I had two books of poetry from the library this week, The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt, and Continuum, a selection of poems by Nina Cassian. Clampitt’s collected poems was 471 dense pages, and even though I have read a number of poems of hers I like, the sheer weight of it all was overwhelming. Any poet’s collected works is bound to have hundreds of uninteresting poems. It’s so much easier to get to know a poet through their selected works. But in the case of Cassian, either I don’t like her, or I don’t like the selection. It’s so difficult to get to know a new poet, to find the right poems, to get a sense of whether their voice really interests you!
So in hopes of saving you a little time, here is a poem by a poet you may not have heard of whom I like very much: Continue reading “Poetry Monday–the problem with poetry”