This group of poems is further outside my corridor of accessibility and somehow darker. My personal foible is to like humour in my poetry. Too much blood. ( )

Ordinary Miracles by Erica Jong begins with an introduction by the poet herself in which she talks about how poems have become “the stepchild of American letters,” especially since the novel has become so popular. She further goes on to discuss the duality of being a poet and a novelist and how it is often considered “promiscuous.” She has thrown those adjectives aside to embrace her duality and to make the most of both genres, with the themes of one informing and flourishing in the other. “I am always hoping that someone will recognize the poet and novelist as two aspects of the same soul — but alas, the genres are reviewed by two different groups of people, so no one ever seems to notice this in print,” she says. (page xvi) It’s funny that she would have this concern in the 1980s, and I wonder what she would think about blogs today that review both novels and poetry.

Erica Jong’s collection is broken into four parts: Fetal Heartbeat; The Breath Inside the Breath; The Heart, The Child, The World; Straw in the Fire. From these section titles alone, readers can tell that the poems are likely to generate an arc from birth to death.

Read the full review on June 15: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/06/ordinary-miracles-by-erica-jong.html ( )