Poetry

Jason E. "Jay" Walker was raised in Cranston, a suburb at the southern border of Providence, RI. He's never been interested in anything but the arts and humanities - entertaining, educating, inspiring, moving, and connecting (with) people - and everything he's done with his life is to pursue his lifelong dream of success in those fields. He was first alternate for the Providence Poetry Slam(TM) team in 1999 and has performed in and/or hosted poetry events throughout the RI area. He's also an established actor in RI independent film and semi-professional theater. He currently lives in Hopedale, MA, but he plans to one day live in warmer climes and travel the world.

In some old prints and paintings, the chemically unstable nature of red pigments causes the color to fade over time. The fugitive red we find in Karen Donovan's first collection of poems could well be the hue of a lost home. With intelligence and wit, Donovan charts the unchartable, hunting down evidence, markings, odd collections of voices, the outlines of a beautiful but elusive ruin. Donovan is well equipped for her task. Her tools are the microscope, the telescope, the Secchi disc, the leaf blower, the V-8 engine, the enthymeme, the sonogram, prayer, analogy, a jar of pickled eggs. Her fellow travelers are the hatchling spider, the bee, the woolly bear, the slime mold, shad swimming upstream, mud swallows, stray dogs, the drunk, the chemotherapy patient. Her quest takes her from an Amtrak bar car to a hawk hospital to a post office in Tuscaloosa. Along the way she invokes a host of named guardians, including Tycho Brahe, Einstein, Athena, Victor Lazslo, Leopardi, and Socrates. The result is a collection of poems that blends observation and memory in surprising and original ways.

These poems, which examine the spiritual as well as the psychological effects of being a Christian, offer an amalgam of diverse yet related influences: John Donne's "Holy Sonnets"; Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H.; and Emily Dickinson's "Behind me--dips Eternity--." Another significant source may also be apparent: the sonnet sequences of such Renaissance poets as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and William Shakespeare. However, although the poems in Galactic Pilgrim generate a sense of thematic sequence, and although--composed of octets with variable rhyme schemes--they proceed in the same stanzaic form, they are, most decidedly, not sonnets. Rather, they are, as samples of formal poetry, what their author prefers to call either "triads" (since each poem contains three stanzas) or "quaternals" (a coinage that underscores the role of the reader as the fourth component, the co-creative entity, that responds to, and intertwines with, each triadic structure). All in all, reflecting key concepts from Jungian psychology and the new physics, these patterned lyrics seek to unfold--through form no less than through content--a unified and coherent philosophic vision steeped in the model life of the Christian Redeemer.

Johnny Flaherty's latest book Gimme Liberty I Can Smell ! is a bold collection of neobeat poetry homaging a motley array of heroes. It's a maverick's manifesto that promotes "individualism" in a world enamored with collectivism. It promotes "freedom" in a society that values wealth and power above all else. And it promotes "pacifism" in a country waging perpetual war. Nevertheless, the author is undaunted by this challenge, believing that "to keep a flame burning" is a worthy goal in itself. With the ease of an old-school bard, Johnny blends storytelling with unflinching social commentary spiced with dry wit, satire, and paradox. At times, he plays the devil's advocate, and on occasion turns history on its head. His tone is often existential, while his outlook is optimistic, encouraging readers to acquire a taste for unflavored truth. His poems explore many ways liberty is experienced and enjoyed; then, too, how it is so often repressed. Neil Dale's freewheeling illustrations, combining whimsy with drama, augment the book's spirit. And from the poem of the old lady on a park bench: "Life necessitates courage !"