Some Contemporary Poets

Most of what is called "contemporary poetry" is not poetry at all but personal essay, reminiscence, nostalgia, or short short stories. In an attempt to evoke a sense of poetry, the writers arrange their words in curious ways on the page or simply break up lines according to how they feel at the moment. Often, however, the work produced, though not poetry in any traditional or meaningful sense of the word, is quite impressive.

Claudia Emerson in "Elegy in July for the Motel Astra" from her volume Secure the Shadow gives us a fine description of the old Route 1, once the main highway from the Northeast to Florida:

The motel signs, once neon sculptures           of lyric light and promise, still advertisedarkly what was: Corona, Radiant,           Starlight, Aurora, places named for skybounddestinations someone dreamed up to lure those           on their way to or from the ocean,to or from the mundane everyday,           the heat, at least, for a time—a night—escapable.

A place or two are still rented by the season           to migrant workers following a harvest,tobacco, peanuts, soybeans—or the paving           of other roads. But most have fallen beyond use,windows paneless, still-numbered doors ajar,           anything worth salvage hauled out piecemeal,the only inhabitants small birds, black snakes,           wasps, and vines, cavity-seekers, their shadows.

And further on:

On the concrete floor of the pool, the years' collection           of leaf rot, dust, rainfall and frost, the cricketsand toads that fell into and then could not           escape it—have recomposed to formthe barest layer of soil . . .

The title piece, "Secure the Shadow," manages to derive from what is grotesque (old photographs of dead children) an eerie kind of beauty (one is reminded of Wisconsin Death Trip). And what she writes about her childhood and her family, though sometimes lapsing into easy clichés, is for the most part emotionally moving.

In The Empty Loom Robert Gibb writes about his wife while she was alive and (mostly) about himself after her death. Though from time to time writing what could be called poems (there is even a sonnet), he usually gives us excellent prose reminiscences somewhat spoiled by his attempts to make them appear as poetry. For example this from "Garden Diptych":

2. Groundhog

Back here where you asked that your ashes be buriedBeneath the beams of cedar and rafters of fir,

It's slipped in again to plunder the entire cropOf broccoli, leaving me with only the slavered stalks

And snapped-off leaves and sprung wires of the fence.Next will be the Brussels sprouts and lettuce,

And the solace I've sought in growing things.

The same can be said for other compositions in the volume ("The Scarf," "Skunk Cabbage," "Mullein: Third Trimester," "Winter Storm Watch") though sometimes Gibb is more creative in his attempts to convert prose into poetry ("Lunar" and "Poke Weed, Persimmons"). And sometimes he wanders into the banal. For example "Elegy Roses," in which, after beginning with a meaningless quotation from a review by Garry Wills (Our own life's a burial place. . .), he tries to squeeze poetry (or beauty) from an overrated John Ford Western. For the most part, however, what Gibb writes, if not usually poetry, is moving and evocative.

J. T. Barbarese's volume Sweet Spot contains chiefly reminiscences he tries to turn into poetry through everyday language and slang. "The El Is for...