Janee J. Baugher

Janee Baugher's poems are often like soft musical lines where the time signature is always bending. But occasionally, the magnet of the muse pulls concretely as in the case when she illustrates the shelves of jars in "Middle Ages Apothecary's Room. in Earthenware":

"vanille______poudre de camomille_____ poudre de...
citrate de fer_ poudre de roses de provin_ gomme..."

There is a narrative whole in the organization of these poems. The whole is fashioned by the three principle sources of material: 1) Poems created in the womb of those transfixing moments face to face with the art ; 2) Poems largely responsible for the narrative scaffolding arising as she journeys from gallery to gallery, buffeted by unexpected encounters; and 3) Pastiches in response to "Through the Looking Glass". This last category gives the reader hints into how this poet goes about the task of "seeing" and performing her craft.

One of the scaffolding poems is entitled, "Salt Specks in my Lap, Pepper on the Run". The poet describes her self-medication during a train ride. Her caesuric lines portray well the breaks in her thoughts, the distraction of a swollen throat, the vibration and clack of the rails.

In "Portrait de L'Artiste", Baugher left-justifies the first line of each stanza providing strong demarcation of ideas and what develops is a punctuation of the motion and violence of and beyond the painting:

"The cool hues overtaking, oscillating. | As you scrutinized the looking glass, |" (and in another stanza) "The acuity | both salvaged and savaged |"

Finally, the poet has made a gallery available of the art works which she is covering. The poems easily stand on their own, but after a number of readings, I did access this gallery. If you have an old monitor as do I, some of the images may not reveal all that is referenced in the poems, and you may wish to do a google images search for a few of these works and thus you may come upon a sharper rendition of a particular work.… (más)