Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2022
Review: Catena Poetica: An International Collaboration
Reviewed by Dan Carpenter
Title: Catena Poetica: An International Collaboration Authors: Flor Aguilera, Joyce Brinkman, Gabriele Glang, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda Year: 2022 Publisher: Finishing Line Press
What could be more congenially cosmopolitan than a five-course feast of the senses? Four poets representing three nations submit what they proclaim as an original answer in the form of a new chapbook of collaborative work that challenges each of them to up the enticement and elevate the conversation. Catena Poetica brings together Flor Aguilera of Mexico, GermanAmerican Gabriele Glang, former Virginia poet laureate Carolyn KreiterForonda and former Indiana poet laureate Joyce Brinkman in the joint production of five groupings of interrelated poems under headings that serve as a kind of sensory Esperanza: Color, Spice, Music, Water, Clouds. The titles are metaphorical, mythological, historical, philosophical, spiritual. But first and always, they mean what they say. Music is an onomatopoetic extravaganza of pounding drums, mothers’ hums, rattling seeds and “people / breathing long before cathedral organs / pumped air through golden pipes.” Spice with its verbal bazaar of “sweet paprika” and “fragrant waves of clove” and “parsley, rosemary / and thyme” beckons the (older?) reader to bring the page or screen up close for a whiff à la the mimeograph sheets of school days. Clouds invites us to
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