Tag Archives: Families

Telling My Father, by James Crews (2017)

James Crews’s poetry is poignant, thoughtful, easy to read, and most importantly, leaves you thinking in ways that feel genuine instead of forced.  The first of this collection’s four parts relays the poet’s memories of his father that, far from waxing nostalgic, unfold into a complex web of admiration, unease, guilt, and self-discovery that culminates in an unspoken, shared moment.  Here the power lies in the placement of each poem, and Telling My Father shows how it’s not just the writing that matters, but the space between the writing that lets us form the most meaningful connections.

More

Telling My Father at Southeast Missouri State University Press

Longer Review at The Hopper

James Crews Talks Grad School and the Creative Life with Yours Truly

Four Major Plays, Volume II, by Henrik Ibsen (1881-1896)

Prior to this I’d only read Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, and while these four plays are less significant, they built off of the other Ibsen I’d read while covering more thematic ground.  Ibsen was a progressive decades ahead of his time, and today these plays seem more relevant than ever, covering environmental protection, the place of women in society, the dangers of populism, parents wielding control over children, and choosing money over love.  I enjoyed the denser John Gabriel Borkman much less due to its heavy exposition, but maybe also because I haven’t gotten old yet.

Rating

Ghosts 

An Enemy of the People  

The Lady From the Sea  

John Gabriel Borkman