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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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Thu, 21 Jun 2007
Book of the Day: Season We Can't Resist by Martha Carlson-Bradley
Martha Carlson-Bradley's Season We Can't Resist is striking for the way it blends scientific exactitude with a lyric sense of the world's possibilities. For Bradley, image is music, and her lovingly-crafted free verse poems capture the world's visual nuance in a way that becomes almost aural.
Here's an example:
Surface Tension
Clear as tea, the river
ferries floating leaves--
birch and alder, ash--
as spangles of October sunlight
burn, blinding:
in shade
one yellow maple leaf
glides vertically
beneath the surface, curved
like a hand at rest--
a gesture not sustainable
in air:
my eyes adjust
and here--here too--
hundreds pass, whole cities
dimmed beneath water,
swift as if some purpose
leads them east.
The world, in its infinite complexity, can withstand any scrutiny we give it--even (or especially) the careful, informed attention of Bradley's knowing eye.