Jane Anderson Jones

23. Florida in Poetry : A History of the Imagination by Jane Anderson Jones & Maurice O'Sullivan (editors), (1995, 285 pages, read Jan 25 – Apr 30)

This is one of those moments where I really regret my inability to write proper reviews this year. I read this for so long, a few poems a day, that it became part of my daily routine. I even hugged the book when I finished because it had become so familiar and I wasn’t ready to let it go.

To attempt a proper review, JA Jones and M O’Sullivan put together, through 1995, an anthology covering Florida poetry through its history, from Spanish and non-Spanish explorers and early almost-settlers through songs and chants, through Wallace Stevens and so on up to a long section on contemporary poetry. I read the early parts along with Marjorie Stoneman Douglas’s River of Grass and the echoes of the history and poetry of those times together was enchanting. The contemporary section was the best, high quality stuff of great variety.

On personal level I somehow got a lot out of the 1930’s poems, connecting them with the time period of my grandparent’s marriage in Miami Beach. Several contemporary poems reached me, but I was surprised how moved I was by the Cuban poets Yvonne Sepia and Ricardo Pau-Llosa. Other authors I highlighted include Donald Justice, Judith Berke, Van k. Brock, Alison Kolodinsky, Richard Wilbur, and especially especially Enid Shomer who has several mesmerizing poems within.

2011
http://www.librarything.com/topic/104839#2746640… (meer)