Field Recordings

Walter Bargen is watching. In the Missouri Poet Laureate's newest book Trouble Behind Glass Doors $13.95 University of Missouri-Kansas Press, Bargen crafts poems out of negative space, recording what is not happening as well as what is occurring in small towns and personal lives alike. Whether Bargen wears his laurel like a poet of a small town parade or the harbinger of the end of the world, Bargen’s work shapes a world where human interaction is held together by inaction and action, and it is the tension between the two that gives Trouble its emotional punch. Trouble is a well oiled machine of language. It opens with three epigrams concerning hope, framing the theme for the three sections of Trouble . Paul, from Romans, gives us a message of patience and hope, Baudelaire warns that hope and desolation go hand in hand, and Kafka states that “hope is not for us.” And Trouble delivers as promised. It’s a work that grows darker by the poem, and one can feel the cold terminato...

Jehanne Dubrow’s The Arranged Marriage , from the University of New Mexico Press, expresses the violence of relationships, and the emotional and physical toll that such violence creates. Front and center are poems expressing how men vie for control of their women, and how the simplest domestic chores reveal the chaos within a one-sided marriage, within a relationship, and within us. The most striking poems in Marriage tell the story of how the poet’s mother was held hostage in a home invasion, and it is the diction of that encounter, of shock and violence, which permeates the entire volume. Whether Dubrow writes of a dog on the street or writes an ekphrasis response to a painting violence is inherent in the language. The consistency of her diction and her unified poetic vision elevate Marriage , and illustrate the violent tyranny of the patriarchy that for some women in the world is a very present danger. An arranged marriage is a dated concept, and many of the men in Dubrow’s ...

Whitaker, Chappelle to read poetry at Irish Eyes July 29

EVENT: Poetry Reading.   Wed, July 29, 7:00-9:00 Broadkill Poets Scott Whitaker and Sherry Chappelle poetry r eading followed by open mic.    Irish Eyes, 105 Union Street, Milton, DE 19968  Drop on by and enjoy refreshments. See you there.

The Wachowskis films are visual delights, often airy and delicious as pastries and coffee. Nothing too substantial once the body is done with the sugar, that's not a jab either; the Wachowskis make pop-corn munchers with flair. Bound, their thriller debut, The Matrix , and Cloud Atlas are their strongest directorial work, some argue V, and many argue CA is a bit hokey at times because the actors donned prosthetics and wigs, and played multiple characters, often switching genders or ethnicity. I liked that about CA, a touch of old school Hollywood, but at places it felt forced and lacked grace. I digress, regardless of their work, at heart of the Wachowskis is the power of transformation. Together with Babylon 5 creator and writer, J Michael Stracynski, the Wachowskis deliver unto Netflix Sense8, a sci-fi drama that focuses on the heart, the emotional center of its characters. Sense8 , their new Netflix show (Tom Tykwer's fingerprints are all over Sense8  ...the co-c...