There are many mysteries among the poems that delighted me in July’s Verse-Virtual (http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html).

Michael Minassian’s poem “The Fortune Teller” reads like a deep parable with too many possible meanings for any of us to sort out simply. It features a Korean fortune teller, a finch who apparently understands Korean (and performs gymnastics in a cage), an angry exchange not simply or words but of roles, a mysterious neighbor, and a finale in which the poet carries a bird on his tongue.

Well, doesn’t he? You have to read it.

Joan Mazza writes of another mysterious guest in “Filamentous Algae,” a new arrival in a local pond, following the sometime residence of lotus and bullfrogs and herons.

“Uninvited, you arrived in late spring. I spied
you from my office window, weaving mats
on the pond’s surface with your long hair.”

As the accompanying photo suggests, long hair this thick can be dangerous. The poem concludes with an unexpected change in frame of reference, from environmental to personal, that leaves us surprised and thoughtful.

Then we come to DeWitt Clinton’s incredible series of contemporary adaptations of poems by great Chinese classical poet, Tu Fu. What a project! I like all of these efforts in the July Verse-Virtual.

I find them naked, vulnerable, moving, witty, open and unsentimental….

To get the whole story, see my blog at

http://prosegarden.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-garden-of-verse-mysteries-in-plain.html