What characterizes the poems in "Crying Sky: Poetry & Conversation" are their crass, sea-washed, wind-beaten Yankee style and New England images of nature.

One of the contributing poets, 2004 Guggenheim fellow David Wojahn, writes about his literary generation as an inevitable progression from the selfless third-person narratives of Postmodernism:

"Right now we're in an interesting situation. The aesthetic presuppositions of Postmodernism, with their emphasis on dissemblage and slippage, and their suspicion of romantic notions of the self, have been the norm for nearly twenty years now. This has created an exasperating unease among (poets)... they're afraid of linearity, or narrative...they worry...that poems with an emphasis on self-disclosure will somehow lack the intellectual credibility they see in poets who are widely read. The kind of poem which ends up meditating on meditating, have over-shadowed poems which are self-orientated or have a strong story-telling urge."

Young poets may fear this desire to break away from their contemporaries' established norm; however, many of the poets in the first edition of this new periodical have boldly broken these invisible parameters and have delved into a realm of personal discovery through honest narratives.

Mekeel McBride recounts a random conversation with a weathered working-class waitress at a questionable diner in "Honey." When asked about the type of chicken sandwich they offer, the waitress imparts the bloody truth of processed poultry in mystery meat. She then shares another secret, a desire to reverse the laws of society by turning a town photo upside-down, making the steeple of the town church to point to the "ground we'd thought was under us ... now a kind of unexpected heaven."

South Dakota Poet Laureate David Allen Evans, who came to New Hampshire for the 2003 gathering of national poet laureates called "Poetry and Politics," offers a version of the world beyond the clouds as Alice's Wonderland. "Down You" explores the mythical rabbit hole as a journey into the "unknown region." Perhaps not as unforgiving as Vaughn Williams' masterpiece, this poem gives us an inverted idea of how unpredictable life really is.

Alice B. Fogel's three "Variations" are anything but expected. "Boats" is constructed with maritime metaphors that echo a rowing against the current, a fate to which mankind seems doomed. Her boats both suffer their own tragedy and inspire maiden voyages with their ephemeral spirituality. The poem leaves us with the idea of "being neither adrift, nor drowned."

Her other two "Variations," numbers 12 and 15, are eloquently metered and masterfully equipped with crisp imagery and daring questions. In "Woman at the Dam," she ask, "just what mortality means" in this life-affirming, soul-searching account of a woman at the edge of uncertainty.

"Happy Prince's Bird" is an epitaph to a former lover in the shape of a bird. These verses pull at the strings of our hearts, leaving us in quiet contemplation:

"...Too late even for you

who could not go on and on giving because,

foolish Prince, suffering is by far a greater cache

than gold. Beloved, you don't need a body

to feel the yearning of a soul."

Leatha Kendrick also writes of lost and/or unrequited love and squandered ambitions in her poems "What You Leave Me" and "How It Feels Now." The latter uses the simile of heartburn in the guise of devastation at the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. She relates the tragedy and their last struggle to her fear of the future, "so scared to move out of my rubble, to move toward what I don't want to fail that I won't thaw into motion." "What You Leave Me" sculpts the absence of one part of a relationship. Only in dreams can their souls come together as one, as their bodies once did.

The nine other poets are equally unique in this 77-page first edition of "Crying Sky: Poetry & Conversation," which will be published in the spring and the fall by former Portsmouth residents S Stephanie and Walter Butts, who now live in Manchester. You can find it in Portsmouth at RiverRun Bookstore on Commercial Alley or in Exeter at Water Street Books. The periodical is also available by subscription.