About the Poems - JAE
About the Poems
by Jill Alexander Essbaum It seems I’m getting back to my formal roots with these poems (have I ever really strayed?) as they all have precise rhythms and are attentive to rhyme. Rhyme is RAD! Rhythm RULEZ! The poem “everywhere a magpie” is after Craig Arnold’s poem “A ubiquity of sparrows.” It’s not a response so much, or even an answer poem. It’s more like a riff. The Diptych and Triptych poems are something I started doing not that long ago. I’ve written several of them, to assorted degrees of success. The title of “She was driven by a thousand desires, a few of them decent” is taken from a tag line to the classic Susan Heyward film, I Want to Live!. (Great damn movie, by the way. Not really relevant to the poem, I just thought it was a helluva line.) I’m very nearly ashamed of the turn of phrase “manly tamps.” But only a little.