Edward Journey reviews Ken Aurtrey’s new book of poetry titled Circulation in the Alabama Writers Forum.
In his poem “Mnemonist,” Ken Autrey evokes a man “whose mind / will not forget,” even as the words of the very poem he is writing “now flatten into precision, / holding me in relentless thrall.” That poem seems to be a fitting guidepost for Autrey’s new collection, Circulation, and its poems of memory, loss, and discovery. In a poem like “Expedition,” Autrey’s description of the mundane – an at-home slide show for sick kids – veers into the sublime.
