Poet Jeffery Beam
Reviews
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From reviews of THE BEAUTIFUL TENDONS: UNCOLLECTED QUEER POEMS
1969–2007:
These juicy poems, at the intersection of spirituality and sexuality,
leave me breathless with their erotic thrust."
—Poet Edward Field
Poetry is an enrapturing process that intensifies the discovery of
experience & only what arises out of this urgency produces utterance
that is distinctive & honest. Here in these sinewy acts shine the
mobilities of praise, the delight in the body's beauty & its
surprises,
the wonder of beholding energy & love. The poems are glimpses of
sensual epiphanies, lightning flashes on the dramatic heart of event,
memories from the crux of dream. Here are secrets that lie within the
adventures of desire. Pursue them, & participate in the pleasure.
—The late James Broughton
Jeffery Beam's The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems
1969–2007
proves what many of us have known for some time: he is one of our most
important & valuable poets. Beam's amazed eyes in his own enchanted
part
of the forest he dwells in in North Carolina are as wondrously seeing as
Eudora Welty's own gaze at the beloved flowers she carefully tended,
along with her mother, in her own front yard down in Jackson,
Mississippi. Within & beyond his garden of verses, Beam's poems are
as
stirring & radiant as Eudora's own prose. This is clearly evident in
this batch of uncollected works that alight on the mysteries of his
garden but also ranges beyond it into other wide fields, including a
richly alive two-spirit consciousness, sensuous & penetrating of
body
&
soul conjoined in song, "simple praise-songs ... simply songs of
pleasure." No matter what he touches on, it is always observed with
Beam's precise & careful eye in spare, direct language that's as
fresh
as a sunrise & the sweet air of morning. Read these poems &
brighten
your day. I guarantee it.
—Novelist & memoirist Michael Rumaker
All children should hear you, the universe glistening. The spirit of
poetry & nature & Eros are carried forth into & for the future.
You
are
one of the poets I feel closest to - kindred spirit in love with the
natural world & kindred spirit of awe & affection to our own kind.
Feather to feather, wing to wing.
—Poet & environmentalist Antler
The gift to the reader is this: an accomplished, graceful writer
sharing
work from over thirty years, poems that sing from the heart of desire.
Poetry of contemplation, lived experience and Passion; Beam's voice is
joyful, carnal, and worshipful. "Take it, / and take it gladly " he
exhorts. We are made richer by accepting.
—Poet, writer, & activist Andy Quan
The lyrics of Beautiful Tendons do what poems ought to do. They brim
with melancholy and love, a poignant tenderness and a delicious
eroticism, the beauties of humanity and the natural world. They combine
thoughtful and evocative depths with a pellucid simplicity of phrasing.
Like Whitman's work, they celebrate both the body and the soul. What a
luxury and a delight to have so many of Jeffery Beam's poems in one
handsome volume.
—Poet, fiction writer, memoirist, & activist, Jeff Mann
The Beautiful Tendons is a collection of award winning poems by Jeffery
Beam. The poems are lyrical and metaphysical as well as sensual and
dramatic. There is melancholia and love in the poetry and they are both
tender and erotic brimming with sensuousness. Beam's poetry is of both
the body and the soul. Beam characterizes himself as "a Queer poet,
child-like, saintly," seeing "the Kingdom of Heaven in every leaf, every
drop of blood spilled, every meal, every automobile, every homeless
person's cardboard box, every bright mansion, and every bird song. The
Queer-spirit sees All-in-All in every act of love." With a
self-description like this, it is easy to see how Beam could write so
beautifully. Here is a collection of poems that is accomplished and
graceful as they speak of desire, contemplation and passion. It is
Beam's experience and spirituality that makes these poems such a gift.
—Gay Jewish activist, writer, and teacher Amos Lassen on
Amazon.com
Bob Arnold reprints the opening poem, The Man Poem, on the Longhouse
website as
Woodburners We Recommend, Spring Coming
2008.
—Bob Arnold, Longhouse Booksellers and Publishers
This is awkward, unskilled poetry painted by a hand that would rather
design a room with unmatched furniture.
—Music critic J. Peter Bergman in
Edge (online gay
magazine) (Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Miami, Dallas, San Francisco, New
England)
Recommended on Ron
Silliman's blog, and on Christopher Hennessy's
Outside the Lines
blog
Email: jeffbeam@email.unc.edu
URL: http://www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam/reviews.html
Last updated: Saturday, April 10, 2004
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