Field Recordings

John Sibley Williams debut collection, Controlled Hallucinations $14.95, FutureCyclePress, is bare ghostly work of vision. It is a work of negative space, a work of spare words, a work of economical images, and a work of ache. It’s a numbered collection, the poems themselves lacking titles, one poem sequencing into the next. The title evokes a Rimbaudian world of fever, delirium, and excess, but Controlled Hallucinations is just that, controlled, honed; the excess is cut from the carcass, leaving spare poems that form a body that aches. The collection opens with a dedication to the “coming extinctions” and prepares the reader for an apocalyptic vision, however, Williams’ apocalypse is a personal one; a collapse of relations, of love, of family, and work. The opening poem is call to vision, a call to being. “To be the effect./To be a thoughtful pause/and restrained response...To be the scent/translated as toxin/or perfume...To be love/itself,/neither the loving/nor the belove...

Joan Colby’s Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press, is a fresh selected collection gathering Colby’s work from the late 1970s through the present. A midwestern practicality forms the backbone of these poems, from the history of work, family, and the land. She is a poet with a place and something to say about it. A poet of rural life, a peasant, perhaps, a welcome voice among the masses of poetry nation. I like watching the poet’s music change over the course of years which reveals itself in a collection such as with Colby’s. The music of the syllables take turns, puts on new keys, dresses up in a new mode, and saunters back with a fresher voice, the poet’s newer work. Anne Sexton once said that poet’s always prefer their newest work, something I personally identify with, and I wonder if Colby does too.  Colby’s newest work flashes and crackles with urgency. Danger lurks in her landscape in forms of hunger, death, and drought. “A dark wind batters the door./Our minds unchi...

Field Recordings welcomes poet and author, Ruth Bavetta , to the internet wilds. Bavetta's work has appeared in dozens of journals and literary reviews. Bavetta has a new book of ekphrastic poetry (one of my fav modes of composition) out, Fugitive Pigments, and two new books forthcoming from Moontide Press and Tebot Bach, respectively. Links to Ruth Bavetta's work can be found throughout. Happy exploring. Name: Ruth Bavetta Pen Name: Ruth Bavetta Most recent title published: Fugitive Pigments , a book of poems about art and other poems that resonate with them, published by FutureCycle Press . I was a professional artist for years before I started writing poetry. In this book I bring together the worlds of poetry and art. These are ekphrastic poems, instructive poems, poems riffing off the principles of art—the art of living, of shading, perspective, colors; how to create an exquisite corpse, and what one should know about shadows. I speak in the voice of Joseph ...