 | A WRITER'S WIT |  J. Fichte |
My Book World
Gorman, Amanda. Call Us What We Carry: Poems. New York: Viking, 2021.
This collection of poetry may be the most innovative one I’ve ever read—quite fitting for one of our youngest and most distinguished poets. Gorman uses a wide variety of poetic forms. Concrete poetry portrays Melville’s whale, and a poem about the Covid Pandemic is a black mask with white print. She devises a series of free forms fitting the subject matter. Yet others are truly novel, for example, in “The Soldiers (or Plummer),” in which her lines representing a young soldier’s diary appear as dated diary pages. The poet seems to be telling the broad sweep of African-American history by searching out every appropriate form and by sweeping out every ignored corner of said history. One reading, as with most fine poetry, will not be enough. And I look forward to Gorman’s next collection.
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Wise Brown
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cerf
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, Angels
This collection of poetry may be the most innovative one I’ve ever read—quite fitting for one of our youngest and most distinguished poets. Gorman uses a wide variety of poetic forms. Concrete poetry portrays Melville’s whale, and a poem about the Covid Pandemic is a black mask with white print. She devises a series of free forms fitting the subject matter. Yet others are truly novel, for example, in “The Soldiers (or Plummer),” in which her lines representing a young soldier’s diary appear as dated diary pages. The poet seems to be telling the broad sweep of African-American history by searching out every appropriate form and by sweeping out every ignored corner of said history. One reading, as with most fine poetry, will not be enough. And I look forward to Gorman’s next collection.
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Wise Brown
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Elsa Maxwell
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Bennett Cerf
FRI: My Book World | Denis Johnson, Angels
RSS Feed