Dirt Sandwich

By LINDA ANNAS FERGUSON

Linda Annas Ferguson knows-to borrow Wallace Stevens' formulation-that "Death is the mother of beauty." She proclaims in one of her poems, "Everything / is drenched with endings, alive with dying."... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0982441665
• ISBN13: 9780982441664
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Press 53
• Length: 94 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

From literateyourself.blogspot.com

The following is an excerpt of a reveiw for "How to Forgive," a poem included in the collection of DIRT SANDWICH. HOW TO FORGIVE reprinted with permission of the publisher Take a sip of wine, let it worry your mouth. Open up the dirty window. When moonlight is weeping on the lawn, scatter crackers and bread crumbs, scream, throw stones at the stars. Imagine another love. Throw stones at the stars, and bread crumbs. Scream on the lawn, scatter crackers. When moonlight is weeping, open up the dirty window. Let it worry your mouth, take a sip of wine. Forgiveness. If ever there were a word worthy of poetry it is forgiveness. Not only a theme, but an emotion, a state of being, a point of reckoning and ruin. We are often libel to do more damage to ourselves in efforts towards reprieve than the original transgressor could ever do. There is a circular, repetitive method to forgiveness, and the greater the transgression, the longer the round-about to absolution. Linda Annas Ferguson's "How to Forgive" from her collection DIRT SANDWICH recognizes this circular process and takes it as its form. The third stanza repeats the first stanza in reverse, and turns the voice from melancholy to manic and back again. Ferguson's structure brilliantly builds a bridge to theme. Ferguson uses emotive verbs like "worry" and "open" and "scream", identifying forgiveness as an active state of emotion. The verb "imagine" is the anchor of the second stanza's sole line, implicating the leagues our minds travel upon reflection of the past and, horror above all, the future. With a comma here, exchanged with a period there, the poem slides from anxiety to anger to an exhausted resolution. There is a methodical, deliberate rhythm in the alliteration of the first stanza's verse "scatter crackers and breadcrumbs, scream..." while the third stanza's period within,"Throw stones at the stars, and bread crumbs. Scream..." leaves the rhythm broken and gives the words new cadence and thus new portent. Objects and images also transform and play with duality. The image of sipping wine heralds the poem. Wine is an agitator creating anxiety in the first line. The open window of the first stanza sets the voice free and gives us a chance at cathartic expression. The open window of the third stanza invites a cleansing, reflective resolution with the speaker rinsing their worried mouth with wine in the poem's closing line. "How to Forgive" is a highly successful poem. All the elements are brought together to create the most elusive and critical of poetic desires, heart. Read more of my reveiws of Press 53 titles at [...].