Key West The Newspaper

by Kirby Congdon…….

Pulling a new collection of poetry out of its envelope, I flipped through the pages and two poems caught my eye. These were intimate poems, an obituary of a dog emphasizing our need for a pet rather than the other way around, and a meditation on a public institution for those on disability. In this second one the narrator describes his attempt to handle the situation, closing his poem with “I finally fell away, imaginary wings broken.” Both poems were in a featured coverage of Eric Greine’ work in Forge, Vol. 9, Issue 3 edited by Tim Mclafferty here and in England.

Mr. Greinke, a maker and shaker in Michigan, explores what is meaningful. “November Nights” describes the comfort of being in bed and that’s it! Another category is that of exploration in which the narrator lets the poem, “Lifelines,” describe the dangers of life on the sea, ending,

In dreams of flight above rough seas,
I search for you, to throw you these lines.

And then we have, “After the Freeze” written with Alison Stone. This is the category I call writing for its own sake rather than for history (as in Ginsberg’s Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation…”) or to express an opinion (as in Eliot’s The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month…”) The poem by Stone and Greinke is the kind of poem we look for and want to write. It ends with these words:

…What was hidden…now emerging
until what blossoms
shines with
the familiar false hope
of fresh flowers.