poems2go

“I’m So Excited”

Posted on September 1, 2017 Updated on September 1, 2017

I was singing this song as I prepared the latest collection of poems2go.

When you read Chris Lamay-West’s “Emily Listens Critically to Diana Ross” you’ll know why. No, Diana didn’t make this song famous, The Pointer Sisters did, but still, I was singing it because I am excited about these poems. They’re fun, and smart.

And not only is West tuned in, but so is Rosebud Ben-Oni whose submission included all poems with titles from lines of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. It was convenient, of course, that Sarah and I were reviewing submissions and making our selections the eve of the solar eclipse. I was humming “every now & then i get a little bit lonely” for days.

I love singing for all the same reasons I love poetry because I feel engrossed, engaged, and connected to something outside my worrying head. It encompasses both the physical and emotional resonances I crave. I can’t sing particularly well, and probably write poetry only slightly better, but they make me feel happy, especially when they’re fun and smart, as these poems are.

Sarah and I were particularly impressed with the range of forms we read including formal, experimental, free, and prose. We have some of each for you in this quarterly collection. Alan Michael Parker shares from his collection of sonnets, Nate Pritts engages us with white space, says:

I leave my hands behind

There are other hands
At work inside me

A brightness

Mary Ann Honaker gives us a prose poem,  Siham Karami shares a pantoum,
and  we have Kevin McLellan’s address “Dear Canaries,”

Thank you for sending the sparrow
emissary

to remind me of space
and to encourage light

To round this collection out is the observant  “Olber’s Paradox” by Grace Curtis, and the entrenching poem on motherhood (one of my favorite poetry subjects) ‘We’ve Not Long Come In” by Sasha West.

You will come away from these poems looking more closely at the night sky, an ordinary Wednesday, automatic doors, and you will, most hopefully, be singing.

Enjoy!

Christine