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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Wed, 23 Aug 2006
Book of the Day: Heart Island by Stephen Cushman
Stephen Cushman's poems are superb for their attention to particulars: of emotion, of image, of spiritual nuance. Many of the poems in Heart Island are lyrics about memory, while others are close examinations of their subjects that, literally, unfold deeper meaning like the flowers of a petal opening. Consider this poem:
Selenitic
Said of a flower
that opens in moonshine,
but doesn’t it mean
full moon bamboozles
the gullible flower,
counterfeiting sun
by cranking out shadows,
or does such a flower
discriminate between
any old onslaught
of usable beams
and the moon’s special mix
of darkness and light
pressure, tender
yet insistent
as it coaxes each petal
so ready to open
to just the right touch.
"Selenitic" is a sly poem, tender in its close evocation of the way the flower opens "to just the right touch," as a poem about flowers in moonlight becomes unexpectedly erotic. Heart Island, alternating between casually graceful meter/rhyme and well-sculpted free verse, is full of such unusually pleasant surprises.