Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

Wilson's pleasures are more mild and mundane than intense, even when he's depicting relationships. His terror makes for a more visceral poem:

sunlight whispers the edges
of black leaves and
black fruit and black limbs.
This is the familiar Nature,
but enormous, as in
the disproportions of a bad life.
At nightfall, rummaging
under the cold moon, my first
sense of your shadow comes
like a shaking out of muslin
over the bed
I have hollowed in the meadow.
You are an owl; you are hunting
me. You plummet
out of the black wind over
my hiding place; your eyes
are like yellow shackles;
your broad wings drape the moon.
(From "Transmigrations")

This is Wilson's second book of poetry, though the picture on its back puts him firmly in middle age. He is pedigreed, having published in the right places (including this book, which is part of the Pitt Poetry Series) and having been editor of The North American Review, but I found most of the poetry in this book to be so mild that it barely held my interest. But sometimes that's what we want, right? A book that's a fast, pleasant read that doesn't get our heart beating or ruffle our feathers. This was that sort of book for me.

Thanks for sharing this review with us, Jen. I've been on something of an owl kick lately (can't get enough of those PBS nature documentaries!), so I always appreciate a decent owl poem.

A collection of owl poems would certainly be a unique anthology--and short, I imagine.

I had a sort-of owl poem published! It really wasn't about an owl, it was about my granddaughter imitating one after we read an owl book for the thousandth time

Cool, Nina. That's two poems toward and owl anthology. I discovered last night that the poet of a book I just finished had a previous book titled "A Companion for Owls."

NIGHT KILLER

In the moonlight, high in the Lemon Gum,
perched under the arching ghostly branches,
two eyes of jet peer from a snow-white mask.
Tyto Alba, the Barn Owl,with heart shaped
facial disc, edged with ruff of stiff feathers.
Mottled pearl-grey body feathers above
the moth like plumage, purest white beneath;
her slim legs are bare on the lower half,
with small feet that end with deadly talons.
Nocturnal, she roosts in the heat of day.
You will hear her screeching in the cold night,
hear the scream before you ever see her.
She can see in the half light of humans,
night vision even in total darkness;
pinpoints her prey by listening to each sound
the desperate, scuttling little creatures make.
She is a well designed killing machine
with hooked beak, powerful feet and sharp claws.
Her flight feathers have softened edges
to make her deadly flight near soundless
She swoops silently down without warning,
seizing victims with her claws, biting deep
into their neck arteries, puncturing
their most precious organs for a quick death.
© M.L.Emmett