American Girl

Rating:
Summary: This is a lovely snowy thing
Review: Great fun in this book of modulated and in some ways midwest-obsessed poetry. The great trick about this book is that it is both accessible and heady, experimental but not obnoxiously so. We see plenty of winter herein, and plenty of play with gender (as the title suggests, as the blurbs suggest). I am ordering more. I suggest you do too.

Rating:
Summary: I liked it so much I bought one for a friend!
Review: It took me several decades to understand that a personal library or even a society could not be complete without volumes of poetry. Most excellent poets are hard to find while they are still alive and frequently not very prolific. Poetry is very private, immediate and transcendent. It also requires that people who love and understand poetry must support the efforts of poets they enjoy. I enjoyed this volume in the same way I love Whitman,Stevens,Dickinson, Pound or even Bly. Generally I prefer supporting live poets when I am able.
"American Girl" is an odd collection(almost a sampling tease!) of very good, very different poems. They pull you in and like all writing-invite one's introspection and wonderment. These poems are personal, lucid and haunting. Some poets know how to use language without letting it use them. Cory is such a poet-she holds out a phrase knowing full well it doesn't quite define something that happened to her that she didn't fully understand-in the first place. Cynie Cory knows the truth of life without being self-referential. True life and true love is a mystery. Should that prevent any of us from trying to hold it and share it with a friend?
I was struck by the personal, fluid mastery of English used by Cynie Cory holding forth on many truthful glimpses of reality tucked so obviously in her poet's quiver. Sharing poetry or "discovering" a poet can be fraught with peril. No such problem the this volume of Cynie Cory's it rings clearly like a bell. Like a writer who has found her voice. Her use of language contains no mistakes as what is vague or uncertain was meant to be.
Here's a few of her lines-

"If I live to touch her, I will cure the cold.
It's common, how you maximize forgiveness
like a shortcut to the store."

Clear, focused and open to other insertions or even completions but left pulling possibles out of the reader. Enter a "moment of the poet" and step out of your life for a breath of her's.
I have limited myself to a lifetime limit of 50 volumes of poetry and this is one is on the shelf. I am happy I discovered it.