Jody Bolz

A novella length poem. The narrator is a woman meditating on her first marriage and a trip taken with her first husband across Asia as the strains in the marriage began to tell. Her memories of the places and people of the trip are recalled with a vividness equal to her feelings about her first husband. As a counterpart to these memories, the author intersperses a dialogue she holds in the present with her first husband as she imagines him now. She imagines that he is not too happy to be involved in this enterprise.

It is a moving and vivid poem about the way the intersection of the past and the imagination haunt our lives.… (mehr)

A beautiful short book, consisting of nine extended poems, which concern themselves with the familiar routines and activities of the day -- in particular, the days of a woman who is a mother with a husband, two adolescent kids, a job teaching writing, students, at least one ex-lover or husband who might inhabit the car ahead, and laundry to fold. The poet's days consist of the routine but not uninteresting life of quotidian details and are -- not interrupted, but intertwined or mutually enfolded with -- memory, reverie, visions and thoughts of past or future or other lives. What is perhaps most impressive is that neither side is privileged or thought more worthy of considered thought and description -- the "dreamlife and the workday" are equally present and important to the life and the poem.

The poems are written in short lines, and short stanzas. The lines though short often themselves consist of fragments sitting together. This form, I think, works well for Bolz. It provides for the easy interchange between the different things her mind brings into focus.… (mehr)