Sandra Beasley - Theories of Falling

While I was at AWP15 in April, it was my intent to pick up a book or two of Sandra Beasley's.  As it would happen, her books were sold out by the time I reached her table and as a result it became one of a couple I ordered upon return home from my money budgeted for books at the conference. I have finished it (I have an enormous stack of books I am reading through as a result of AWP)

This is not a new book, though she has a new one out - Count The Waves  which I hope to read soon.

 Here is my review of her book Theories of Falling

Sandra Beasley throws a parade in Theories of Falling; a parade to impress us with the many reasons not to love her.  The Allergy Girl, wasting away as an infant.  Her bloodstream equal to a Fisher Price workbench. The wheezing, rashes, the dangers of a tainted kiss.

Beasley’s book of poetry has a lingering quality that toys with you and requires that you pick it up again and again as if it were the antidote that saves you from something, perhaps boredom. She guarantees you can walk away from going over Niagara Falls if you do it just right. But warns you’ll just die in a poor house.

There is an intimate nature here, an uncovering of truth. As if she slowly peels back layers that we might see beneath the surface of our prescribed reality to find something altogether more real than we imagined. The poems collectively have an affluence of lyricism. The substance, the metaphor all come together nicely. There is nothing more you will want, except more of her work.

As for Beasley’s parade to dissuade our affection, she is indeed wasting the elephants and ticker tape, it isn't working.

Coin Operated Poems - A Review

In this latest collection of poetry, Mary Biddinger longingly delves on that shrinking view through the rear view mirror.  A Sunny Place with Adequate Water is a land we come to inhabit

within the pages of this book, and while there, Biddinger successfully shares a unique vision that while surreal, seems vaguely familiar as if we've experienced some of these things and as for the others, we only wish we had.

The nostalgia of small town America is all here. We see an old order, but an often reinvented one as well. There is a coin operated apple pie, and a coin operated engine finds its steam. A Parlor, a diary, a paramour and a half, so many things relying on coins that buy next to nothing today.

These poems are tidy. The language and the images Biddinger employs have an old shoe comfort. Yes, including magnets and their unreasonable behaviors and the homeless man with a sign that read PREMIUM.

I've come to both enjoy and respect Biddinger’s writing and she continues to amaze me. I felt she took some risks with this collection. I believe they are ones that worked.  This book is an enjoyable read.