The Garden of Verse: A Brief Tribute to Verse-Virtual May 2020, Even As We Mourn the Loss of Founder Firestone Feinberg

As our journal's managing editor Jim Lewis put the matter recently, "I cannot think of a better way to show appreciation and support for Firestone than to continue to build this community that he started."
            Firestone Feinberg, the founder and editor of Verse-Virtual, the online journal and community of poets I have been fortunate to be part of for the last five years, passed last Monday.
           I had just written these comments on a few of the many poems that particularly impressed me in the May 2020 issue of Verse-Virtual.org. As Jim implied, we can best honor him by doing what we do.
            So here are some thoughts on a few of the poems in the May issue of Verse-Virtual I am particularly fond of. You can find all of these poems, and many others at Verse-Virtual May 2020
 

            Barbara Crooker's depiction of this time of year in "It's May," -- "the time of year when

everything we’ve been waiting for opens" -- accords very much with my own thoughts. The idea of the world's 'opening' is wittily captured in the images that follow:

"The iris wave their flags, every shade of the rainbow,

and the peonies have unclenched their fists"

The poem continues an imagistic walk through this season of delights -- "An Oriental poppy is about

to stamp its orange exclamation mark" --

            leading to a nature-centered pitch for an earth-friendly politics. If I wasn't already marching in this parade I would swiftly join it. It's time to plant a perennials garden on the White House lawn. (It can't hurt.)

Two strong poems Marc Alan Di Martino walk us down the other side of the street. Skillfully and affectingly told, "Dark Matters" connects its 'matter,' a piece of  family history, to universal themes:

"The blades of life

spare no one—eventually, each of us

is butchered in one fashion or another

like Isaac on the chopping block."

And I thought its ending  (which I won't spoil here) was perfect.

Neera Kashyap's satisfying exploitation of the villanelle form, "Self-Rule" sees both dark and light in a world imaged by the poem's first line:

"There is work to be done on this hill."

After several tightly pinioned instances --

"The rabbit runs, paws tremble, thoughts mill;

Stumbles and falls, sorrows break in."

-- the poem's final lines fulfill its form and offer a satisfying reflection. 

Tamara Madison's "Seeing Paris" is not about the conventional associations of its two-word title. The irony of what it is about makes for a moving poem. The truth of the poem's observation that many of us"even learn

to free their faces of feeling,

to meet the world with a mask

that is smooth and shiny and which may

indeed look good, but we are not fooled"

...seems to me to take on an even stronger impact now that we are so often meeting one another behind the barrier of actual, physical masks.
            A deep and complex poem about a troubling reality, the extent to which we all wear masks. And what we wish them to say.

David Graham's "Accidental Blessings" is another poem that suggests there is so much more to life -- and much of it pretty hairy -- than we're likely to put on that other kind of officially made-up 'face,' the resume.

            While the poem's tone is relaxed and informal, its tally of bumps and bruises is scarily impressive: A little childhood brain fever, a near-miss run-over, a swinging collision with a tree; pills not taken, fights ducked. It's enough to prompt a class assignment on near-misses (start making lists...). The poem ends with a vividly phrased toast to survival I won't spoil here by quoting.

As so often in the past, I am grateful to Marilyn Taylor for the pleasure of form. Her sixteen-liner, "Piano Overture" finds the essence of a certain species of formal occasion, the twice-a-year visits of the piano tuner. I can't help quoting these two lines

"brandishing his hammer like a sword,

we watched him wring concordance from the air."

            Nor can I refrain from pointing out what a beautiful rhyme "concordance from the air" makes with the line it rhymes ending with the words "clean and spare." Please read this poem if you haven't. It requires something more than a semiannual visit.

These and so many more strong poems can be found at http://www.verse-virtual.org/poems-and-articles.html