Book Review, Denny JA: Fang Yin's Handkerchief, #BestSellerNo1 Kindle Poetry Book New poem genre from Moslem World? For public in general this is old news. A new comer poet in literature world managed to achieve the First rank for the Best Selling poetry book in Amazon Kindle Store. His book sold more than those written by world legend poets such as Shakespeare, Kahlil Gibran, Jalaluddin Rumi.
Nonetheless, for literature observers, this is like a first light in the new horizon; the birth of new poetry genre, essay poem that combines the beauty of a poem and academic research with footnotes. This new genre is not written by a poet, but an activist who wants to introduce sensitive social issues in his country, discrimination. Indeed the readers love it.
This new genre is shaped from a country with the biggest Moslem population in the world: Indonesia. Denny JA is not a poet, but an activist, and he wrote a love story with the setting of racial riot in 1998. This riot has introduced Indonesia to the new era of democracy.
Respond to Criticism Reading unique poems written by Denny JA reminds me of John Barr’s carping judgment on the current development of poetry. In 2006, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, published an article written by John Barr, Chairman of Foundation of Poetry.Entitled “American Poetry in New Century”; this article is a harsh criticism to the present development of poetry in the United States. However this reproach also addressed the poetry development in the whole world. According to John Barr, poetry is almost impossible to understand.
The poetry writing already reached the stagnant point which means it has not changed for decades. There is a huge gap between the readers and the poetries. The poets are engrossed in their imagination, or only reacted to other poet. They secluded themselves and no longer