Give poems a chance! 😀

Nine of us--including the book's co-editors, our very own Philip Clark and Michael Bronski--went online last week for a very enjoyable discussion of the second half of Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski. Tim Hennessey made an observation that I wanted to share in hopes of enticing more people to read Borawski:

"I haven't read many poems, and I don't feel like I know much about poetry. But Borawski's poems really spoke to me, and I enjoyed reading them." I second that assessment, and would just add that most of the  poems are about a page long (and many are shorter than that). So if one selection doesn't speak to you, try the next one. 

In that spirit, at the risk of embarrassing Philip, I also want to plug a previous anthology he edited (which we discussed back in 2010 and 2011): Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS. I still regard it as one of the best anthologies of verse I've had the pleasure of reading, and I dip back into it from time to time. Alas, it is out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon and ABE Books, among other sources.