I’m challenging myself to write about poetry and short fiction that I didn’t write. Not so much to critique, but rather to notice form and structure. And subject matter. I tend to understand meaning by creating more words. Articulation continues to move as a becoming and the memory of ruptures revisited in that moment. Sometimes the memory floats and documenting it with words, film, or drawing isn’t a priority as much. The memory of those moments can bring back the sensory experiences, and that’s what I tend to explore in my own work.
Right now, I’m eager to pull back to the text, and pay attention to the thickness of the poets who create sensory experiences with words. A different way of understanding the many forms the text can take. None of these reviews are AI-driven, and is intended to give one human’s considerations about poetics of the early 21st century, and sometimes before. I’ll match a song to it, one from when the book was released. Sometimes I’ll focus on one poem in the book, and other times I’ll review as a whole.
The first review
The first review focuses on a chapbook ‘I Wrote this Poem” by Cindy St. John released by Salt Hill Journal. Its cover of hand-drawn elements on natural paper shows the sun and the moon, a fish that spans the front and back cover, and the sea. Michael Burkard’s illustrations show expressive and warmth in the hand drawn elements. Many of the poems are set in New York City, a place where you can forget all three exist when you’re going from the middle of Queens to the middle of Manhattan.
Much of the poetry captures micro-moments in a home or in public space. ‘I never write any poems while driving a car’ caps off a poem while she captures the safety talk by the bus driver.
“I never write any poems while driving a car”
I Wrote this Poem, Cindy St. John
Other moments include overseeing t-shirts and outfits with branding and slogans, and lamenting about boat desires while scrolling through Instagram. Another reflects on an unexpected shared understanding about the brightness of light in a coffee shop. After a flight, the movements and rewards that come from a bag check also have an excess to examine underneath, even if it’s not fully knowable in the moment.
The poems at the end are the reaction with a distinct sensation. The tight flash paragraph reads as personal recounts and event the writing process. The utilitarian use of color in an art gallery invites a sharper connection with the vibrancy of the city beyond the gallery walls on a gray day –
"Mostly when writing this poem I was not thinking about the art or the gallery, but the city and its colors and the sidewalks:
on either side of your thin eyelids
you see yellow'
Reading this in 2026, the poems reflect an optimism in the ordinary, even if there’s a silent questioning of the structures that uphold daily life.
Connective Cube 
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