Friday, March 15, 2013

Four recent books by poet Jeffery Beam



The Broken Flower: Poems
Skysill Press, 2012

Jeffery Beam's The Broken Flower shows him once more to be a master of the precise word. Language cascades down the page with a grace and sense of inevitability that only the true poet can accomplish. Whether focused on a painting or a friend, Beam brings into language a dazzling clarity. He sees the world the way it is.
―Poet, Editor and Publisher Ed Foster

       

The New Beautiful Tendons: Collected Queer Poems 1969-2012
Spuyten Duyvil Books, 2012

These juicy poems, at the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, leave me breathless with their erotic thrust.
―Poet Edward Field

     

MountSeaEden
Chester Creek Press (art books), 2012

Wonderful gray―green black and white poems. As lush as an ocean, as spare as a peak.
―Poet Thomas Meyer

      
Midwinter Fires
Seven Kitchens Press, 2011

Midwinter Fires is Beam at his most minimal and acute, summoning up angels, linking the realms of the heavens, the earthly seasons, and the passions in an intricate and celebratory music that assures us in our dark seasons. We observe a poet of plenitude and abundance confront the supreme season of abnegation and withdrawal. In these pages Jeffery Beam turns negation against itself, ritualizing the world around him, drawing forth, from the lowest moment of the earth’s light, desire and song.
― Poet Joseph Donahue

8 comments:

  1. Dear Marly. Thanks for this - for me, for all, for you. You are the greatest, grandest. A thank to all who take a serious look too. Jeffery

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  2. Thanks, O kind Mr. Beam!

    And here's a poem from Jeffery's new book from Skysill Press. It arrived in my mailbox a few days ago, so I am going to pluck out a poem. Here's the title poem:

    THE BROKEN FLOWER

    For Alexander Gilmore III


    That a broken flower
    could speak or

    a bird's feather
    found forlornly on the path

    tell symbols
    amazes us.

    The last place we would think
    to look

    there in the discarded
    shattered world.

    The petals no
    less lovely still sing

    a loving intention.
    The feather a floating

    memory forever lightened
    by its past.

    The hand which carries them
    the way humans can

    when that which is broken or
    displaced is made repaired,

    renewed. Rediscovered:
    the most perfect flower the most

    perfect feather.
    That the flower

    has no stem only
    confirms it.

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  3. I'm so lucky... I can hear Jeffery's voice as I read these poems, because I have heard him read, many times, in real life. His work is weighty, though it often comes in small packages. Many of his poems have the velocity and precision of an arrow to the heart. The Broken Flower is a case in point.
    Thank you for featuring his work on your blog, Marly.

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  4. Yes, that is lovely! And I could no doubt say the same if only I hadn't been dragged away into the nigh-polar ice! Helas...

    I am hoping that it will be not so much my blog as one belonging to friends and e-friends. But no doubt it will evolve (or die--that also is always an option. But it shows some signs of being useful to people, judging by the notes already received and comments.)

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  5. Marly, thanks for featuring Jeffery. I love this new book--and Midwinter Fires, well, as I told J., it came at just the right time for me, reminding me of the fiery heart at the center of the season. I have posted some features on Jeffery's work on my laureate blog and on my Here, Where I Am blog. You can link to them from this comment, I think???

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  6. You can add hot links--or just leave the addresses and I'll redo them...

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  7. Blast you, Marly Youmans!
    Even I have heard of Jeffery Beam (gosh!)
    And now I need to read more. Blast!


    And thank you.

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  8. Yes, he will suit you, Paul! Particularly his lovely celebrations of nature, I think...

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