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Roger Sauls

BOOKS

Conferring Grace on the Materials at Hand

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Pause for Breath, by Robyn Sarah, Biblioasis

by Roger Sauls
17.01.2010

The American poet George Oppen liked to cite the carpenter’s art as a useful model for the construction of a poem. He argued that a poem’s parts, when properly connected, constitute a structure of both shapeliness and utility–a ladderback chair, say.  The beauty of Oppen’s simile is that it places the poem in the broad [...]

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BOOKS

An Audacious Exploration of the Psychic Landscape

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Passenger Flight, Brian Campbell, Signature Editions

by Roger Sauls
19.07.2009

The long and short of the prose poem is that it’s a product of deep inner contradictions. Its prose wants the freedom to wander, while its poetry wants the brevity of a few luminous words. It rejects the primacy of either of its parents in favor of a synthesis of both. It delights in frustrating [...]

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BOOKS

A Marbled Psalm of Praise

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This Way Out, Carmine Starnino, Gaspereau Press

by Roger Sauls
28.06.2009

The figure of the traveler, wind-bent and plowing bravely forward, is a useful trope for a poet whose work explores strange terrain, both inner and outer. Travel demands agility in unfamiliar places — improvisation, adaptation to the flux of experience — traits a poet must bring to bear on the blank page. In This Way [...]

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BOOKS

Miraculous Lemons

PAPER ORANGES Carolyn Marie Souaid, Signature Editions

by Roger Sauls
01.12.2008

THE ELEVATION OF THE FRAGMENT, as a writer’s means of portraying his or her world, has become the literary verification of the 20th century’s recognition of the broken nature of perception. It’s a technique not only for bringing the written word in line with the phenomenal, but also for forcing the reader into the same [...]

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