Are there parallel universes that complete us, that deliver meaning where there seems to be only chaos-- a place, perhaps, for prayers to be delivered, petitions to be filed, unholy chants to be rhythmically sounded out, and sadnesses to be unfolded into wonder and song? Diane Sahms, at least in a literary sense, seems to think so. In her marvelous new book, Blues, Prayers, and Pagan Chants Sahms connects with this other shadow (sometimes sacred) reality, often using memory as her catalyst and nature as her medium. For more of my review of Blues, Prayers, & Pagan Chants go here: https://dougholder.blogspot.com/2024/03/blues-prayers-pagan-chants-poems-by.html
Search This Blog
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Front and Back Covers for my Forthcoming Book
Front and Back Covers of my soon-to-be-published new book of poems, Odd Man Out. Thank you to editor Marc Vincenz and to Philip Nikolayev and Michael Casey for their kind and generous words. Much appreciated.
Friday, January 26, 2024
Front Cover of my Forthcoming Book: Odd Man Out
Monday, January 22, 2024
Review of Uyghur Poems
Poet Karen Klein has published an insightful review of Uyghur Poems (including 13 of my translations) on the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. Here is the link: https://dougholder.blogspot.com/2024/01/uyghur-poems-edaziz-isa-elkun-transaziz.html
Thursday, November 9, 2023
13 of My Translations Re-published by Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House)
13 of my translations of Alisher Navoiy (or Ali-Shir Nava'i), chosen by editor Aziz Isa Elkun, himself a Uyghur poet, are included in this collection.
Thank you to Gloria Mindock, who originally published my translations in Twenty-One Ghazals by Alisher Navoiy (Cervena Barva Press), and Steve Glines, who designed much of that book. Their trust and superb work brought great attention to my translations.
From the Amazon Book Overview: In the face of the systematic persecution of the Uyghurs in China today, which has driven many of their poets into exile, Uyghur Poems is not only a remarkable one-volume tour of ancient and vibrant poetic tradition but also a vital witness to a threatened culture.
Monday, October 16, 2023
Review of Swift River Ballad by Thomas DeFreitas
When tonality
rides along the surface in poetry the results often appear strangely profound.
In Thomas DeFreitas’ new book, Swift River Ballad, the poet pilots his paper
boat of sorts down a torrent of uplifting canticles and unsettling hymns,
seeking the truth, but missing the dangerous rocks and eddies along the way.
DeFreitas stops his readers in their too comfortable tracks with curiously numinous images and sacerdotal references. His technique strikes one as unusual (in the sense of modern verse) and new. Depth is never a problem here. The poet’s perfect pitch phraseology allows submergence into subconscious levels when necessary and proper in an emotive sense. For more of my review of Swift River Ballad go here: https: dougholder.blogspot.com/2023/10/swift-river-ballad-poems-by-thomas.html
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Review of It's Not Love Till Someone Loses An Eye by Clay Ventre
First books of poetry rarely surprise. Clay Ventre’s initial collection, It’s Not Love Until Someone Loses An Eye, does. His first-rate love poems are off-beat and oddly self-demolishing. He chisels each quirky narrative to innovative perfection and then keeps on chiseling. The new, miniature worlds created by Ventre’s persona and his persona’s lover highlight reality’s instability and logical absurdness. But that’s alright. Creators (read poets), after all, are (for good or ill) gods and goddesses by virtue of their productions, and they make sense by rearranging the raw material of chaos. For more of my review go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2023/07/its-not-love-till-someone-loses-eye-by.html
Friday, June 9, 2023
Review of the Pearl Diver of Irunmani
Slicing through
the surface of airless consciousness toward unfathomable truths can excite the
artistic imagination into a rather unique understanding of being and self. Marc
Vincenz in his new book, The Pearl Diver of Irunmani, concocts distinctive and
curious metaphors from these rarely explored oceanic depths with their hitherto
undetected, and sometimes priceless, gems.
Many of Vincenz’s poems are disguised narrative pieces seemingly connected with a dreamlike, almost metaphysical logic. His sparse, but poignant, imagery belies the substantial emotions and mnemonic thought subsumed within. For more of my review go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-pearl-diver-of-irunmani-by-marc.html
Sunday, April 30, 2023
My Poem, Lilith Appears at the All-Souls Lounge, Published
My poem, Lilith Appears at the All-Souls Lounge, has just been published by the Lily Poetry Review (Issue 9, Winter 2023). I am honored. Thank you to Editor-in-Chief Eileen Cleary and her staff. Many other excellent poems are within.
Monday, April 3, 2023
Review of the Ruined Millionaire by Ben Mazer
Internalized
reality and memory need inspired, mindful editing to reach their fated shape of
first-rate poetry. Ben Mazer showcases his skills as the genre’s perfect (or,
at least, near-perfect) editor in his new book, The Ruined Millionaire.
Somehow, in the evident density of Mazer’s work, his mirrored image metaphorically
seems to appear distributing versified handbills that alert his already
captured audience to the celebration of self-consciousness unquestionably
underway. Oxidized word-bronzes and broken shards of stained-glass history are
reinvigorated by this poet into contemporary, albeit runic, measures. Here the
mind’s suzerainty is never in doubt. And Mazer is nothing if not the self-conscious
observer of his own cognizant creations. For more of my review go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-ruined-millionaire-by-ben-mazer_3.html
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Psalms Composed in Utter Darkness Published
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Covers of My Forthcoming Book
Here is the front cover of my soon-to-be- released book, Psalms Composed in Utter Darkness. Thank you to Dos Madres editor Robert Murphy and Elizabeth Murphy for her marvelous design.
