Susan Comninos is a freelance journalist that lives in New York and writes mainly poetry, and has won a Yehuda Halevi Poetry Competition, which was a competition named after an influential Spanish and Jewish poet. Her writing is very advanced and also sometimes in a very religious manner. One of the lines of the poem Deconstruction Workers that I enjoyed deciphering was “till the holly’s left / hanging, anfractuous”, which also was a part of a poem that used great enjambment as well. In Beached, or Dementia, Comninos creates a very vivid imagery through feelings and seemingly unrelated items, without even telling details in the slightest. The lines “for tsimmes… seaboiled soul”, all seemed to have a rapid-fire style of poetry that is more free and quickly flowing without bounds. In a lot of her poems, there is also a repeating theme of water, the ocean, or seafood and sea creatures. In some of her writing, she even uses different languages, which is perhaps from her background, such as Yiddish and Hebrew, which adds to a sensation of being lost in the image of the poem. One example of this is in Pecan, Rodef, Clam where, even in the title, there is a Hebrew word “Rodef”, meaning a fetus posing a threat to its mother’s life, as well as “like a clam’s / clipped momser”, where momser is Yiddish for illegitimate child. In lieu of the vast and daring metaphors that Comninos uses, a final metaphor I found very interesting was the seeming comparison between a person and delicious food in Italian for You, with the lines “what’s known to melt… oh, delicious descent.”
One question I have for poetry is whether there is a “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong” way with poetry and if there is a “better” or “worse”.
Another question I have would be how writing poetry, especially free verse such as Comninos’, affects writing essays and vice versa.
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