Reviews for Tides of Morning

The average rating for Tides of Morning based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-16 00:00:00 David Bartlett Maybe it's just my blue collar family background crazy-talking me into thinking all these poems are genius - but there you go. The beauty of line work, the creative existential flowering of factory cogs, foundry labor, Cuba, Detroit, Massachusetts..................America. Listen to Ed Ochester in your head: The Miners at Revloc Coal has entered their skin. A fine black salt drifts back into their meals. Every day the mills are fed tiny wafers of their flesh. Gives me chills it does - that the miners have been incorporated into the sacrament of commerce. Many of my favorite poets are in this collection - Edward Hirsch, Philip Levine, Antler, Donald Hall, Jim Daniels - and writers that I don't usually associate with poetry like Gary Soto and Joyce Carol Oates. And, because 3-25 (1911) is the ghastly anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, I'll type up a small offering from Part 2 of Mary Fell's "The Triangle Fire": 2. Among the Dead First a lace of smoke decorated the air of the workroom, the far wall unfolded into fire. The elevator shaft spun out flames like a bobbin, the last car sank. I leaped for the cable, my only chance. Woven steel burned my hands as I wound to the bottom. I opened my eyes. I was lying in the street. Water and blood washed the cobbles, the sky rained ash. A pair of shoes lay beside me, in them two blistered feet. I saw the weave in the fabric of a girl's good coat, the wilted nosegay pinned to her collar. Not flowers, what I breathed then, awake among the dead. Clearly, the theme of this anthology is the working lives of human beings, mostly gritty but often (and surprisingly) beautiful and elegant. The collection feels very 1940s, but many of the poems were written in the 70s and 80s. I'm not an expert on the state of the nation, but it seems to me that the country's factories are in the process of winding down, smokestacks are dormant. Poems on sweatshops and picket lines no longer seem so apt, but change the "mill's black heart" to corporate exploitation and you might still identify with the blood loss and suffering of working men and women. Better yet, apply globally and understand that "behind every device of recreation and leisure," "behind every laborsaving device" is a factory slave (Antler).

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-27 00:00:00 Anna Hester One of my 2012 reading resolutions was to read more poetry; I haven't followed through, though. Even with this poetry anthology, I skipped through it, mostly reading the poems that grabbed me immediately or concerned Western Pennsylvania. That said, I enjoyed the poems that I read. The following was my favorite: Field Trip to the Rolling Mill, 1950 Sister Monica has her hands full timing the climb to the catwalk so the fourth-graders are lined up before the next heat is tapped, "and no giggling no jostling, you monkeys! So close to the edge!" She passes out sourballs for bribes, no liking the smile on the foreman's face, the way he pulls at his cap, he's not Catholic. Protestant madness, these field trips, this hanging from catwalks suspended over an open hearth. Sister Monica understands Hell to be like this. If overhead cranes clawing their way through the layers of dark air grew leathery wings and flew screeching at them, it wouldn't surprise her. And the three warning whistle blasts, the blazing orange heat pouring out liquid fire like Devil's soup doesn't surprise her - she understands Industry and Capital and Labor, the Protestant trinity. That is why she trembles here, the children clinging to her as she watches then learn their future. -Patricia Dobler From the Notes, I learned that Patricia Dobler was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio and lives in Pittsburgh. I still want to read more poetry and have several others on my shelves. But I can't help recalling Sam Hazo's comment during a reading, that poetry is meant to be heard.