Brandi's 'Books to Remember'
Brandi Gillette
Issue date: 3/27/09 Section: News
Brandi Gillette
Staff Writer
It's the English minor in me's turn to express opinions this time. This issue's genre up for review is poetry. I discovered a new found love for poetry during my Creative Writing Poetry class last semester and three poets that I never tire of reading are, Suji Kwock Kim, Elizabeth Bishop and James Dickey.
These three poets are very diverse in flesh as well as their poetry styles, but the one thing they all have in common is how much they say in so few words.
Poetry can never die, it may go under the radar periodically, but poetry will always be important.
In today's world, poetry is not as popular as it once was, but there are plenty of amazing contemporary poets out there still. Suji Kwock Kim's chapbook "Notes From The Divided Country" is an exceptional read. My favorite poem in her chapbook is "Monologue for an Onion."
The way Kim compares searching for the meaning of life to peeling an onion is just so superbly written I find myself leafing back to reread it. My favorite line from her poem is, "Is this the way you go through life, your mind a stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth."
Kim's poems have been published in "The Nation," "The New Republic," "Paris Review," "Poetry," "Yale Review," "DoubleTake," "Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation" and other anthologies and journals.
Her chapbook won the 2002 Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets, which I feel was completely deserving. Her ability to write about her past and her divided homeland so eloquently and meaningfully is just astounding. This chapbook gets three and a half stars from me.
Four out of five
My favorite form of poetry is the villanelle. A villanelle has a distinct pattern of rhyme and repetition. All A lines rhyme with each other and all B lines rhyme with each other:
One of my favorite villanelles is "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop from the anthology "Legitimate Dangers," edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin.
Staff Writer
It's the English minor in me's turn to express opinions this time. This issue's genre up for review is poetry. I discovered a new found love for poetry during my Creative Writing Poetry class last semester and three poets that I never tire of reading are, Suji Kwock Kim, Elizabeth Bishop and James Dickey.
These three poets are very diverse in flesh as well as their poetry styles, but the one thing they all have in common is how much they say in so few words.
Poetry can never die, it may go under the radar periodically, but poetry will always be important.
In today's world, poetry is not as popular as it once was, but there are plenty of amazing contemporary poets out there still. Suji Kwock Kim's chapbook "Notes From The Divided Country" is an exceptional read. My favorite poem in her chapbook is "Monologue for an Onion."
The way Kim compares searching for the meaning of life to peeling an onion is just so superbly written I find myself leafing back to reread it. My favorite line from her poem is, "Is this the way you go through life, your mind a stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth."
Kim's poems have been published in "The Nation," "The New Republic," "Paris Review," "Poetry," "Yale Review," "DoubleTake," "Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation" and other anthologies and journals.
Her chapbook won the 2002 Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets, which I feel was completely deserving. Her ability to write about her past and her divided homeland so eloquently and meaningfully is just astounding. This chapbook gets three and a half stars from me.
Four out of five
My favorite form of poetry is the villanelle. A villanelle has a distinct pattern of rhyme and repetition. All A lines rhyme with each other and all B lines rhyme with each other:
One of my favorite villanelles is "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop from the anthology "Legitimate Dangers," edited by Michael Dumanis and Cate Marvin.
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