Saturday Review: “About Their Business, Two Contrasting Poets” a review by Jim Clark in NCLR Online Spring 2024 of Sam Barbee’s poetry collection Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022) and Michael Loderstedt’s poetry collection Why We Fished (2023)
Clark teaches about the language of poetry through this review. He uses Loderstedt’s title poem and Barbee’s “almost-title” poem to delve deeply into poem construction, word choice, and musicality. About Fished, Clark remarks, “Loderstedt is a visual artist, as well as a poet, and Why We Fished contains twenty-five black-and-white photographs that complement his poems giving the book a documentary feel, a sort of illustrated poetic memoir.”
“Apertures of Voluptuous Force shows a talented, sophisticated poet at the height of his powers, but also still dutifully honing his craft.” Clark writes about Barbee, a former NC Poetry Society president. Practice and growth persist with creative work.
Read the entire review in the Online Spring 2024 issue out now! And order from the publisher or from Bookshop.org.
