recently, two books have caught my attention. one is burt kimmelman's As if Free, and the second one is maurice kilwein guevara's Poema. guevara read as part of series A this month, and i enjoyed his reading quite a bit. his book also is interesting. it contains a wide variety of well-crafted poetry on many topics, from politics to inspiration; plus, the pieces sound beautiful. i also like the mixing of spanish and english that he does. i typically enjoy when poets play with language barriers, whether it's the troubadours in three or four languages or ray with english and italian. with kimmelman, his book is the type i just fall into. by that i mean that once i started reading it, it just felt like i was there with the poet listening. the pieces are smooth and daily, and in that is their insight. really, the "nature" pieces struck me the most. they reminded me of gary synder's in that the poet seems to be one who is used to looking at nature--he seems comfortable with what he sees.
on another note, i ran across this review by andrei codrescu of my book Collective Instant. as his work inspired some of the pieces, i'm glad to see him look at the work.
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