I got this book two years ago at ABC Books, and it stayed on the side table for browsing during football games in 2021 and 2022, but I didn’t make it through them, mostly because I kind of gave up on browsing through books during the football games. I’m in a bit of a spot, gentle reader, as I have read fewer than 40 books so far this year, and I’ve always counted on the football browsing to make up some ground in my annual quest for 100 books read at the end of the year kind of like how churches expect to make up an outsized portion of their budgets during Christmas week. Since I gave up the habit of browsing during football games, and we’ve given up any television provider that carries football games, I won’t be doing much browsing at all in the autumn and winter.
At any rate, onto Earth Games. Well, now, this might be Grandmother Poetry: The Next Generation. Blurbs on the back come from grandchildren, and one of them indicates Grandma Ruth is 80. My Internet research (a quick search) found an obituary that aligns with that, so Ruth Loring might well have been a grandmother when these poems came out.
However, unlike the Grandmother poetry that I read from earlier eras, these poems do not often deal with home, family, and Jesus nor do they end with rhymes. Instead, they read more like the instapoetry of Rupi Kaur and Pierre Alex Jeanty in having short lines, stream of consciousness, and abstractions rather than images.
Here’s a taste:
Zapped
Round and round and round I go
my life an endless zero
forever o-ing money.
Oh oh oh!
Then owe owe owe.
Oh…
woe.
Credit card junkie
and all for naught.
More wordplay than poetry, and like I criticize (most) instapoetry, it has a few good moments scattered throughout but it’s mostly for the amusement of the poet herself.
