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32 Poems – 2007

Volume 5 Issue 1

2007

Biannual

Jennifer Gomoll Popolis

In case you were wondering, yes, 32 Poems is just that—a journal of thirty-two poems, one to a page. This issue’s works, chosen by guest editor Carrie Jerrell, are mostly of a straightforward, narrative style, with a couple of wryly amusing “list” poems kicking things off. (Having said that, I wonder if Daniel Nester, whose “Queries,” a list of creative writing class comments, begins “Isn’t everything tucked always lovingly tucked? / Don’t loomers always appear from overhead?” would ask, “Must everything amusing be wryly so?”)

In case you were wondering, yes, 32 Poems is just that—a journal of thirty-two poems, one to a page. This issue’s works, chosen by guest editor Carrie Jerrell, are mostly of a straightforward, narrative style, with a couple of wryly amusing “list” poems kicking things off. (Having said that, I wonder if Daniel Nester, whose “Queries,” a list of creative writing class comments, begins “Isn’t everything tucked always lovingly tucked? / Don’t loomers always appear from overhead?” would ask, “Must everything amusing be wryly so?”) Highlights here include Juliana Gray’s “Psycho,” which admits audience identification with Norman Bates as the car with his victim in it slowly sinks into marsh; and Nathaniel Perry’s wonderful “In a Friend’s Field,” in which a man calls his pet dog back as it stalks a fawn, and is confronted—even awed—by the dog’s animal nature, which calls him much more strongly than the owner, who repeats the pet’s name over and over. David T. Manning’s “Mirella” is a lovely ode to a woman who lingers in bars and is the object of much crude gossip; the poet declares: “Let the loafers, // swillers of cheap beer talk and roll / up their hopes like dimes.” He “will ask for the next dance – / the Delirium Waltz, to sweep her / out into its great arc under the stars.” There are undeniably wonderful moments in this journal.
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