Steven Duong on Writing "Ho Chi Minh City"
"Like you, the ghazal obsesses over what it can never truly reach. It’s a kind of homing device, always facing what it wants most, and in doing so it creates a gravitational field, pulling the language again and again to the same center. Just as the poem attempts to root itself to a word, the speaker attempts to root himself to the city by locating all the surfaces upon which he might direct his attention."
via NEW ENGLAND REVIEW |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Donald Revell on James Longenbach's Forever
"To read the poems gathered as Forever is to walk beside Jim Longenbach along the banks of Lethe. We know the place, having been here before, with Dante in the most beautiful cantos of his Purgatorio. We remember its perils—the perils of oblivion and forgetfulness. And we remember its allures—the garden on the farther shore and a reunion there with the unforgettable. But something has changed. Somehow, Longenbach has prepared an estate for us along the water’s edge." |
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