Victoria's former poet laureate comes by her artistic talents honestly. Her granddad's cousins were Gerard Manley Hopkins and the delightful octegenarian painter Elisabeth Hopkins (The Painted Cougar-Talonbooks). Her cousin is the best-selling author Joanna Trollope.
Rogers' middle son Keefer bears a striking resemblance to his distant cousin Gerard Manley, don’t you think?
The Great Cage Match: Starnino vs Bok, by Kit Dobson. Watch: http://www.vimeo.com/7963755 ---
Watch Anthony Wong's brilliant five-minute film of Ken Babstock's poem "Fire Watch"(8.72 MB, MOV) from his latest collection of poems Days into Flatspin. It's right here:http://www.anansi.ca/assets/firewatch.mov
As reviewers, we naturally present our biases as strengths. If we’re paying attention we’ll also recognize anything overdone or done in ignorance of the larger historical and aesthetic frame in which both poetry and criticism exist is likely to do disservice to both. Even then we're more likely to miss more than we catch, appreciate less those poems worthy of praise, while elevating others beyond their genuine deserts.
My own biases in poetry lean towards compression, dense allusive imagery, dissociative leaps in meaning, lines rich in personality and driven by strong purpose or intentionality. Naturally, these represent a very small part of the broad range of tastes and expectations through which any book might be filtered.
Uppermost must be our sympathies for the poet whose satisfactions when we get it right must almost inevitably be tempered by an even greater patience when we get it wrong.
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