Rose Solari Reviews Three New Collections Exploring History and Identity
The WIROB critic tackles collections by Steven Leyva, Miles David Moore, and Stanley Moss in the January roundup
Rose Solari reviews three exemplar new poetry collections for Washington Independent Review of Books. In her ongoing poetry column, Solari takes great care to tie each of the collections she reviews together and the theme this month is history and identity.
From the beautifully drawn New Orleans of Steven Leyva's The Understudy's Handbook, to the WWII of Miles David Moore's Man on Terrace with Wine, and the deep knowledge and reverence for the history of poetry in Act V, Scene 1 by Stanley Moss, these three collections look at the foundations of history, art, love, and identity: "The Ground Beneath their Feet."
Rose Solari keeps a regular column where she reviews poetry for Washington Independent Review of Book. Her last review tackled the Selected Lucille Clifton and Henry Taylor.
Featured Audio: “Letter from Sligo Creek” a poem by Rose Solari
Like the cover photo, the poems in Difficult Weather are timeless and—unlike the poems in many first books—extraordinarily mature. Although the narrative voice is generally that of a young woman in her late twenties and early thirties whose subject matter sometimes ranges back to early childhood, these are poems of adulthood: the discovery and endlessly painful rediscovery of human frailty, sexual and emotional betrayal, bad love in all its familial and romantic varieties, memory, and elegy…
Listen to Grace Cavalieri Interview fmr. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky
Grace Cavalieri is known widely for her stirring and empathic poetry, collected in her Legacy work Other Voices, Other Lives, but did you know that she is also an impressive interviewer? On her NPR show, The Poet and The Poem, she interviews significant poets from the US and around the world, with an aim of interpreting their lives through their poetry. In her tenure on the program, she has interviewed 9 US Poets Laureate (you can find a list with these archived interviews HERE), including the incomparable Robert Pinsky.
Featured Poetry: “Toytown” by Grace Cavalieri
The name Other Voices, Other Lives, is not purely poetical, in fact, for Grace Cavalieri it is a mission statement. In her Legacy Book of the same name there are several sections in 3rd person omnipotent which aim to breathe the same air as famous women who have suffered adversity. Tragic figure Anna Nicole Smith, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Cora from William Carlos William’s Kora in Hell. All in all they are an admix of Grace Cavalieri’s poetic life, all brought together in one beautiful volume; so, perhaps, we might figure that Anna Nicole Smith converses with Mary Wollstonecraft for the very first time in the pages of Other Voices, Other Lives.
Today, from the Anna section we have the heart-rending “Toytown”