About the Poems - ES
About the Poems
by Elizabeth Savage A couple of years ago after a reading with my old friend Ellen McGrath Smith, Ellen remarked that my poetry had become "much more emotionally direct." Although I did not say so out loud, my reaction was, "Oh god, I hope not." These five poems, in very different ways, result from my effort to confront directly emotional territory I've skillfully avoided most of my poetry-writing life, namely love, the spookiest of all emotions, in some of its most poetically dangerous kinds: love of divinity, parent, child, work, and self.