Read Kathleen Bonanno's "Slamming Open the Door"

Art based entirely on a singular event, situation or concept for it's emotional impact often runs the risk of being at best gimmicky and at worst exploitative, so it was with some apprehension that I initially approached Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's debut poetry collection "Slamming Open the Door" (Alice James Books, 2009), which chronicles the murder of her daughter Leidy (pronouced "Lady") and the trial that followed.

Yet the concept of utter loss that creates the narrative arc of the book -- an arc as tightly executed as any collection I've read -- is what gives this collection its power, the sheer emotional force of which rivals that of any contemporary literature now available.

Bonanno lives in Oreland, Penn., and teaches English at a nearby high school. She also is a contributing editor of The American Poetry Review, of which her husband David also is an editor. I spoke to Bonanno recently by phone for a newspaper article I was writing in advance of a reading she will be giving at a local college late this month. I was particularly interested in asking her about “Poem About Light,” which is the last poem in the collection but was the first she wrote, just days after her 21-year-old daughter was strangled by an ex-boyfriend.

The poem seems more optimistic, more hopeful than the rest of the collection, and I asked her if there was anything telling about the fact that it was written so soon after the event.

"I think that it's telling about the grief process, which is not simply a solitary walk in the deepest darkness," Bonanno said. "At least for me it wasn't. It was partly that, it was partly about the comfort of the people who surrounded us. It was partly the joy of the memory of her. And somehow, through it all, even the hardest times, I knew that there is always still light in the face of shade. That one doesn't exist without the other."

The poem was read at Leidy's memorial service, and Bonanno read it aloud to Leidy's murderer during his sentencing (he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole).

"The other thing is that was sort of an empowerment poem in the sense that it's basic purpose was to suggest to Joseph Eaddy, Leidy's murderer, that he didn't have the last word," Bonanno said of the poem. "That Leidy by her nature had the last word. That his attempt to make her nonexistent was an impossible feat. The sun will rise tomorrow like it did yesterday."

It may be because my wife and I had our first child -- a daughter -- this past October, and thus I'm more susceptible to the tragic possibility of losing a child, but Bonanno's acutely honest collection had my heart in a Vise-Grip from start to finish. Im fact, I can't remember being so emotionally affected by a collection of poetry.

When toward the end of our interview I asked Bonanno if she found herself continually pulled back to writing about Leidy's murder, she said she doesn't feel pulled to write a "sequel" to the story or another collection about the event, but she does think Leidy will figure into her future poems "in the same way that my most important relationships will figure into my poems in the future. But I'm not called to keep writing that story that way."

Instead she's working on another collection -- the working title is "Oh, Suburbia" -- that's "sort of a consideration of the suburbs and what really goes on here. Sort of the beauty and the horror and the fascination that is the suburbs."

"My intention was to write a book of love poems, sort of love poems to the universe, some of them romantic poems, some of them just poems that were celebratory of life," Bonanno said, laughing. "Turns out, I don't have enough love for the universe to write a full collection, so that’s quickly becoming a chapbook."

Bonanno was interviewed by Terry Gross for Gross' "Fresh Air" program on National Public Radio, and the segment aired on July 29, 2009. Listen to the interview here or read the trascript. You can read poet David Kirby's favorable New York Times review of Bonanno's collection here.

Free Poetry: Ben Mirov's "Collected Ghost"

Print purists can say what they want, but the information-dissemination possibilities offered by the digital age can't be denied. One of the great opportuities offered by the medium of the Internet is free poetry, not only in the form of individual poems, but entire chapbooks and collections as well.

The latest free PDF chapbook I took a liking to is Ben Mirov's "Collected Ghost," recently released by H_NGM_N Books. "Ghost" is an apt term to describe the collection, which consists of 27 poems separated into three fairly distinct sections. The first section is the strongest of the three, with the following sections dissolving into a kind of indifferent ambiguity by the end like a ghost which, as you proceed toward the floor, dissolves into the ether.

Each of the nine poems in the first section reads like a summarization of the poet's day, as in this selection from "Fillmore Ghost": "She arrives and I can't remember her name and / she kisses me. The last three songs are dim. I can't find an ATM. I / throw the poster in the trash. My pants are covered in beer."

The poems are conversational in tone, mostly caught somewhere between free verse poetry and the prose poem, and are full of potent and telling imagery, as in "Same Ghost": "I act like myself at a coffee shop and try not / to shake. My day is a petal of in a glass of vodka."

Elsewhere in the section, the lines are inexplicable yet somehow entirely accessible at the same time, as in "Empty Set": "I can't eat anything that begins with C. I can't run faster than that guy / in my brain. I don't feel like emailing V in Morocco. He's scoring weed / and not eating lamb."

The second section of the collection is titled "Eye, Ghost," and is a series of 10 numbered poems that each consecutively weave into the next. Dominant in this section are form (each poem is 10 lines long and has similar line length) and the replacement of the personal pronoun "I" with the word "Eye," which sadly ends up seeming too much like a gimmick, being little more than a distraction from the rest of the poetry.

The strength of the second section is the various references to lines from the first section, which by the end of the second section ultimately makes one feel at least satisfied that it ties in to the collection somehow. If each poem from the first section seems like a snapshot of the poet's day, the second section is like a photo album that brings them all together.

Yet by the end of the second section one can't help but relate to the poet, who in the first line of the first poem of the series writes, "Eye woke up in a construct."

The eight poems in the third and final section seem like outtakes from the first. They follow the same sort of thematic curve, but are less effective in their execution, the collected impressions seeming more randomly thrown together, as in "Ghost Chapter": "I eat too many eggs at work. / I put too much ketchup on my hash browns. / R gets mad and throws a computer. / He can't brush his teeth."

Ultimately it's a rewarding collection. It's a quick read, and again, it's free.

As far as the poet goes, Mirov is a New York-based, widely published writer who, according to his chapbook bio, won the Diagram/New Michigan Press 2009 Chapbook Contest for his chapbook "I is to Vorticism." He edits the online journal pax americana and is poetry editor of LIT Magazine. He also keeps an interesting blog.