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.