By CJ Trent

Photo Courtesy of www.greysparrowpress.net

I like poetry. Once long ago I even knew what iambic pentameter and blank verse and meter were, and could discourse semi-literately about symbolism in Coleridge and list the Romantic English Poets and stuff like that, but in my middle age I’ve forgotten all of that except how much I like reading poetry. I love dipping into a new collection randomly, finding a perfect line, a description that changes everything. Right now I am enjoying wandering through MaxineKumin’s new book, Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010. The book is comprised of poems from five of her previous collections, and peppered with new works previously unpublished. Many are set in nature and are spare; perfect lines and images that shape fully a scene or a moment in just a page or two. My favorite so far is “From The Eighteenth Floor” and begins this way:

Sunrise is a

peach curtain,

the river a woman

in a silver lame dress. Noon, its slats up,

a wide heaven,

dusk a soundless

opera, orange-tinged.

Poetry is the perfect choice for this time of year, when we are so busy finishing the semester and facing yet another holiday season. It is easy to squeeze in a poem or two, between finishing that paper or studying for exams, and if we are lucky and happen upon a lovely collection such as Where I Live who knows, we may just read them all, just for fun.

CJ Trent works in the College Bookstore.