Sunday, May 18, 2008
 
Book Report: The Braille Woods by Ann Townsend (1997)
This chapbook, published by the St. Louis Writer's Center, was J2's first volume of poetry. Unlike his elder, he did not receive the Rod McKuen treatment fresh from the womb.

As I was active in the poetry scene in St. Louis at that time, I thought perhaps I might know of her. However, she's a professor at some university in Ohio with a pile of literary magazine publications, not one of the locals who stepped beyond the Kinko's chapbook.

The poems have a lot of dense imagery within them, but mostly, that's it. I didn't get a lot of other deeper meanings or connections with the pieces. Nothing I'd like to read again, and certainly nothing I'd memorize to recite to myself when bored. Nothing I'd quote, and nothing I'd set my Yahoo! IM status to so I'd sound smart. That means, I guess, she's no Ogden Nash or Michelangelo.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Maybe an incident, nicely evoked, of seeing a blind person in the woods while you're on a hike and not saying anything to the blind person, even though the blind person senses you're there, means something to you. That's the title poem in a nutshell.

Did nothing for me.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:32 PM
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."