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This has become my new favorite Jack Ridl book of poetry. I like everything about it. The poems, some of them collected from his other books, the layout, paper and print and most of all the painting on the cover which I happen to know is by his daughter Meridith. It matches the mood of this collection perfectly. I saw work when it was hung at the Grand Rapids Art Museum and recently discovered that it now hangs in the home of a friend.) Jack Ridl’s poems are often stories so they should be heard or read in their entirety, but let me entice you with a few succulent phrases: from After Reading Dom John Chapman, Benedictine Abbot / “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” My prayers will sit on the backs of bedraggled donkeys, in the sidecars of Harleys, in the pockets of night watchman, on the laps of widows. from Repairing the House We’ll learn the house can live without our changes. We will listen to its language. The cracks along the stairway – they are sentences. from Sisley’s “Snow at Louveciennes” ....She stands bordered by the indifference of daylight, imagines a cardinal cutting its wound across the snow, a cat crawling under a cottage, curling its tail around its sleep. and from I am Wearing Your Shirt/ For my father The snow that comes in the mornings Mmmm....enjoy!brings each of your words. The water forms around your and, your either, not, and yes. They land, they just land. Sometimes they fall all day, and into the next. Sometimes they melt before noon. <back to list |
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