There are three basic types of complexity a reader encounters in contemporary poetry. The first type arises when inexperienced poets have not yet developed sufficient intellectual and emotional depth to understand their subject matter or have not yet developed an adequate command of language. The resulting product is muddled rather than deep. The second is...
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Insight and Exaltation
Readers who know the exceptional poetry of Catharine Savage Brosman will recognize familiar landscapes and motifs in her latest book, Under the Pergola. The collection is divided into two sections. The first, On Bayou Bonfouca, comprises poems that reflect the people, topography, flora, and fauna of south Louisiana from greater New Orleans to the Texas...
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Brush the Distance
Catharine Savage Brosman’s latest book, Breakwater, is a stimulating addition to her always intriguing poetic realm. The book is packed with superlative individual poems, and their cumulative effect strikes this reviewer as majestic. Breakwater is divided into three sections. Section I is an extended love poem involving the poet and the man to whom she...
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At Ford, Diversity Is Job One
The chairman of Ford Motor Company, Jacques Nasser, in a videotaped address to a group of top executives forced to endure another in a series of “diversity-training” seminars, stated that he did not like the sea of white faces in the audience and that one of his prime directives was to ensure that in the...