CUE – Winter 2005

Twenty-four prose poems and one interview in a handsome, elegant little volume—CUE is a find. In editor Morgan Lucas Schuldt’s e-mail interview with award-winning poet Karen Volkman, Volkman writes: “…poetry should make us more conscious of how we think and structure our experiences and sensations, and provide new possibilities.”

Twenty-four prose poems and one interview in a handsome, elegant little volume—CUE is a find. In editor Morgan Lucas Schuldt’s e-mail interview with award-winning poet Karen Volkman, Volkman writes: “…poetry should make us more conscious of how we think and structure our experiences and sensations, and provide new possibilities.” Indeed, this issue of CUE provides us with a sense of the prose poem’s vast and marvelous possibilities, from Rita Dove’s speculations on the difference between prose and poetry (“It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it?”), to Mathew Thorburn’s five acidic little fruit poems (he extols the virtues of the apple, banana, lemon, lime, and pear), to Van Jordan’s dictionary story (a plot of love and abandonment structured around and told through the definitions and uses of the word “to”), to John Levy’s dissection of a painting by Degas (“‘The Racehorse, Amateur Jockeys’ took more than 13 years to not complete. Is that the opposite of racing?”), to Paul Dickey’s “The Thought of What America Would Be Like If” composed of fragments of texts as diverse as jokes by Lily Tomlin, folksongs, the verse of T.S. Elliot, and supermarket sale signs. If you love prose poetry (and how can you not?) you’ll love CUE. [CUE, P.O. Box 200, 2509 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ, 85719. E-mail: [email protected]. Single issue $6. www.u.arizona.edu/~mschuldt/CUEhtml] – Sima Rabinowitz