Back when I wrote poetry, I used it as therapy, as catharsis, writing about the things that bothered me in hopes that they wouldn’t be as much of a bother when I was done. It’s something that writer Meghan O’Rourke is doing as well in her third collection of poems, Sun In Days (hardcover, digital). Though as I learned from my conversation with her about this book, that’s not all we share when it comes to the poetic arts.
The best poetry comes when a writer is honest both with themselves and their audience, even if that truth isn’t easy to say or hear. It’s a credo shared by writer Marlena Chertock who, in talking about her second poetry collection, Crumb-sized (paperback), explained that her poems are “mostly autobiographical” and that she “believe[s] in radical honesty.”
In Minivan Poems, writer Justin Grimbol did indeed put together an entire book of poems about his minivan. But in his newest collection Come Home We Love You Still (paperback), Grimbol not only compiled a book of poems with a similar narrative theme, but a structural one as well.
There are a lot of reasons that people write poetry. To describe the beauty in the world. As a coping mechanism. In an attempt to impress the woman they’re in love with even though she doesn’t read poetry and she’s clearly not into me. But in talking about his new poetry book Minivan Poems (paperback, digital), writer Justin Grimbol said he started writing this collection of poems about minivans as a bit of a lark.