Sound Over Sense Isn't New

John Ashbury judged the 2013 Walt Whitman Award and it shows. If you like John Ashbury or most post modern poetry you will like Chris Hosea's Put Your Hands In. If you are looking for a fresh approach to poetry, however, this is not your book.

Put Your Hands In is clever and fun. But original it is not. This is a collection where meaning can be found if searched for, but meaning is less important than sound. These poems are meant to be read aloud and in one sitting, which puts it in a tradition stretching back to Gertrude Stein. Some poems are collage poems in that they borrow phrases from elsewhere - newspaper clippings, other poetry, random conversations - and then mix them up pell mell to come up with something other. Some are composed entirely of half-finished sentences, an approach that is fun for the writer and interesting for the reader. The prose poems are effective, yet the most clever and thought-provoking piece, for me, is "Black Steel" which harkens to concrete or visual poetry.

Hosea here presents to us a crash course in 20th century poetics. Perhaps in an effort to convince himself or the reader that these approaches are still relevant in America today, he has heavily laced them with 21st century references to the digital. The result seems forced - not quite pretentious, but at least a little desperate.

Still, it is a delight of sound. Rhythm and alliteration ask you to consider the sound of everyday, even sometimes vulgar, language over the sense. Revel in cacophony and noise. Just don't expect to hear anything new.

Buy Get Your Hands In at Amazon.

Legal Disclosure: I did not receive anything in exchange for this review nor have any affiliation with those involved in the book's making.

"Emerald Hills" by Artemis Blithe

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on October 23, 2013)

Artemis Blithe is a poet currently living in Eastern Kentucky, U.S.A., but he is far from the stereotypical Appalachian poet. Blithe's work falls squarely into the realm of performance poetry. His book "Emerald Hills" is available through lulu.com.

Blithe's poems are written in a flow-of-thought prose style, so it is difficult to sense the rhythms that one hears when he reads. His grammar is at times intentionally askew. The odd misspelled word is thrown in. He writes with an almost overbearing megalomania that clearly draws from Walt Whitman. In fact, he could be a modern version of Whitman. Blithe rages all over the pages, declares general superiority, and champions a return to living in harmony with the earth. His statements are just as absolute, his declarations just as forceful, as Whitman's ever were.

But the power of the words and lines is greatly diminished in the medium of print. His is a poetry not meant to read. It is meant to be heard, to be delivered in a bombastic whirlwind of dramatic rapping, to be punctuated by audience participation in the form of applause and spontaneous shouts of agreement as if it were a sermon delivered by a hiccupping old regular Baptist or Pentecostal preacher. Maybe that is what Blithe is: a preacher of his own unique faith. But if he is a leader, the path he intends to lead us on is not well-defined. It is the path of an angry soul who is still searching himself. Was that perhaps true of Whitman in the day?

As a book of poetry in print, "Emerald Hills" does not work. But should you have a chance to hear Blithe read, then the mess of the print will make sense and ignite with hard-hitting gunpowder. Artemis Blithe proves himself a solid descendant of the Beat generation and of that universally acknowledged father of American poetry Walt Whitman.

Artemis Blithe's Facebook page.

Buy "Emerald Hills" on lulu.com.

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