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Review of My Report from the Uwharries
Ranging over and through the world of the imagination, gathering details, and illuminating the poetic high ground found between the unfathomable and the understood is no mean feat. In her newest collection of poetry, My Report from the Uwharries, Irene Mitchell leads us along the ancient paths of mood and metaphor finding, of all things, a wry, contemplative vision of harmony. For more of my review of My Report from the Uwharries go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/12/my-report-from-uwharries-by-irene.html
3 New Poems just Published by Lothlorien Poetry Journal
Three of my poems were just published by Lothlorien Poetry Journal: Bypassing the All-Souls Lounge, Ash Wednesday at the All-Souls Lounge, and Boethius Has Second Thoughts at the All-Souls Lounge. My thanks to the editor, Strider Marcus Jones. Here is the link: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2022/12/three-poems-by-dennis-daly.html
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Sunken Boats
My daughter drives us through the old delta, past the fish sign, into the town. The sea has receded one hundred miles. Pathetic man-made canals scar the foreground, reach outward to bring the waters back.
Monday, December 5, 2022
Waiting for the Suicide Bomber
Wais, the bartender and part owner of the Hotel, waves his Glock in the air like a blessing. On cue, four beefy men, two on each side of the bar, pull their weapons out, check their magazines, compare. The men, all in their mid-thirties, all wearing jeans, are contractors, probably. Wais’ dum-dum bullets impress, carry the day.
I grab my draft beer and pretend to sneer at the Yankees fan beside me. Mid fifties I’d say, quieter than the others, except when pontificating on his favorite sports team. He heads security at the airbase, or so he says.
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Pushcart Nomination
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Veterans Day
Veterans Day 2022
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWvdf_51Iq0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDaQfLFHYjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VktJNNKm3B0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kC5ZkEIt8
My Boy Jack -- by Rudyard Kipling
'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
'Has anyone else had word of him?'
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind-
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
Labor Organizer
Apropos of Nothing
My will is easy to decide For I have nothing to divide My kin don't need to weep and moan Moss does not cling to a rolling stone My body? oh, if I could choose I would to ashes it reduce And let the merry breezes blow My dust to where some flowers grow Perhaps some fading flower then Would soon rise up and grow green again This is my last and final will Good luck to all of you, Joe Hill
Labor organizer. IWW Wobbly.
Executed in November of 1915, Salt lake City, Utah.
Claimed he wouldn't be caught dead in Utah.
Friday, November 4, 2022
Three Untethered Psalms Composed by John Faustus and Playing Pinball at the All-Souls Lounge Published
Two of my poems, Three Untethered Psalms by John Faustus and Playing Pinball at the All-Souls Lounge have just been published by the Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Much thanks to the editor, Strider Marcus Jones. Here is the link: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2022/11/two-poems-by-dennis-daly.html
Sunday, October 16, 2022
My Poem Happy Hour at the All-Souls Lounge published by North of Oxford
My poem Happy Hour at the All-Souls Lounge was just published by North of Oxford (Philadelphia). Thank you to the editor, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri. Here is the link: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/10/16/happy-hour-at-the-all-souls-lounge-by-dennis-daly/
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Review of Annapurna Poems by Yuyutsu Sharma
Are poets good for nothing? Plato certainly didn’t trust them. He believed that poets make things happen, but they are immoral, specializing in the pleasure of illusion and falsity. Mimesis (imitation), poetry’s stock in trade, moreover, corrupts society’s youth. For Plato philosophy (truth-telling), rather than poetry is the real deal. On the other end of the spectrum Archibald MacLeish, taking his cue from Aristotle, argues in his Ars Poetica that “A poem should not mean/ But be.” He believed in the aesthetic value above all, art for art’s sake.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Review of Even on Parnassus by Lawrence Cottrell
“Make it new,” “make
it new” the modernist critics and poets admonished their contemporaries and
successors. Pound with his Chinese ideograms and imagist poems, Yeats with his
Rosicrucian metaphors, Ginsberg with his countercultural and beat
sensibilities, Elizabeth Bishop with her polished, somewhat distant take, Robert
Duncan with his field philosophy of language, and arguably Gerard Manley
Hopkins (who predated the rest) with his sprung rhythm did. Others,
interpreting “new” as prose-like or accessibility, opted for the confessional angle
(think Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath) or the immediacy of the
famous (some would say infamous) Iowa Writers Workshop, which in the persons of
Donald Justice, John Berryman, or Rita Dove championed stylish plain-spokenness
in both formal and free verse.
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Review of Far Cry Poems by Tom Daley
Mischief meets elegiac mournfulness in Tom Daley’s new chapbook, Far Cry, in which the poet summons up the ghost of a close but estranged gay friend and searches through evocative imagery and shared memories for an understanding, a resolution, and, most of all, a final embrace. Unexpected religious and erotic juxtapositions deliver both edgy wit and good-natured humor. And, most impressively, throughout this poetic sequence, Daley utilizes impeccable word choices that result in very high-level, almost objectified, confessional pieces. In short, Daley’s diction sparkles. For more of my review go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/06/far-cry-poems-by-tom-daley.html