the Aurorean
Spring/Summer
2014
Publisher/Editor:
Cynthia Brackett-Vincent
Assistant Editor:
Devin McGuire
62 pages, $11,
softbound
Review by Zvi A.
Sesling
Two quick
disclosures to open this review of the Spring/Summer 2014 issue of one of the
best New England based magazines: the Aurorean. Disclosure number one: I do not particularly
care for rhyming poetry. Disclosure
number 2, poet Dennis Daly is in a wonderful group of people of which I am also
part: The Bagel Bards (which meet every Saturday morning 9 a.m. to noon at the
Au Bon Pain, Davis Sq., Somerville, MA.
Well with that
behind me, I was genuinely pleased to discover Dennis is in the current issue.
Despite the rhyming, of which he is an excellent practitioner, the two poems
are quite readable and enjoyable. Dennis a fine poet and at readings his
baritone voice rings out with the lines of his poetry. In the current issue of the Aurorean he is one of the Showcase
Poets with two offerings, “Little Misery Island” and “Great Misery Island,” two
real islands near Salem, MA where the poet resides.
In “Little Misery
Island” the opening stanza sets the
tone: Some say you can walk across/From
its larger kin. A gloss/I think on a darker fact:/All men are islands, compact.
Here he has
summoned John Donne (no man is an island) and bravely states that “All men are
islands, compact.” This seeming disagreement with Donne is really not a
divergence for what Donne is saying is that man cannot function alone and Daly
simply states that men may seem like islands but there is interaction with
other men and nature.
the Aurorean has always pumped out good poetry and the current
issue certainly matches its reputation and always offers poems that catch the
eye.
Ryan Bayless’s
offer is:
My garden’s first
fruit,
a ripe tomato,
offers its skin
to
the beak of a
bird.
Sharon Anderson’s
Wash Day addresses the woman of
another day – the unliberated:
Monday morning,
without fail
on a clothesline
stretched between
two elms, hung
Grandmother’s
flour sack
aprons—freer than
Grandmother ever
was.
For those with a
penchant for the longer poem Jack Galmitz’s “The Riggings” provides a take on
relationships that crosses time and space from infinity to birth to marriage
and back.
I went down
as water goes
down
to seek my level
to stop staring
at the sky
as if moons and
stars were mighty
and the shrubs
and rocks were wrong.
I went down
to find her
her eyes so blue
I fell in and
began
to swim with fins
and gills
and wouldn’t come
out
until she pushed
me out
in time and I was
hung
upside down and
slapped
on the bottom and
cried
When we married
and I was told I
could kiss the bride,
we were already
wrapped in one another’s arms,
for we had known
each other since the beginning
of time that
comes to pick you up
when you fall
down.
Another poet
whose work I have enjoyed in the past is Alan Catlin. In a previous book of his work which I
reviewed he dealt with people who suffer one way or another. In the two poems
which appear in this issue of the
Aurorean Catlin sounds a hopeful note but somehow leaves off with not-so-hopeful endings such as tarnish sails
or unlike Robert Frost, “…paths that lead us/nowhere”
There is plenty
of fine poetry in this issue of the magazine from the opening Featured Poet
David Stankiewicz to the closing Feature Marilyn Dorf. the
Aurorean usually delivers poems worthy of their publication and this
current issue is no exception.
Zvi A. Sesling
Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Publisher, Muddy
River Books
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7 & Anthology 8
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