Book Review: Field Notes on Language and Kinship by Tyler Chadwick

Title: Field Notes on Language and Kinship
Author: Tyler Chadwick
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Paper copy

I've been writing reviews for days now, and I've saved my review of Field Notes on Language and Kinship until the end, primarily because I'm not sure how to classify it. In the book, Chadwick responds to, or is inspired by, many of the poems in Fire in the Pasture, the poetry anthology he edited. This is a really creative book, with essays, poems, literary criticism, and thoughts on life thrown in the mix. And by "thrown in," I think I mean, "carefully considered." This book is such a delightful mix of things, and it shows how one work of art can work to inspire readers to create others.

Book Review: Fire in the Pasture, edited by Tyler Chadwick

Title: Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets
Author: Tyler Chadwick
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Paper Copy

I'm teaching Literature of the LDS at BYU Salt Lake this semester. When I agreed to teach, I felt pretty confident in my ability to talk about essays, short stories, novels, film, and even drama, but I knew that I'd need some help with poetry. I asked friends for recommendations on what text I should use, and the universal response was Tyler Chadwick's Fire in the Pasture, which is an anthology containing several hundred poems by modern Mormon poets. Several hundred poems still felt daunting, and since the world of Mormon Lit is pretty small, I took a chance and emailed Chadwick, explaining my situation, and within a day, he emailed back with a list of the poems he'd recommend I use with my students. We had a great discussions about baby blessings, baptisms, missionary experiences, teaching Primary, laundry, canning fruit, wedding night jitters, and boob jobs. This collection is full of great poems that my students found relatable and funny and meaningful, and I can't wait to spend more time with it.

Book #87: Ballistics

Title: Ballistics
Author: Billy Collins

Is it cheating to close out the year with a 100-page book of poems? I hope not. Eddie and I have loved Billy Collins's poems for the last decade, and I was excited that a new volume came out just in time for Christmas. Sure, there are some misses, but definitely enough hits to make it worth the sticker price. In fact, since joining the Segullah staff, I feel like it's my civic duty to buy more works of poetry, especially good poetry (I'm not sure that my poet friends would consider Collins good poetry, but I like him).

My favorite from this volume? (detail)