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
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
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
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
Thanks, O kind Mr. Beam!
ReplyDeleteAnd 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.
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.
ReplyDeleteThank you for featuring his work on your blog, Marly.
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...
ReplyDeleteI 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.)
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???
ReplyDeleteYou can add hot links--or just leave the addresses and I'll redo them...
ReplyDeleteBlast you, Marly Youmans!
ReplyDeleteEven I have heard of Jeffery Beam (gosh!)
And now I need to read more. Blast!
And thank you.
Yes, he will suit you, Paul! Particularly his lovely celebrations of nature, I think...
ReplyDelete