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
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Saturday, December 24, 2022
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
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Review of The Wild Goose Poems by Kevin Gallagher
No writer distills history utilizing the form of poetic narrative better than Kevin Gallagher. In his latest effort, The Wild Goose Poems, Gallagher delves into Irish Americana, its background, and its sources. He uses a first-person sequence of poems on the rebel Irishman, then iconic Bostonian, John Boyle O’Reilly as the centerpiece of his collection. The poet leads into that sequence with a retelling of Celtic myth and finishes the book with a combination of classical myth and both local (Southie) and family lore. Think beginning, middle, and end. And that’s the way it reads. For more of my review of The Wild Goose Poems go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-wild-goose-poems-by-kevin-gallagher_14.html
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Review of Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong
Decadent. Robotic. Thinly constructed with self-indulgent metaphors. No, I do not like Ocean Vuong’s new collection of poems, Time Is A Mother. In fairness, I am biased and motivated because of a breathless, over-the-top review of Vuong’s first book, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, published in the New Yorker in 2016. That hyperbolizing reviewer claimed that Vuong would somehow “fix” the English language. Nonsense.
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Review of On Earth As It Is by Michael Steffen
Matter-of-factness takes center stage in Michael Todd Steffen’s magnificent collection of poetry entitled On Earth As It Is. Acceptance, albeit with enormous curiosity, seems meted into each poem’s very marrow and, with it, the poet’s cogent observations. No confessional spattering here. Only hard detail, telling irony, and all-weather humor.
Steffen’s objectivity stems from an apparent deep-seated stoicism not unsimilar to the rather dry meditations left by Marcus Aurelius (Consider Aurelius’ belief that externals do not enter a person’s essence. Quite the opposite.). The complexity of this book is evident even in its title, which exhibits a connection to the Lord’s Prayer and brings with it another meaning entirely. For more of my review of On Earth As It Is go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/05/on-earth-as-it-is-by-michael-todd.html
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
My chapbook Alcaics for Major Robert Rogers Published
My chapbook Alcaics for Major Robert Rogers, published by Wilderness House, has just arrived. It is now available at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton St., Cambridge, MA, (617)- 547-4648) and will be at other independent book stores soon after.
I'll also sign copies at the bi-weekly Saturday meetings of the Bagel Bards in Porter Square, Cambridge. It is available at Lulu today and will be available at Amazon in four or five weeks. Here is the link for Lulu. https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/dennis-daly/alcaics-for-major-robert-rogers/paperback/product-qmdj5v.html?page=1&pageSize=4
The chapbook includes one poem of 72 stanzas, a prologue and an introduction, as well as notes, a map, Rogers' Rules of Ranging,. some historical pictures, and a bibliography.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Two of my Poems, Ode on Today's Canonization of Jacinta and Francisco Marto & At St Mary's Monophysic Church in Diyarbakir, Turkey, Published in Wilderness House
Two of my poems, Ode on Today's Canonization of Jacinta and Francisco Marto & At St Mary's Monophysic Church in Diyarbakir, Turkey, were just published by Wilderness House. They are part of a manuscript entitled Odd Man Out currently seeking a publisher. Thank you to editors Steve Glines and Ravi Yelamanchilli. Here is the link: https://www.whlreview.com/no-17.1/poetry/DennisDaly.pdf
Friday, March 11, 2022
Review of No Time for Death by Harris Gardner
“Oh death, where is thy sting?” 1 Corinthians had it right. So does Harris Gardner in his affecting affirmation of life, fittingly entitled No Time for Death. Slicing through humanity’s Gordian knot of denial, Gardner confronts mortality with memory and poetic craft, assisted by a large dose of wit. His stratagems are nothing if not down-to-earth and sensible. The collection’s three subtitles convey Gardner’s personified logic: An Argument with Time, Contemplating Mortality Instead of My Navel, and Negotiating for an Afterlife. For more of my review go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/03/no-time-for-death-by-harris-gardner.html
Saturday, March 5, 2022
Covers of Alcaics for Major Robert Rogers
Here are the covers of my new book, Alcaics for Major Robert Rogers. It consists of one poem with 72 stanzas in Alcaic meter, an introduction, a prologue, notes and a selected bibliography. It should be out by mid-April or thereabouts.
Thank you to Wilderness House Press and its editor Steve Glines for his excellent design and placement of historical pictures within the collection.
And also, thank you to poet Ed Meek for his kind words on the back cover.
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Review of The Star of Dazzling Ecstasy by Alexander Pushkin, Translated by Philip Nikolayev
Most English translations of Alexander Pushkin convey facets of the poet’s singular, Russian genius, but never give the full sense of it. Even Vladimir Nabokov’s attempted literal translation of Eugene Onegin seems to fall flat. One exception to this is Charles Johnson’s impressively formalist translation of Eugene Onegin and other longish Pushkin poems. Now we have another exception, and an extraordinary one at that, Philip Nikolayev’s new bilingual book of selected Pushkin poems, entitled The Star of Dazzling Ecstasy.
Saturday, January 22, 2022
The Limits of Minimalism in Poetry
Steven Ratiner recently published an interesting and thoughtful argument in the Red Letter Poem Series (found on Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2022/01/red-letter-poem-94.html) exploring minimalism and concreteness in poetry, especially as it applies to poet Aram Saroyan. Ratiner quoted Seamus Heaney and tapped into the opinions of such poets and non-poets as Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms. Below is a brief, humble, and somewhat incomplete answer to Ratiner’s arguments.
Petals on a wet
black bough.
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Review of Millrat by Michael Casey
Once upon a time multileveled manufacturing plants with attached smokestacks, called mills or factories, grew like mushrooms around waterfalls and river bends. They attracted the able-bodied, both men and women, who sought financial independence and dignity. What these seekers found instead in this soot-filled urban culture was a rite of passage for some, a technological trap for others, and a graveyard or graveyard road for the unlucky remainder.
Friday, January 14, 2022
Shield Wall on sale at Grolier
My newest book, Shield Wall, now on sale at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, 6 Plympton St., Cambridge MA 02138. (617-547-4648).
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Review of The Album by Peg Boyers
Never have I read ekphrastic poems so undetachable from the sources of their inspiration. It is as if Peg Boyers in her new collection, The Album, wrote within the individual art objects, delivering fresh, insightful, versicle pieces, birthed out of the same aesthetic DNA. Boyers and the editors of Dos Madres also deserve not a little praise for publishing this year’s most beautiful book of poems.
La Tempesta (after La Tempesta by Giorgione, 1504) opens Boyers’ collection with its symbolic inferences. This painting was George Gordon Byron’s favorite because of its magical ambiguity. Some art historians believe that the painting was a warning to Venice to avoid war with the Pope’s threatening army. Boyers, however, has a more versatile approach. Her protagonists are art aficionados, who have just purchased a tie, adorned with the lightning bolt from the painting, from the museum shop. The lightning bolt is the demarcation between the lush foreground with a young woman nursing her infant and a young man eying her and an urban background. Previously these art connoisseurs have focused on this foreground ignoring the darker rest, including ruins and an impending storm. For more of my review of The Album go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-album-by-peg-boyers.html
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Review of City of Stories by Denise Provost
While reading Denise Provost’s new book, City of Stories, I marveled not only at her well-wrought pieces, but the witty, contagious joy pooling in each one, which charmingly overflows and inevitably drenches the reader in its artistic charm. Sure, there are moments of sorrow and maddening dysfunction in her observations. Hope, however, and the poet’s offbeat stoicism always seem to save the day.