[Note: I'm way out of my depth writing poetry reviews!]
I'm so glad I heard Jenny Qi's recitation of “Telomeres & a 2AM (Love) Poem” on The Nocturnists, which prompted me to buy her book, Focal Point. I love the intersection of art and science from which she writes.
Points of appreciation:
💭 The title of the first poem is "Point At Which Parallel Waves Converge & From Which Diverge," which is the definition of a focal point in optics.
💭 The beginning line of "First Spring, 2011": 'Everyone I love is dead or dying.' Yep.
💭 The poem "Possibilities," which is simply a numbered list of ways to die (excellent writing prompt, if morbid). Three of them, numbers 3, 5, and 7, are just two words: Brutal murder. Slow slicing. Live burial. Then number 9's irony made me laugh: 'Alone in the forest, mauled by a rare bear, the kind of bear you have spent your entire life studying.' Number 13 is blank.
💭 The language-play in "The Plural of Us" — which begins with 'The end of an us is a death without dying,' and ends by considering 'octopuses octopodes octopi' and the structure of plurality in Latin. '… think how the Latin plural of -us is -i.'
I was intrigued that both Qi and Stephen Sexton (author of If All the World and Love Were Young that I posted about on Monday) included a section of notes where they explain their inspirations and sources for some of the poems. Obviously, credit where credit is due, but also it was fun to get a glimpse of their processes.
All three of the poetry collections I bought this month came from the poets’ grief. Sexton and Qi lost their moms. John Roedel’s dad died (more about his book, and the general idea of grief poetry, in a later post).