Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

Even though I bought this book from Trish Reeves after she gave a reading, I was still surprised by the scope of it. If you pay close attention, you’ll learn most of life’s important lessons in this book. You know, the lessons each generation tackles again and again without learning from the past. Luckily, she tosses in a good deal of wit and whimsy to soften the terror of thinking that we, not just as individuals or planet Earth, but our entire solar system might be blinked out of existence at any moment. It’s best not to think about it and just go drown our sorrows at one of the many quirky taverns on Reeves’ pub crawl.

While away a few hours at Big Baby Tavern, God’s Tavern, or my favorite, The I Think I Was Born with Too Much Original Sin Tavern. Other poets reading this collection will want to take in “Perfect Bound Tavern”:

“Ms. Dickinson is in the tavern tonight;
really, the small bedroom upstairs
with her bed, sans Sue,
the glass of sherry
the color of ED’s eyes,
needle, thread and one-thousand
pages of poems.”

Reeves gives us a crash course on those lessons we should have learned by reviewing the art and artifacts of ancient cultures, wars, witch trials, and the lives of saints. The title poem ("God, Maybe") takes us to the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War, describes

“…the working out awry when
the right flank acts as if
it does not know,
and does not care what
the left flank is doing, and
one-hundred-twenty counties
of men, minus three deserters, follow
General Johnston through the peach orchard.”

My favorite poem in the collection took its title from a quote from P. G. Wodehouse:
“St. Sebastian upon Receipt of About the Fifteenth Arrow.”

“Perhaps that’s the way to read
the lives of saints, with some
levity . . .
For aren’t we . . .
left to count . . .
how many years
from birth to beheading, how many
prophetic index fingers
poking the sky
as we, however robust,
run our palms across our torsos . . .
for the question of the tally:
Which arrow is this?”

Love that last poem! The examples appeal to me a lot. I may put this on my Christmas list. Thanks.

S. wrote: "Love that last poem! The examples appeal to me a lot. I may put this on my Christmas list. Thanks."

Merry Christmas!