🔗 Share this article

Within the realm of current poetry, a number of recent volumes stand out for their unique styles and themes.

So Far So Good by Ursula K Le Guin

This particular final book from the renowned author, submitted just prior to her demise, holds a title that may look paradoxical, but with Le Guin, assurance is rarely straightforward. Recognized for her futuristic tales, several of these pieces also explore journeys, whether in the earthly realm and beyond. One piece, The End of Orpheus, envisions the ancient persona traveling to the afterlife, where he encounters Euridice. Additional poems highlight earthly topics—cattle, avian creatures, a tiny creature slain by her cat—but even the most insignificant of beings is bestowed a soul by the poet. Scenery are evoked with lovely simplicity, sometimes endangered, other times praised for their splendor. Depictions of mortality in the natural world guide readers to reflect on age and death, in some cases welcomed as an aspect of the order of things, elsewhere resented with anger. Her individual approaching death takes center stage in the last meditations, as hope mixes with gloom as the human frame weakens, drawing close to the finish where security vanishes.

Thrums by Thomas A Clark

An nature poet with minimalist tendencies, Clark has developed a approach over 50 years that strips away numerous hallmarks of the lyric form, such as the personal voice, discourse, and rhyme. In its place, he restores poetry to a clarity of observation that provides not verses on nature, but the natural world in its essence. The poet is nearly absent, acting as a conduit for his surroundings, conveying his encounters with precision. Exists no forming of material into individual narrative, no revelation—on the contrary, the physical self becomes a vehicle for internalizing its surroundings, and as it embraces the downpour, the identity fades into the terrain. Sightings of gossamer, willowherb, buck, and owls are gracefully woven with the vocabulary of melody—the vibrations of the heading—which calms readers into a condition of developing perception, trapped in the instant prior to it is processed by the mind. The poems portray environmental damage as well as splendor, posing inquiries about responsibility for threatened beings. But, by changing the recurring inquiry into the cry of a barn owl, Clark demonstrates that by identifying with nature, of which we are continuously a part, we might discover a solution.

Paddling by Sophie Dumont

Should you appreciate entering a vessel but sometimes find it difficult understanding modern verse, this could be the volume you have been hoping for. Its name indicates the act of propelling a craft using two oars, one in each hand, but also brings to mind skeletons; vessels, death, and water blend into a heady concoction. Holding an blade, for Dumont, is comparable to grasping a pen, and in an poem, viewers are made aware of the connections between poetry and kayaking—because on a stream we might recognize a settlement from the reverberation of its spans, literature prefers to observe the reality differently. A further composition details Dumont's apprenticeship at a paddling group, which she quickly comes to see as a haven for the doomed. This particular is a cohesive volume, and later works persist with the motif of the aquatic—with a stunning mental image of a dock, instructions on how to right a vessel, studies of the shore, and a universal declaration of aquatic entitlements. You won't become soaked reading this book, unless you combine your literary enjoyment with substantial drinking, but you will arise purified, and made aware that people are largely composed of water.

Magadh by Shrikant Verma

Like other writerly explorations of imagined metropolises, Verma creates visions from the historical South Asian realm of the titular region. The grand buildings, fountains, places of worship, and pathways are now quiet or have turned to dust, populated by waning remembrances, the scents of courtesans, malevolent beings that bring back the dead, and ghosts who roam the debris. This realm of the deceased is rendered in a style that is reduced to the bare bones, but ironically exudes life, hue, and pathos. A particular piece, a fighter moves without purpose between ruins, posing queries about recurrence and significance. First printed in the vernacular in the eighties, soon prior to the poet's demise, and now accessible in the English language, this haunting creation echoes strongly in the present day, with its bleak images of cities obliterated by invading armies, leaving behind naught but debris that at times cry out in protest.