Lisa Sperber * Sean McDonnell * Angela
Garcia
Eric Gudas * Maria Melendez
Edited by Francisco Aragón
Praise for Mark My Words:
What
Happens to Horses at Night by Lisa Sperber
When
a voice seems strange but never takes a wrong step—that
is, never fails to be subliminally, emotionally convincing—I
feel in the presence of one of the great pleasures of poetry.
I mean its power to convey the flavor of an inner life, what
we sometimes call the “unsayable.” Lisa Sperber’s
short lyrics are of this kind.
—Alan Williamson
from his Introduction
Sullen in the
Sweet Air by Sean McDonnell
In
the best of these poems, Sean McDonnell is able to see the
world as a vastly intricate tapestry into which all of the
joys and all of the inevitable burdens of being alive are woven
inextricably together into lovely shapes, and richly enduring
music…His diction is precise and sensuous at the same
time…
–Bruce Weigl
from his Introduction
Belly Unfinished
by Angela Garcia
If poets
are fortunate, they learn early in their careers to seek out
what’s collectively “ingrained / in us,” as
Angela Garcia memorably does in Belly Unfinished. Her
personae constantly try “to hold on to water’s pulse”;
her speakers inhabit marital beds, eager to join their “mislaid
halves,” or haunt the dawn hours. Each finely etched poem
is a “watermark,” an invitation…
–Robert Vasquez
from his Introduction
Orange Juice
by Eric Gudas
I find
the poems of Eric Gudas truly moving; they convince through their
scrupulous adherence to the sensory details of the given and
the depth of feeling they evoke. Offering a modern version of “negative
capability,” they refrain from claiming more than the evidence
they present.
–Jack Marshall
from his Introduction
Controlled Burn
by Maria Melendez
These
are poems of empiric glittering information shards and huge-scale
passion; Maria can move between such worlds, such creatures: “a
spotted bobcat leaps / and pins down heat.” And the pivotal
poem, “Ars Poetica,” which calls for “language
[to] be an act of love,” trickily revises Basho to say “To
learn of love, / go to love.”…I don’t know
of anyone writing like Maria Melendez, and keeping so many pearls
in the air.
–Gary Snyder
from his Introduction
Sample poems from Mark
My Words: Five Emerging Poets
