BONJOUR RATING: 56 (16 out of 29) (I love this completely arbitrary rating.)

Here’s my top 5 poems from July.  This is of course subject to change as the wind blows, but this is what I picked this morning.  I’d be curious to hear what you liked?  Is there one poem that really stands out?  Let me know about it.  I’ll be posting a new poem later today.
5 poems of interest from July (listed in posting order)

A “How ya doin’?”
Bird Poop Window
Defining Normal: Advice to a Newly Married Couple
The Distraction of Blogs
Ninja Abs

Here’s a list of all the poems published in July.
*In Decisions
*The Opera Tonight
The Fall of the Gladiator Hand
*A “How ya doin’?
*Joys of Parenthood
Awkward Family Photos
*The Distraction of Blogs
*Bird Poop Rainbow
The Bearded Food-Fighter Talking Snack
Japanese Beetles Sucked
*Defining Normal: Advice to a Newly Married Couple
*This vehicle will truly get me far
Newsprint vs. The iphone
*Encouraging Ventriloquism
When Memories Stay In-Line
Turn-Around Time
*Reader’s Interaction
*Depressed Lawn
*Potential-Rain Delay
Count to Twelve
Digital Photo Etiquette
*Spiritual Communion
A Classic Dinner
*Vending Machine
*Ninja Abs
Mall Walk
*Elevator Ride
Toilet Paper Roll
Before My Children Get up

What’s a Real-Life Review?

BONJOUR RATING: 33 (12 out of 37)

DISTRACTIONS: Reading in the dark while trying to get kids to sleep

“The world does not need words.” Is the first sentence of the first line of the first poem in this collection.  I’m a sucker for a good poem about the craft of words since I love them so much.  I was immediately intrigued and ignored my children for a moment, allowing myself to enjoy reading poems again.

Failure would soon follow though.  No, I mean literally, a couple pages later Dana Gioana introduces us to Failure.   This poem calls you and your children failures but pulls it off without being too self-deprecating by introducing the failure of failing.  A successfully-written complication.

I soon found myself reading in a darkly lit room saying shush to my children every couple of minutes.   That might explain why not much could measure up to failure until page 51 when I joined a former loving couple at a table for some conversation about one of them being engaged.  I find a love triangle as The Corner Table is immediately joined by two more “love” poems and finish up the book finding poems of interest on about every other page.

Curriculum vitae was also nestled in these pages with a beautiful simplicity that can only be contained in a six-line poem that requires more words to complement it than it required of itself when it was originally written.

Poems of Interest
Words
Failure
Entrance
At the Water Front Café
Curriculum Vitae
Corner Table
Long Distance
My Dead Lover
Homage to Valerio Magrelli : V.
Accomplice
For Sale
Summer Storm

Additional Links of Note:

Dana Gioia  http://www.danagioia.net/

Graywolf Press  http://www.graywolfpress.org/