Hiram Poetry Review – Issue 65

It would be difficult to find another journal this spring that demonstrates the immense possibilities of poetry more clearly, blatantly, and provocatively than The Hiram Poetry Review.

Spring 2004

It would be difficult to find another journal this spring that demonstrates the immense possibilities of poetry more clearly, blatantly, and provocatively than The Hiram Poetry Review. On facing pages:  “The Emptiness That Comes,” a poem by Adrienne Lewis philosophizing about finding oneself at the end of a toilet paper roll (a metaphor for the ending and beginning of both more and less intimate life experiences) and Brad Buchanan’s “The Beheading” (“Caught on videotape, the act / still squirms and crackles—it looks like bad art / or amateur photography— / the intention is more spectacular than the execution.”) On another set of facing pages:  Erin Sweenen’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tuna Sandwich” (XII. “I was overwhelmed, like a tuna sandwich / at a potluck.”) and “Murder Girl” by Carrie McGrath (“In the first few moments pregnant with the shock / of something gone so wrong in the manicured, / pedicured street of a Midwestern suburb, / we were all focused on this girl, maybe 17, / lying on the pavement…”) And between these nearly surreal juxtapositions, Grace Butcher’s graceful “Waiting it Out” (“Running takes all the words; / breath gives them back.”) and Donelle Dreese’s urgent “close to midnight” (“don’t you see? // this is the world gone mad with smallness / …I am ready to run”). [The Hiram Poetry Review, P.O. Box 162, Hiram, Ohio 44234. E-mail: [email protected] Single issue $9. http://home.hiram.edu/www/english/poetryreview.htm] – SR