Harping On: Poems, 1985-1995

This is part of an experiment for me. I didn't know anything about Kizer except that she contributed to anthology of translations of Horace's Odes that I recently read. This is a later collection of hers. The poetry is much more about story and its impact than form, which tends to be free form, and which she seems to want to be even freer. Her poems go a on few pages, read a little like a micro-fiction. They are compressed, meaningful, easy to read and satisfying. They aren't super quotable. I enjoyed her quieter feminism, her translations, which are very free and sometimes irreverent, and her awareness of her time and place. It was a nice sample of and introduction to Kizer.

One of my favorite poems, called American Beauty, is a tribute show more to Ann London, the main promoter of the ERA amendment in the 1970's and a friend of Kizer's, who passed away in the 1970's of breast cancer. She also has a poem called Anniversaries, with references to the novel of same name by [[Uwe Johnson]]. Like Johnson's novel, she writes about living on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, and like Johnson, she captures the various shocked responses to the assassination of JFK in 1963. American Beauty can be found online in several places, including here: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/american-beauty-0

2025
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I've spent the last several years on a quest to discover new poets, and Kizer is one of the best I've found. Her appeal to me is in her radical leftist view of the world and her erudite use of literary references. I also found her free form of translation very interesting. If you like slightly formal poetry that's about big world issues, give her a try.