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Tar River Poetry – Spring 2004

Volume 43 Number 2

Spring 2004

Deborah Mead

I don’t read literary journals for the reviews they publish, and I’m a little surprised to find myself mentioning them here—in a review. But I have to say that the three reviews in Tar River Poetry are themselves as compelling as the poetry in this small volume. Richard Simpson, Susan Elizabeth Howe and Thomas Reiter present careful, academic discussions of three new poetry volumes, discussions that presume a well-educated but not necessarily scholarly audience. Informative and never pompous, they are a pleasure to read.

I don’t read literary journals for the reviews they publish, and I’m a little surprised to find myself mentioning them here—in a review. But I have to say that the three reviews in Tar River Poetry are themselves as compelling as the poetry in this small volume. Richard Simpson, Susan Elizabeth Howe and Thomas Reiter present careful, academic discussions of three new poetry volumes, discussions that presume a well-educated but not necessarily scholarly audience. Informative and never pompous, they are a pleasure to read. Tar River’s poetry is equally strong and accessible, making us see the extraordinary in the ordinary, like the everyday astonishment of swimming or the centurion stance of roadside mailboxes. In Mark Cox’s “Inner Rooms,” a speaker sorts through his late parents’ belongings, searching in vain for a lingering connection to his parents, eventually concluding “[t]here is no key / taped to a drawer bottom, not one fingerprint / on one dusty light bulb, no trace of the moment / before they let go, turned their faces to the wall.” The speaker is left at the end of the poem needing to “fashion the world again.” Such is the job of the poet, and in Tar River Poetry it is a job done well. – DM

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