The Garden of Verse: Family Stories Abound in Verse-Virtual March 2020, from Talking Back to 'Daddy' to the Crime That Destroyed a People's 'Icons'

Poems in Verse-Virtual's March2020 issue told important stories with great skill. Subjects include a re-assessment of the truth behind Sylvia Plath's epochal poem "Daddy," the circumstances behind a first encounter with the muse, and the devastating consequences of a historic disaster. 

         Find these and many other fine offerings in Verse-Virtual.org March 2020

Michael Gessner's "Plath's Father" catches so much about the structure and rhythmic appeal of Sylvia Plath's famous poem "Daddy" while questioning the poem's treatment of its ostensible subject, her father. As "Plath's Father" argues, "Daddy's” denunciation of fascism and patriarchal brutality doesn't appear to have much to do with the biography of her father's shortened life:

"It doesn’t quite seem to mix

Panzer-man and Harvard entomologist,

or the German language ‘obscene’. 

It was the language your parents spoke

before making the love that was you."

"Plath's Father" is a thoughtful, strongly written response to a widely anthologized poem which at the time of its publication seemed to catch the anger of the rebellious sixties. This sympathy for a 'Daddy' definitely deserves a read.  

David Graham's "Your Poetic Career" is another poem that looks back, not on a classic poem, but on a poet's own beginning. A story poem set in undergraduate days, it catches the mood of youthful 'thinking' and insecurities and finds an implicitly sensual imagery that describes what's so -- uh, likable -- in another student's work: 

"She's so damn good, her lines slithering like anacondas

of dirty ice and lonesome fire and all kinds of stuff

you'd never in a million years come up with, so

for a few shiny minutes you are utterly swallowed

by the beautiful Becca-mind,"

...while also a youthfully "bothered" by the rest of the package. A fun and convincing poem.

Another poem that tells a story, Jim Lewis's "penny loafers" recalls a hungry boy, born in 1929 among a parade of siblings

"that stretched
across that great depression
like a trans-continental railroad..."

The poem's imagery and diction catch the mood of the era, especially its Depression generation theme of making do with a watery-soup existence. The mortifying second-hand shoes of the poem's title lead to the fitting word play at the poem's conclusion that I won't spoil by repeating here.

Michael Minassian's "The Icons" looks back as well, from a family perspective, to a grandmother's remembrance of the year 1915, when

"history exploded
like a sleeping grenade,"

destroying both her brother, their church and "all the icons" -- a word that serves for both a concrete meaning and an entire community's world view. Actions tell the story here. The grandmother's post-genocidal world view is evoked by her act of

"dumping the coffee grinds
into the backyard
where nothing ever grew..."

The March 2020 issue is rich in family stories. Alan Walowitz's "My Father Stops at Corners" paints a portrait in a poem whose structure seems to capture its subject's path through life. I particularly enjoyed the long and garrulous sentence that begins with a reference to death -- "He knew he wasn't due to die till 68" -- then works through several other subjects, including its subject's physical resemblance to his own father -- before returning to the theme of a father's death with a striking image,

"which now he owned—
hanging low over his head
like the black fedora
pulled tight over his eyes."

A memorable portrait, indeed.

Tom Montag's author's note to "Three Poems from 'The Woman in an Imaginary Painting'" series is a poem in itself. "I don't know what started this, nor how it will end, but here we go, for as long as she continues," he tells us. "Poets may think they are in charge of their work, but really they're not, as this series is proving to me daily."

These poems flow like time does. As thought does. They're about one thing, and everything. I love its transition from the woman's perspective, to the artist's, and then back to the woman's own self-examination.

"Because she always loved art
she posed for him.
Because it was unlike anything she had ever done.
Because she wanted to impress her friends..."

Every line feels just right and, perhaps, inevitable.

And there's lots more where these came from at http://www.verse-virtual.org/poems-and-articles.html