Having finished the Jane Smiley novella, I found myself in the land of Quarterly poetry. The first poet is Paulette Jiles, with "The James Poems," thirty poems spread over forty-three pages. As I've noted before here at the EWN, I'm not one versed in the language of poetry, or the various styles. However, I kept finding myself reading these works as prose and not poetry. I wasn't finding meaning or reason for the line breaks. In such cases, I usually blame myself, my lack of understanding, and my lack of having read volumes of poetry to date. As I got deeper into this near chapbook worth of poetry though, I found myself blaming myself much less than I usually would.
From "Frank Surrenders: October 5, 1882"
"I have known no home, I have slept in all sort of
places...I am tired
of this life of taut nerves...I want to see if there
is not some way out
of this."
I might not have mentioned that the poems are about Frank and Jesse James--the James Gang. Having read these, I did feel like I knew much more about this family and time period than I did before sitting down with this issue. I just didn't feel like I'd read a lot of poetry.
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