Fanny Howe, whose latest book of poetry, Second Childhood, was nominated for the National Book Award, suggests that readers not try to understand her poems but rather just listen to the music of the words and images. Her collection centers around "the convergence between old age and childhood."
Nothing gay this gray morning. The salt-sprayed trees and bushes bend over like scared students, tested by a towering teacher — all brick, iron and glaring glass — missing nothing.
I appreciate the prayers and kindness shown to me and my family during my daughter’s illness. So happy to be back on-Island. So grateful. The following by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, captures perfectly my sentiment at this time.
What if a deceased dog could talk? What if hippos went on holiday?
Those are some of the questions asked and answered by the former U.S. poet laureate and Island favorite Billy Collins in a reading of new and selected poems at Featherstone Center for the Arts last Friday evening. Among other disparate themes, he explored parenting, animal-human relationships, endearing soap bars and the experience of a traveler who arrives in a foreign place and is immediately told he has arrived too late in the year to witness the peak of the natural beauty.