poetry

What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned is the most original, electric, and soul-altering book of poems I’ve read in more than a year. It reads like a nonlinear memoir that skips around Alexie’s life, with common threads charging the poems like drumbeats.  The largest theme - growing up on an Indian reservation surrounded by a cast of remarkable characters with haunting stories – shows up in nearly every poem.  Other themes of grief, recklessness, addiction, poverty and freedom reappear again and again. Alexie occasionally skips to the present, connecting his former and current selves, like the New

The Read Local committee is very pleased to announce Jemshed Khan has won our Bear Witness poetry contest for his poem "#48689." Entries included an impressive variety of poetic forms, including haiku and sonnet, making the selection very difficult. In the end, we selected "#48689" as, like the numbers in the title, it tattooed itself on our minds. The haunting imagery and vivid description lends the poem personal immediacy and requires remembrance. The person #48689, bearing witness as both executioner and innocent victim, gives us chills and the poem deserves repeated readings.

Jemshed

On Tuesday, February 16th at 6:00 p.m. The Writers Place and the Johnson County Library will present Poetry and Prose, a poetry reading by inmates and former inmates incarcerated at Lansing Prison. Arlin Buyert has facilitated the poetry program at Lansing Prison for the past four years. It is sponsored by Arts in Prison, Inc. which also features The East Hill Singers, theatre and yoga programs for inmates.

Arlin Buyert was born and raised on an Iowa farm near Sioux Center where he graduated from high school. Arlin was formally educated at Macalester College and The University of Minnesota

The Read Local Committee is pleased to announce Anna Francesca has won our Faster, Higher, Stronger Poetry Contest with her poem Citius, Altius Fortius. We love the poem, especially so close to this time of new year's resolutions, for Francesca's focus on herself and her own strength. The act of always looking forward reminded us a little of Matthew McConaughey's 2014 Oscar acceptance speech in which he declares his hero to be his own future self. We also love the poem's construction with consistent use of natural and mathematical elements throughout. And we especially love Francesca's

The Local Writers committee is pleased to announce Karin L. Frank has won our #IHeartU poetry contest with her entry Solace. We love the poem's progression from start to last lines, and the contrast between young and old. We enjoyed the sophisticated vocabulary punctuating strong imagery, and the poem is especially pleasing when read aloud. Try it! We're excited to hear Frank's reading of her own work at our April 9th 2nd Saturday event. Tell us what you like about Solace in the comments.

Karin L. Frank's poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Rockhurst Review, Taj Mahal Review

Arlin Buyert’s latest collection, Oh Say Can You See, opens with "Big Brother", a poem that exposes the aftermath of a spirit ravaged by war. It is a candid poem that ensnares the reader in raw emotion, a poem of spare words, grounding details and a haunting and unforgettable metaphor: “someone else came home:/quiet and brittle as a dead tree.” By the end of the poem, I felt as if Bobbie was my big brother.

Perhaps Buyert’s greatest poetical gift is his ability to always leave the door open to his memories. Somehow, as the poem is read, the reader becomes more than someone reading the poem –

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume I is a creative, charming compilation of 1-5 sentence stories, poems, and artwork. The dainty book features 67 of the more than 8500 contributions originally submitted for the volume. Some made me laugh, others made me pause and reflect, and I kept flipping back to certain illustrations just to savor them a little longer. My favorite tiny story:

One day before breakfast, an

orange rolled off the counter

and escaped its fate, bounding

happily through the kitchen door.

Filled with hope,

the egg followed.

You can thumb through it in a matter of minutes

In the Palm of Your Hand isn’t just a handy poetry guide for poets, it also contains a hefty chunk of poems from both known and lesser-known poets.  Steve Kowit masterfully demonstrates that a combination of both writing and reading is essential for a strong and extensive writing path.

The book is organized quite well with simple but thorough explanations of various aspects and forms of poetry followed by thoughtful exercises.  Poems are peppered throughout the book, offering direction, insight and inspiration. 

I was quite impressed with the unique and multi-faceted exercises.  The

David Rothenberg's Bug Music is a highly readable  and eccentric investigation into an aspect of nature too easily taken for granted. Bugs produce very mathematical sounds based on natural cycles. What human ears are able to delineate is really only the tip of a very large iceberg connected to other icebergs. Delving deeply into the sounds of cicadas, crickets and katydids, Rothenberg is not afraid to suddenly go big-picture on his readers. He aims for nothing less than a direct connection between  a cricket’s chirp and jazz band’s rhythm section. There is a philosophical nature to Rothenberg

Love this author – love this illustrator – love this author and illustrator combo – love this book. That’s a lot of love, but if you read this book I think you’ll agree with me. I don’t remember how I came across the illustrator Mark Hearld, but my guess (and hope) is that we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from this talented British artist. His mixed media work reminds me of Eric Carle, but colorful and vibrant in a fresh new way.

Award-winning children’s author and biologist Nicola Davies provides the perfect poetry to go along with the artwork, to vividly present the abundance of our