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Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2005

Volume 100 Number 1

Spring/Summer 2005

Sima Rabinowitz

“This is what we seek: Clarity, fluidity, unselfconsciousness, poems that guide us without fanfare into what is genuinely human—an insight, experience, or mood which, though we’d not perceived it before, we recognize it instantly.” Some of the more accomplished poets whose work satisfies the editor’s vision include Linda Pastan, Diane Lockwood, Jim Daniels, and Jane Shore. Shore introduces seven poems by Nadell Fishman that “recast the roles of mother, wife, and daughter, retelling her personal story through fairy tales and popular culture…” “This is what we seek: Clarity, fluidity, unselfconsciousness, poems that guide us without fanfare into what is genuinely human—an insight, experience, or mood which, though we’d not perceived it before, we recognize it instantly.” Some of the more accomplished poets whose work satisfies the editor’s vision include Linda Pastan, Diane Lockwood, Jim Daniels, and Jane Shore. Shore introduces seven poems by Nadell Fishman that “recast the roles of mother, wife, and daughter, retelling her personal story through fairy tales and popular culture…” For the most part, the poets represented here observe the world with sincerity, with earnestness, with longing or wistful dreaming and often with much hope. One exception is Jed Allen’s “Zero Yard,” whose poem of mock apology cleverly turns into a true apology as the tone subtly shifts: “I’m late and shamed I reek / of song and death—sorry I flat // refuse to mend my way…” becomes “—sorry / you had to hear this, now, // in the yard, in the silence / of the night.” One of the most moving poems in this issue is Maria Fire’s, “Mother of Autistic Daughter,” whose conclusion is a metaphor, it seems to me, for poetry itself: “They just wrong saying / my baby have no words. / Listen. The God Almighty be / loving her hallelujah speak.” [www.writer.org] – Sima Rabinowitz

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