More Poems for Hungry Minds

More Poems for Hungry Minds 

By Highland Avenue Poets 

Edited by Steve Coleman 

Highland Avenue Poets Publishing, 2024 

Paperback: $11.95 

Genre: Poetry 

Reviewed by Foster Dickson 

My first thought on seeing the cover of More Poems for Hungry Minds was that this was a follow-up to an earlier publication. My hunch was correct. Here, the Highland Avenue Poets in Birmingham offer a third anthology from the group’s members, the second being Poems for Hungry Minds. This collection opens with a preface by contributor Barry Marks, a lawyer, poet, and past president of the Alabama State Poetry Society, who provides some background to the group’s relatively short history and purpose. Following his brief introductory remarks, ten poets are featured in seven topical sections: Ars Poetica, Society, Nature, Cycles of Life, Love, Struggles, and Humor. 

Marks’s preface explains that the Highland Avenue Poets, presumably named for the busy thoroughfare that runs from Five Points South to Highland Park in Birmingham, are a casual group, something like a salon or workshop, and we learn that various members have come and gone over the span of a few years. The COVID pandemic disrupted their meetings, so their first anthology was titled The Social Distance, an homage to the online gatherings that temporarily replaced in-person ones. This new collection, whose contributors are all male (with the exception of credited illustrator Véronique Vanblaere), comes from the group’s interactions while sharing and revising their writing. Steve Coleman, another contributor, is acknowledged and appreciated as the collection’s editor. 

As with any multi-author anthology, the styles and substance vary, yet section titles are there to aid readers, who might thumb through to get their bearings. We begin with a poem by Marks, in which the Metaphor is personified and freed from the confines of the poem. In the second section, Nature, we find Jeff Book’s lines:  

“In this Deep South city  

Spring comes on like  

An ardent hooligan, horny 

And spoiling for a fight, 

Its weather biblical, bipolar.”  

Given recent weather patterns, we can relate!  

The third section offers a rumination from Steve Coleman about a robocall from a political campaign, and Nick Gaede gives us one dedicated to attorney and former US senator Doug Jones. Jim Ferguson opens the next section, whose title-page imagery shows a man dangling precariously from the hands of a clock, with this admonition in “Harvest Time”:  

“Take care of friends and kin, take time,  

Cultivate, and look, the harvest comes.”  

Later in the section, Ed Wilson considers a commonly used article in “The.” Next, in Love – that favorite subject of the poet – the group offers verses that stray from the typical boy-meets-girl: Tom Gordon’s “Mother’s Day Gratitude,” Ferguson’s “Platonic Love,” and Coleman’s “Buster and Loosey” about two cats who liked to visit each other. The Struggles section includes Mel Campbell’s “Potatoes,” a slice-of-life narrative about doing as one’s mother instructs. Finally, we reach Humor, and there J. Shannon Webster shares that “Just be yourself” is “a terrible idea.” A few pages later, Steve Carlisle has a few things to say about “Waiting at the DMV.” A handful of the book’s final pages are dedicated to two members who’ve passed away: Chervis Isom and Charles Kinnaird. 

Barry Marks is correct when he writes in his preface that poetry is an art that shouldn’t be pursued for the gain of audiences or money but for other gifts, like “feeling.” Having a few compatriots with whom to share poems and to receive honest feedback that sometimes includes criticism is another gift in itself. More Poems for Hungry Minds is this group’s testament to the meaning, support, and solace a poet can find in that environment.    

The collection is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook formats. 

Foster Dickson is a writer, editor, and teacher in Montgomery, Alabama.