World Class Poetry Blog

Poetry Blog Critique: Meander With Me
20 February 2008, the poet @ 10:20 pm

I suppose at 88 years of age you don’t have much to worry about. That’s the impression I get from reading the memoir-like blog of Mary A. Kaufman. Meander With Me, as it is called, is a nice blend of poetry, philosophy, and creative nonfiction.

Mary’s blog is currently categorized with six categories for her writing:

• Essays
• Opinion
• Poetry
• Stories
• Thoughts
• Uncategorized

She moves about freely and at ease between these categories and a variety of topics from day to day and will often include a bit of commentary before and after her original poetry. A self-avowed atheist, she has lately been on the subject of God, Christians, and faith. While her diatribes may come across as listless rants to the less keen, to me they appear more as a scurry for justification by one who has experienced life from several angles, including the wife of a Mennonite devotee.

While Mary’s arguments against the existence of God are a bit sophomoric (she really says nothing I’ve never heard before), her insights into philosophy, mythology, history, and culture are much more engaging. Unafraid to drop an allusion that might go over the head of an average reader, she provides some erudite insights into life and isn’t afraid to speak her mind as is evident in her poems that address racism and bigotry and other hard subjects. Her poetry, however, is an interesting mix of fine craft and sloppy editing.

I admire Kaufman’s willingness to write about subjects that most people wouldn’t tackle - death, racism, apologia to reason, politics - and her range is remarkable. I get the feeling that she is well read and thinks deeply on these topics before writing about them. But the writing itself is a little raw and needs some honing.

It is evident that, in her poetry, she likes to rhyme. But her rhymes are not sing-song rhymes in the vain of trite iambic pentameter. Rather, she has a tendency to slip into blank verse and she reminds me a little bit of Percy Bysshe Shelley - heady and rhapsodic. The problem is that the blank verse isn’t tight enough. It does at time stumble upon itself and I like the fact that the rhyme is unpredictable most of the time. Her rhymes are more like T.S. Eliot’s Modernist rhymes where there is no set pattern, no predictable abcabc or abab. They look more like a meandering rhyme where a couplet might follow an abab scheme followed by an abcacbba; in other words, the rhyme scheme is not formulaic. But she does have a tendency to use the same style and tone in almost all of her poems.

A little more variation would be nice. Not in subject matter, but in meter and elements of craft. Kaufman also needs to watch cliches. For the most part, her images are original and she does a good job of saying things in a new way, but there are times when the verse is too long and rambling and that’s when she has a tendency to underwrite. Otherwise, I find her verse a bit refreshing and not at all pretentious. Nor is it simple in the sense of being simplistic, though she does keep the poetry simple in terms of uncomplicated and that’s welcome, particularly on a blog that isn’t trying to reach for the atmosphere.

Meander With Me is a fabulous blog with a great theme. Mary Kaufman does indeed meander and her blog is aptly titled, though her meandering is intentional and done with purpose so I don’t count it as a negative. Kaufman has self published a book of poems titled Butterflies and Bumblebees. With some editing, she has the potential to create verse and creative nonfiction that could find its audience.

Visit Mary’s blog, Meander With Me.

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