Kristin Garth : Flutter (Twist in Time Press 2019)
Garth’s sonnets are inspiringly wrought gems, hung with consonance and internal rhymes, reading them is surreal for me —wording blurs and swirls until suddenly the sonnet’s sense becomes clear and I am transformed from just reading words to connecting to those words. Unmatchable stuff–there isn’t another sonneteer like her.
Charles Bukowski : Love is a Dog From Hell (Black Sparrow 1977)
I’ve been reading Bukowski since I worked at Tower Books and found his books. I don’t write a poetic thing like him, I don’t live like him, I don’t act like him, but there is a thread of something profoundly intelligent, and anti-social, in Bukowski’s poetry that makes me turn to his words again and again over the years when I, too, am sickened by the world and need solace.
Margaret Todd Ritter : Wind Out of Betelgeuse (MacMillan 1928)
Obscure now, Ritter bridges formalism and modernism; she had been published in the likes of Poetry, The Lyric, The New York Times…(what happened? Perhaps her ‘own’ time did not suit her?) She wrote “The cactus will receive my greatest consideration / For as a woman I was condemned to be thornless”. Wow.
Dorothy Parker – Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright 1926)
To me, no one measures up to the precision that Dorothy Parker wrote with: every word has its weighted purpose, every line is perfectly balanced, and her rhymes are wrought so exactly they seem to naturally fall just so—but that seemingly effortless punch is deceptive. A tremendous poetic talent lies behind it–it’s intimidating but important to grasp how she does it.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Poetical Works
My favorite edition of Shelley is an old cheap reader’s copy –it is more useful. Shelley’s poetry defines the invisible essence of art: fraught, idealistic, formal, fantastical, mystical, vivid, and rebelliously attuned — I found his work when I was 16 and just starting to write, I return to his poems when all the parts of my soul need to refresh, and I drink them in.
Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in The Ghost City Review, Mooky Chick, Pussy Magic, Tilde, Third Wednesday, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Lyric, Able Muse, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (Great Weather for Media), Lift Every Voice (Kissing Dynamite), and many other places. She is an urban drop out, living off-grid in middle of rural nowhere where nothing can bother her, except poetical ghosts. Noms: The Pushcart, The Best of the Net and the Rhysling.