The Daily Glance
Thomas Fink's Peace Conference is filled with shaped poems and lyric utterances. Partially, this book seems like an exploration of form that takes up what Fink has done in other books. The shaped poems that begin the book are fascinating because they are non-standard shapes with some stanzas (if they can be called that) that are formed like x's and some that do not connect. These forms complicate the reading process, especially when Fink plays with narrative lines with quick shifts in topic. (I wish that I could reproduce these here, but I think I'd have to use a pdf or photo to do that.) Beyond the shaped poems, Fink plays with new forms; for example, he creates a series that combines a prose poem with a hay(na)ku. It looks like a haibun but is something different. It's amazing how much he manages to pack into his pieces:
Why are you worrying about teeth? They'll be dead teeth. I'm careful about
what I buy. We found ourselves--ages ago--strewn together in a store, on a
rock. Nowadays he really favors the candy-stripper variety. They're perky, so
I indulge him.
This section is from a series titled "Dusk Bowl Intimacies," and the series seems to me to be one of the most interesting poetic series that I've read in quite some time. He plays lyrically with different voices, explores a new form, and combines cultural poetic traditions.
One last note, the poetry in the book is wonderful but so is the front cover art. Fink is a painter as well, and the piece displayed on the front cover is fabulous and contains forms that repeat in the book.
Thomas Fink's Peace Conference is filled with shaped poems and lyric utterances. Partially, this book seems like an exploration of form that takes up what Fink has done in other books. The shaped poems that begin the book are fascinating because they are non-standard shapes with some stanzas (if they can be called that) that are formed like x's and some that do not connect. These forms complicate the reading process, especially when Fink plays with narrative lines with quick shifts in topic. (I wish that I could reproduce these here, but I think I'd have to use a pdf or photo to do that.) Beyond the shaped poems, Fink plays with new forms; for example, he creates a series that combines a prose poem with a hay(na)ku. It looks like a haibun but is something different. It's amazing how much he manages to pack into his pieces:
Why are you worrying about teeth? They'll be dead teeth. I'm careful about
what I buy. We found ourselves--ages ago--strewn together in a store, on a
rock. Nowadays he really favors the candy-stripper variety. They're perky, so
I indulge him.
This section is from a series titled "Dusk Bowl Intimacies," and the series seems to me to be one of the most interesting poetic series that I've read in quite some time. He plays lyrically with different voices, explores a new form, and combines cultural poetic traditions.
One last note, the poetry in the book is wonderful but so is the front cover art. Fink is a painter as well, and the piece displayed on the front cover is fabulous and contains forms that repeat in the book.
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