it was missing pages 13-15) and read it in one day.

    There were poems to Bob Dylan, Robert Duncan, and other big names in language. There were personal poems about relationships and introspection. But mostly this book, an entire section is dedicated to Peru, is an explosion of good vibes and life celebration.

    The poems are centered on the page and spring from some simple title or first line conceit and finish with a strong sly smile.

    A very very strong book by a poet that I need to read more.

  • Strange Flesh by William Logan

    William Logan won the National Book Circle award for Criticism for The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin which is a horrible book full of faint praise.

    I love reading poetry and really try to be positive in my reviews, since I have some sense of how hard it is to write anything even half way interesting. Also, I have been on a long string of great books of poetry.

    I had trouble with this book–and not just the horrible cover, but lines like:

    Back and Forth like a mace

    .

    just really annoy me, not simply for the Poet-ry-ness, but also because they are printed without comment. And he quotes Brad Pitt (the actor) from Seven not the writer of the screenplay. And he uses IM to mean In Memorial. Just all sorts of things that bother me.

    And this is not an isolated example:

    Some things had been in storage twenty years,
    yet still she greeted each with pretty tears    ,

    I mean really! I would have been torn to bits in 10th grade for something like that. The book ends with this poetic retelling of chinese torture and execution which is a strange aftertaste for a book thats content contains very little that is challenging–excusing the horrible cover yet again; and so, in an effort to remember this book fondly I am going to create my own poem using this text.

    In a lot of the poems he ends with a little one line zinger–I am going to connect all of these zingers, into:

    Strange Flesh

    For there is poetry in wildness, and every alligator basking in the slime is in himeslf an Epic, self-contained.
    –Martin Chuzzlewit by William Logan

    It took the rest of her life to settle the score
    back and forth like a mace
    at the nothing that is nothing.

    Passes the eye in downward flight
    like toys abandoned by the giant’s baby
    pilgrims whose pilgrimages were mistaken,
    the ghosts of innocents played.

    Until the alien sun burned across the snow,
    steam floated above the waters like a crown,
    and the high explosive of modern architecture..

    Except, cemented into the bricks, the iron ring.

    I.M. William Logan


    That is likely better then anything in the book itself!

  • Human Dark With Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy

    This is yet another fantastic book of poems that I have picked up at the Newport Beach Public Library. I am on an extreme run of success!

    I really liked the use of language on this one–all sorts of strange enjambment and other lyrical twists and turns which made these fairly confessional sounding works very interesting. Frank and often ironic, I felt that just about every single poem in the three sections worked very well–the poems with longer line length (and the stanza and line length were definite in almost all of the poems, lots of fun repetition) worked more effectively for me–they some how seemed less poetic and more honesty.

    A strong book of poems by a poet I will watch for in the future.

    There were also several mentions of Artist Colonies in the printer note and thank you’s–which I would like to find time to follow up on.

  • An Aquarium by Jeffrey Yang


    This is a massively antastic book of poems. I got it from the Newport Beach Public Library and read it twice–once all the way through, and again slowly with a dictionary and notepad. Full of brilliant poems that really reward multiple readings.

    I liked:

    Vacuum

    Aquinas head down in a vacuum
    Aristotle which way in a vacuum?
    Sacrum, Sacrum, inluminatio coitu.
    –E.P., CANTO XXXVI

  • Creepy Bike Ride


    Windy Creepy Tree leaving moving shadow
    only on mornings when no one shows up
    to our weekly swim practice.

  • Need to Know

    On a warm
    winter day
    I fell asleep
    reading Wake Up

    by Jack Kerouac
    as eternal gnats
    ecstatically danced
    in rays of sunset.

    You can only teach
    people what they
    need to know.