“Playful Song Called Beautiful’: Blair’s prizewinning poetry crackles with energy

John Blair's poems offer readers structured forms, vibrant images, and a propulsive energy. In return, they ask for sustained attention and a willingness to unpack the allusions and ideas that drive them.

Blair's new collection, 'Playful Song Called Beautiful,” was selected by poet Craig Morgan Teicher as one of two winners of the 2015 Iowa Poetry Prize. The collection was recently published by University of Iowa Press.

Many of the poems are composed of three line stanzas with a rigid syllable pattern. 'A Song on Geronimo's Grave” combines that structure (five syllables in the first and third line, seven in the second) with colloquial language:

' ... Of things/in Oklahoma worth one/single [expletive] there are/only three, he says,/Geronimo's unstolen/bones, Oral Roberts/University/chromed like a starship, known to/every mother's son/in Tulsa as Six/Flags Over Jesus and [expletive]/if I can recall/the other one …”

Blair frequently unfurls lengthy sentences like the one above (which continues over five additional stanzas). These passages crackle with energy even as they sometimes require the reader to slow down, read again, and follow the language into unfamiliar territory.

'Quod Me Nutrit Me Desruit” (which translates from the Latin as 'What nourishes me destroys me”) opens with an arresting seven stanza sentence that features the playwright Christopher Marlowe and a burst of violence:

'Imagine the way/the iron prodded vicious through/the cracker thin bone-/back of his eye with/a sound like a bad tooth giving/way, Marlowe board stiff,/still standing, sclera/and iris split into wet/staring hemispheres,/…”

As the book's title suggests, Blair writes poetry that is both playful and beautiful. His prize winning collection will reward your attention.