“The Poetry Game” Yields Intriguing Results: Frog Pond Review Issue 4, Edited by Misha Solomon

Titled “The Poetry Game,” Frog Pond Review Issue 4 offers 18 poems, several of them inspired by “a game of close listening.” Ten poets met to participate in the Game. “Gamemaster” Misha Solomon describes the process this way: “The first poem was brought to the Game. The second poem was written during the Game. The third poem was brought to the Game.” And so on.

The key question for readers, of course, will be “what was the result?” I found the “poetry game” to be an intriguing concept, and was eager to answer that question for myself.

The “game” resulted in an interesting linkage between pairs of poems, in the form of echoing elements. For example, the prose poem “Wild blueberries” by Olive Andrews includes the lines “In the winter you sent me a video of the snow falling from your kitchen window, the trimming white and scalloped like gingerbread frosting.” “timing,” by Rose Maloukis, throws back the lines:

                        powdered sugar
soft as the falling snow    dust
leaving its lacelike patterns
on a warm gingerbread cake

Rose Maloukis’ “Country Song” begins:

country song plays in the back of my mind
no audible    words    barely any sound
only the faint soft chords of misery

“Yesterday Drove a Ford F150” by James Hawes starts off:

Because it is in that music, with
its longing and oxidation I
am induced to recollect what
I fought so hard to forget.

While the pairs of poems make an interesting counterpoint to one another, the individual entries also contain some striking lines. Again, back to “Wild blueberries,”: “Now it’s August and the air is preserved in a brine. You comb the beach for sea glass and I close my eyes. The tide moving in and out. The rocks rolling across your palm.”

“Woman at a Window” by Meryem Yildiz begins,

in a way, we are all standing in, looking out.
we are all tilting to the left of the frame,
blood orange breath pasted on blue green
walls,  . . .

I read the collection in mid-March, and the first lines of “Trap Door” by André Babyn captured my feelings about the previous month perfectly: “February passed quickly / I felt it sleepwalk through the dusty hallway.”

After reading “The Poetry Game” issue, I’d gladly read another similarly structured edition. The linkage between pairs of poems was intriguing, and the collection as a whole offered some captivating images. Kudos to the poets and the Gamemaster.

Misha Solomon assembled ten Montreal poets and has them play a game, the result is this fine issue of Frog Pond Review!

With new work by Olive Andrews, André Babyn, Sarah Burgoyne, Malaea Ergina, James Hawes, Rose Maloukis, Sasha Manoli, Jade Palmer, Dustin Ariel Segura-Suarez, and Meryem Yildiz!

Publisher: Turret House Press (Fall 2023)

Lisa Timpf

Website

Lisa Timpf is a retired HR and communications professional who lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Her writing has appeared in New Myths, Star*Line, The Future Fire, Triangulation: Habitats, and other venues. Lisa’s speculative haibun collection, In Days to Come, is available from Hiraeth Publishing. You can find out more about Lisa’s writing at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/.