This time out, we’re happy to present four poems by Amie Sharp—a poet with perhaps the most appropriate surname I’ve ever heard, given the razor-like crispness of her language. She reminds me a little of Kim Triedman and Peter Bethanis, who have also been Featured Poets here at Atticus Review. Take a look and I’m sure you’ll see why.
For starters, we have “Dark Dream,” a solid narrative poem made even better by Sharp’s flare for language (her sun-streaked hair lank as seaweed…). I also like the seeming ease of her delivery, a rugged accessibility that speaks not just of a given writer’s intelligence but one’s heart and respect for the audience, too.
These are poems of great range, as well. For instance, “Shooter” takes a pretty big risk by tackling a subject matter that most other veteran poets would shy away from; yet Sharp deftly avoids the usual gimmicks that have been known to kill countless socially conscious poems over the years. Speaking of politics, there’s a little of that in “Riverwater” (Dying’s/our destiny, sure, but killing’s/our most stalwart event) but again, its politics given greater dimension by use of lyricism and dark humor.
I think my favorite, though, is “Act V, Scene 3,” a sectioned poem presenting three separate scenes and banking on some pretty risky juxtaposition that totally pays off by managing to pull off what I would have thought impossible: reading it, I feel like I’m encountering Shakespeare for the first time. And any writer who can so quickly counter all those joyless readings of Shakespeare forced upon high school students all over the country is obviously a writer worth following.
SELECTED WORK:
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Thank you for featuring Amie Sharp, a person and a poet deserving of this honor.
Thank you for featuring Amie Sharp. I agree with everything Michael Meyerhofer has so eloquently expressed here. Amie’s poems grip and move me. She has a rare gift of combining precision of language, command of metaphors, and generosity of delivery, and then avoiding easy conclusions and clinching the ending. I’m a huge fan of both the poet and her poems.