Welcome to today’s stop on Laura Grossman’s blog tour! The Sighing of the Winter Trees is her first collection of poetry.
I liked these poems. I didn’t love them, though; I think because I couldn’t get inside of them. I tend to love poetry that takes something ordinary and simple and turns it around or views it through a different prism. Grossman’s poetry is more basic than that. Here is an example:
The Fish Tank
The fish tank
Full of fish
With a cheerful
Light on
Glowing bright in the night.
Simple and interesting, but not very deep. Still, the book flows well and the poems are short and concise. The major recurring themes are seasons, holidays, purple, mystery, flowers, sunsets, waiting, and death. Interestingly, Grossman uses little to no punctuation, which I think helps the poems flow.
In sum, the subtitle “Poetry to Warm Those Cold Winter Chills” is pretty accurate. Despite several poems about summer, this would be a good collection to curl up with a blanket and hot chocolate on a cold winter night. I’ll conclude with my two favorite poems from the collection (one coincidentally about hot chocolate):
Summer
Summer is here
Again like a
Merry go round and
Round
Pink cotton candy
By the beach is
Dandy and the summer
Days blossom full heartedly
Standing by the
Beach
Towards summer’s
End
Watching the lonely
Seagulls
And the salty
Water tears
Of “summer goodbye”
A Hot Cup of Autumn
The dark chocolatey taste
Of cocoa
On an autumn day
Robust, warm and
Joyous in every way
A hot cup of autumn
Beside the fall leaves
Crackling and the orange
Sleepy sun of autumn
Yawning, trying to come
Out someway, beside the
Brown leaves crackling
And a cup of autumn
Warmth on an autumn
Day
The Sighing of the Winter Trees, by Laura Grossman 
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{ 3 comments }
Hmmm. I gave poetry a try once. I was pretty good.
It’s always seemed to me that poetry was a way to make writing about abstract subjects much more cryptic and difficult (John Dunn is a perfect example). So I’m not sure what to make about poems about hot chocolate.
I’m not savvy at poems but I can live with the ones you have cited, so simple and ordinary. :)
Where has the Bluestockings Society gone?
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