The Heart Is Improvisational

An Anthology in Poetic Form

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Pub Date Sep 01 2017 | Archive Date Nov 29 2017

Description

Poets attribute an array of roles and capacities to the involuntary muscle and catalyst of our storied lives. The heart becomes a repository of erotic and familial love and a sanctuary for memory. In this collection, poets explore the flux of the heart's responses and instigations: the heart's tender overtures, its joyous pulse, its mating call for the other, its changeable temperament, its final tick in freeze-frame. Among the poets featured: Kenneth Sherman, Lorna Crozier, Marilyn Bowering, Roo Borson, Patrick Lane, Charles Bukowski, Rita Dove, Eugénio de Andrade, John Barton, Robyn Sarah, and Mary di Michele.

Poets attribute an array of roles and capacities to the involuntary muscle and catalyst of our storied lives. The heart becomes a repository of erotic and familial love and a sanctuary for memory. In...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781771831864
PRICE $25.00 (USD)

Average rating from 11 members


Featured Reviews

Never has Pascal's saying "The heart has its own reasons which reasons knows not" been as vivid as it was in reading this collection of poems.
I'll have to say that the arrangement and presentation of poems was key in making me understand, love and connect with the poems. The poems begin with a more mechanical theme based on the functionality of the heart and progresses into the emotional and more psychological aspect with a bit f a connection to family and history in the middle. Eva Tihanyi's poem kind of marks the end and beginning of a new phase with It beats. It stops beating. as she gives what she titles The Unabridged History of the Heart.
I received this copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review and reading the poems made my evening!
If you love poetry, poets and poems, then how about reading poems centered around the one organ that we cannot shy away from?

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This is a poetry collection featuring works from a wide variety of authors, all giving their unique perspectives on the most important part of human life—the heart. It was an extremely hit or miss collection for me, and I found it very hard to get into. In general, I tended to prefer the poems that focused on the less tangible, more emotional views of the heart, rather than the technical and clinical depictions. To me, the poems that spoke from essentially a medical perspective felt like reading a biology textbook—albeit a lyrical one—rather than a poetry collection.

All of the writers who contributed are extremely talented; all of the writing was strong and skilled. In my opinion, however, the flow of the writing—both individually and as a whole—was definitely broken up by the ones that focused more on fact than feeling. Of course, not all poetry needs to be abstract and romantic. The freedom to be whatever the writer wants it to be is one of the reasons why this is such a wonderful vehicle for creativity and expression. But for me, I think I just prefer poems that creatively expand on the emotional rather than the physical.

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One of the most inspirational and heartfelt book I have ever read in my life! Thank you NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

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