Recorded January 25 by The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle, a PSM member group. (Click the Photo)
Thomas Lynch’s most recent of twelve books are The Depositions—New & Selected Essays (W.W. Norton, 2020) and Bone Rosary—New & Selected Poems (David R. Godine, 2021). He is finishing a novel which he fears might finish him. He keeps homes in Michigan and West Clare, Ireland.
The Human Engine at Dawn by Jim Daniels
The ghost behind these haunted and haunting poems is the bittersweet and stunningly detailed memory of his formative years in blue-collar Detroit, echoed sometimes in his present home of Pittsburgh. The latter (much less the former) isn’t Paris, he admits, but then, “Fuck Paris.” With The Human Engine at Dawn, Jim Daniels remains among this country’s most gifted and engaging poets.
—William Trowbridge, author of Call Me Fool
Jim Daniels. Singer of the broken city. Ishmael of lost families and foundered dreams. Virgil of what he calls “our poorly wired world.” These poems are deep dives into Daniels’ past, and a past Detroit. The portraits of his mother and father are unforgettable, both for their blunt, unsentimental honesty and their tenderness. Again and again Daniels manages to unearth bright shards of beauty in the bleak alleyways and poverty-haunted streets of the city. And there’s an ode here to his father’s bowling ball that will knock you down, that will roll you right back to the smoky, beer-soaked heart of the last century. The Human Engine at Dawn, in its dark and lyrical urgency, reminds me of why I came to poetry in the first place.
—George Bilgere, author of Central Air
About the Author
Jim Daniels’ latest books include Gun/Shy (poetry), The Perp Walk (fiction), and the anthology RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music (coedited with M. L. Liebler). A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
Claire Weiner — “PostScript” by Seamus Heaney
I find the opening words of Postscript by Seamus Heaney difficult to ignore. “And some time make the time to drive out west…” What an invitation—gentle and imploring at the same time. An invitation that mirrors the natural setting he describes: “the ocean on one side is wild…. and inland among stones the surface of a slate grey lake…” The yin and yang woven throughout this short poem continues with his magnificent description of the swans, “tucked or cresting or busy underwater.” He captures a moment that never fails to blow me away.
Naomi Shihab Nye—“Kindness”–https://poets.org/poem/kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Kindness,” has been for me both a source of inspiration and solace. In this poem she takes us with her on an ordinary bus ride to remind us that “Before you know what kindness really is/you must lose things.” I have a sister who is terminally ill and it seems all I have to give her right now is kindness. But Nye tells us in this poem that kindness is the only thing “that makes sense anymore,” that it can go with us “everywhere/like a shadow or a friend.” In addition to this being a beautiful poem, it is a fine example of how poetry can bring grace when it seems there is none.
Catherine McGeehan
“The Garden” – Andrew Marvell
As a lifetime gardener, I can’t help but admire Marvell’s “The Garden,” with its metaphorical twists and turns reflecting on themes of human vainglory, nature’s gifts of calm meditative repose, and Biblical references. My introduction to the poem was at a project meeting when it was read by a landscape architect describing a garden design. My favorite part of the poem is in the sixth stanza.
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Yes to annihilating all this world’s strivings, trials, and even joys into a green thought in a green shade. Yes to getting back mentally and physically to our home in the natural world!
Jerry Lang
On Visiting Herbert Hoover’s Birth and Burial Place by Thomas Lux
I admire Thomas Lux’s villanelle, “On Visiting Herbert Hoover’s Birth and Burial Place,” especially because the conversational banal tone hides misfortune. At the prairie’s edge, tents flourish, a reference to Hoovervilles. His message is still relevant: “What you spent was what you earned and not a dime in banks accrued.” Like then, “so many people can’t pay their rent.” The speaker is also humble, saying if he is wrong, he ‘repent[s], but don’t too many people dream of meat in their soup?” The greater divide between rich and poor—“some eat white bread, some get screwed”— due to greed is repeated. But would we, if in power, make any difference? The confusing syntax in the middle asks, “. . . how, can we prevent our oblivion?”
Janice Zerfas
I love Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem “They Flee from Me” and I find it so intriguing that I assigned it in every class I taught for many years. “They flee from me who sometime did me seek.” Oh, well, who hasn’t felt that? Ostracized again! He likens his courtly companions to deer, and they’re apt comparisons. I see a lot of deer. Bonus: it’s the first use of the term “newfangleness” in literature, which I thought was more newfangled than the 1500’s. Although he ends up jilted, he has made me love him. Link to They Flee from Me.
Visit 3rd Wednesday Magazine’s YouTube Channel for a reading featuring Katherine Edgren.
Keeping Out the Noise is Available From: Kelsay Books and Amazon
In Ann Arbor: Nicola’s Books, Booksweet,
In Chelsea: Serendipity
In Ypsilanti: Blackstone Bookstore
Poetry Society of Michigan 