Online Journal Review

            Drunken Boat online poetry journal competitively publishes international poems and sometimes art.  I like the diversity of its collection, the result of cultures and experiences from around the world compiling into words.  Several poems have been illustrated by different people than the author, and I find it intriguing how readers visually interpreted the poems.  I wonder if any poets disliked the image an artist created for their work.

           One Australian poem, “Everything Spins”, attracted me with its scientific metaphors.  I always enjoy the rare yet eclectic combination of science and poetry, yielding more sense about the entire world than emotionally focused poems.  The author, Aimee Norton, connects human relationships with the interactions of matter.  One of the more complicated issues of life lies in this alignment of universal truths and forces with the personal.  Her poem aptly meshes these, acknowledging the ‘heavy centers’ of vastness constantly reeling us people into its gravity.  Interestingly, as this journal submits to no specific theme, this same poet wrote another piece about aboriginal stories, offering a very different view than that presented in “Everything Spins”.

           Then, a French poet writes with interesting but not so understandable words, using rhythm and sound to describe a story.  A Swedish poet makes even less sense, yet in one poem uses scientific language, reminding me of Norton’s work.  I doubt if this Swede and this Australian have met, but the same idea crossed both their minds at one time writing.  Although these poets have come from, I imagine, wholly different backgrounds, their language, use of rhythm or none at all, and themes relate to those of the other poets in this collection, sometimes only to one particular line of another author’s, and the equality of poetic structure surprises me.  Each contributing writer has a brief biography, yet I find this information unnecessary.  Without knowing their nationality, or whether their poems have been translated from a foreign language, the poetry possesses a certain homogeneity, all free form, creative expressions of relationships and the people involved.  I like this journal because without any obvious theme it publishes works from all possible perspectives, and yet they naturally fall into place, matching pieces of the collection.

Reflections on the Poetry of Louis Jenkins

            I first notice the format of Jenkins’ poetry.  His poems span the page in a pseudo-paragraph form, without any meter or pattern to the lines.  Combined with his contradictions of himself and casual language, like writing, “….well, slowed down a bit, perhaps” in his poem “Change”, I feel as if in conversation with this man in a coffee shop.  Because of this tone, I easily remove any obstructions to listening.  He invites us into his poetry, beginning with simple introductions:  “There might be some change on top of the dresser” in “The State of the Economy”, or “It turns out” in “Gravity”.  Then suddenly midway in the poem you realize he has deceived you into reading profound thoughts.  Mostly I like his work because of this unexpectedness, but I also appreciate how he connects the mundane to broader truths.

            Jenkins writes with a witty and entertaining sense of humor.  This aspect of his voice creeps into the poems just like his wisdom.  After reading the title of his poem, “The Afterlife”, I expected something sincere, yet discovered a very funny piece.  Once again, Jenkins displays his talent for thoughtful and often sarcastic surprises.

His poems always come from his unique and clever voice, but also address ‘you’.  Sometimes the author himself becomes this addressee, as in “You haven’t changed” from “Change” and I imagine he shares this detail of brushing his teeth incorrectly as if he were talking to himself.  According to Jenkins, we know each other because he declares “You and I stand at the back” in “The Speaker”.  He evokes this casual intimacy in every poem, referring to the reader and himself interacting with particular images and scenes of daily life.  Again, he creates a conversational tone that sets the audience up for his sneak attacks of wisdom, often finally reached with humor.  Even when I finish reading and contemplate his words, I never felt like he imparted any deep knowledge because he wove it into his poem after making me laugh.

Composition

I am

Composed

Of quiet moments

Collected into a prayer

For atheists, the choreographed

Possibility filling the gaps between

Sentences, lingering on the edge of your

Iris before blinks bombast my fragile

Idea, shatters into kaleidoscopic

Shades of aching comfort

Soon forgotten by

Rapidfire

Eyes.

Chris Martin and Meaning

            Chris Martin’s poem “Blood on the Tarmac” seemingly contains fragments of many stories, like whose blood was on the tarmac, and why can he not be innocent in Minnesota, and to whom does he return.  His language, however, takes us away from these close up pictures, away from the “patchwork face of the suburbs” almost as if the reader joins Martin in this airplane and watches the world from a distance.  What appear to be stories become a minute glimpse of the landscape Martin describes.  Focusing on such details only distracts the reader.  The feeling in Martin’s poems comes from the view from above, glancing down to see a hectic, complex, and utterly meaningless world.  He seamlessly connects the varied scenes into this portrait.  Each word used interests me somehow, as unique as his ideas and strangely fitting together so well.  Martin describes events that I have experienced countless times, yet that can feel incredibly arduous or alternatively fantastic.  I like this poem because rather than leaving me in distressing confusion that these experiences can leave in their wake, it challenges me to think beyond that, envisioning both the mundane and the magnificent that are individually lovely so long as I do not try to make such moments meaningful.

Alas, Subjunctive

Alas, Subjunctive, I knew you well,

Yet so near I hear the quiet knell

Of an imperceptible funeral bell.

And Oxford Comma, I will miss

You clarifying curl, a sweet caress

To my eager ears, but not all hear

And I fear I am alone in my distress.

How can the rigid brick foundations

Of my communication education

Shift, I would have thought this were solid ground.

Instead, the people change the language,

And the language changes them.

Might this reflect a newfound lazy streak?

Or is it indeed open minded, as they speak

In hoarse vernacular, no sanding on the edges

The dynamic truth bared in tumbling tongues.

I have wondered how these tongues decided

To shape those sounds and with it the firm past,

To fight fleeting wars and build cultures that last,

Uniting or dividing not by swords but words,

When all along the world has changed and lived

When oblivious teenagers forget the subjunctive.