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Thanks to Highland Park Poetry's contributors in 2021:
Anonymous
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Poetry Book Reviews
Running Aground
By Elizabeth Joy Levinson
Finishing Line Press, 2020
34 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1646622795
Review by Aleca Black
Elizabeth Joy Levinson’s Running Aground captivates from the opening line of “I am sorry I have existed, taken up space, opened my mouth and spoken/or opened my mouth and did not speak.” Her mingled defiance and apology set the tone for a visceral world of heat, bugs, rootlessness, and splintered family ties.
Perhaps the most compelling narratives in the chapbook are Levinson’s sense of isolation and difficult relationship with her family. Through poems like “The Fire-Eater”, “Homecoming”, and “My Father’s Hands”, Levinson describes a larger-than-life father figure who pulls his family from town to town, expectant of their attention but giving little in return. At the same time, Levinson seems to grieve the fact that her father ‘runs aground’ in the penultimate work of the book, “Recovering”, describing with apparent sadness her father’s journey “where he sees no one/neither is he seen.” This invisibility is something that Levinson ascribes to herself earlier in the book, recounting “how easy to pretend/you were a song story/when there was no place/your story belonged” in the poem “Things no one told my parents and, also, why I got a D in geography”. She describes feeling like her environment is “the silver ball/of a pinhead”, rather than a magnet guiding her home. Even siblings are regarded like strangers-“my gaze sweeps over my sisters/but holds onto the landscape.” The ocean permeates their wanderings, the only constant in her life. The isolation and transience that Levinson describes weaves its way through each poem, highlighting the struggle between feeling defiantly separate from those around you and still yearning for acceptance.
The ocean, its inhabitants, and the natural world are another trope within the book. In her second poem, “The portrait of an addict as the elements”, Levinson effectively twists each element of fire/water/earth/air into the experience of addiction within the body. This use of the elements highlights an underlying theme; the role of the natural in our lives, from inescapable insects to the unstoppable force of a hurricane. As Levinson holds a degree in biology, it is not surprising that her creative eye also captures the minutia of her environment. Her descriptions draw the reader in, lulled by rocking waves and warm, sleepy afternoons, while still reminding them of the power and death ever-present in the world around them.
As an amateur reviewer, I feel unqualified to offer deep literary insights into Running Aground. All I can tell you is how it made me feel- swept away to a hot Florida day, muggy under the shade of scraggly trees, rooted in a sense of unbelonging yet tied inescapably to the sea.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Aleca Black is a lifelong reader and has recently begun dabbling in poetry. She has a BA in English from the College of William and Mary.
Posted April 1, 2021
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I Have Grown Two Hearts
By Zöe Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
The Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020
36 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1913499105
Review by Tina Cole
In, I have Grown Two Hearts, Zoe Howarth-Lowetakes us on a journey through motherhood and beyond. These are poems that bring tenderness into close focus alongside the roller coaster demands of everyday parenting. We grow alongside her children, beginning in an I.V.F clinic and traveling the gamut of mothering through her experiences and back to being a child herself. These are honest poems, with the skill to effectively recreate her world, they speak of love laid bare and the reality of balancing parenting demands. They are frank and never sentimental. She so aptly describes the initial experience in, Pregnancy:
constantly doing two things at once
creating a baby
and everything else.
Howarth-Lowe uses rich language and draws upon a wide emotional range to focus the various perspectives and experiences of motherhood. The voice is strong and clear with no variance in tone from the dedication she feels to her tasks, she speaks of joys and tribulations with equal vigour. The different forms of poems keep the collection light and interesting. As a reader you are drawn along with themes about the developing child through early motherhood / trying to get a child to sleep as in, Lullaby:
tiny newborn
we jig along the corridor, whirling and twirling ……
…. midnight, each moment jinks along like the banjo string plucking.
Then to the intimate comfort of a family sharing a bed, the jumble tangle of bodies and tender moments in, Little Souls:
A nest of parents and siblings
There are four of us here
untidy.
To managing the tantrums of a five year old in; You Don’t Fit the Way You Used To,
I am unable to explain my inadequacies
to your nearly five year old stamping foot.
…… I cannot carry you home
These poems have a fine, careful, boldness that anyone who has been through motherhood can instantly identify with. There is longing, there is frustration, there is anxiety, but there is never anger or regret.
The collection contains poems covering topics that you might find in any, ‘Guide to’. The wonder of new life, the terrible sadness of miscarriage, sleepless nights, the strong emotional bond between parent and child, the need to let go and how to manage the everyday small, issues with tolerance and sensitivity.
It is also interspaced with poems about her life in general, their movement to the north of England as in, Northbound. Also, a poem about the horrors of birthing long ago in, The American Museum, with the strong lines:
willing the head and shoulders
of this child to erupt from her
….. struggle and kick;
elbow its own way free..
and two poems about her relationship with her father which I found, particularly moving;
Going Back -
Hand in hand /in silence / …and we remembered
Image on a Brass Lion -
for a second/ I see with your eyes/ and I become the father/ gripping his daughter’s hand.
Placed at the end of the collection these allow the reader to fully reflect on the child – parent circle.
These are poems that roll the words of parenthood around in the mouth like marbles, they talk in the plain language of feelings, sometimes witty and sometimes deeply moving. Zoe writes with a conviction and vividness that so effectively draws us into her world. They seem effortless in their simple style and yet have lines that go right to the heart. A must read for any prospective parent/grandparent or godparent.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Tina Cole lives in the U.K. near the border with Wales. She is a retired Headteacher, (School Principal) and has worked as a consultant with schools and Universities. She is now a poet, reviewer and leads workshops with both adults and children and organises and annual children’s poetry competition (currently stalled due to the pandemic), yppc2019.org. Herpublished poems have appeared in U.K. magazines such as, Brittle Star,Creative Countryside,Poetry Café,Mslexia, Aesthetica, The Guardian newspaper and in many poetry collections. In 2021 her second collection will be published by Yaffle Press. She is currently undertaking a Master’s degree in creative writing at Manchester University.
Posted April 1, 2021
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poetry of the engineer
By Curt Vevang
Self-published, 2021
79 Pages
ISBN-13: 979-8-69-705324-9
Review by Cassandra McGovern
A stunningly colorful cover drew me into Curt’s narrative book, “poetry of the engineer,” a photo of “The vintage steam engine circa 1900 used for many years to raise and lower the Tower Bridge in London.” Curt underscores in his bio, “Yes, I am an engineer. Who else would put a steam engine on the cover of a poetry book.” Curt’s “Forward” further sets a wry tone: “Engineers are considered left brain creatures, analytical and methodical. That’s why we are called propeller heads and wear white socks....Conversely, those that are the “more creative types”, like poets are considered to be right brained. They wear sandals and no socks.”
Many poems are rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter, others are in various length stanzas, as well as a villanelle for the Cubbies: At Wrigley Field. Curt’s poems are witty, poignant, many last lines quite insightful, often a twist on ways of thinking that I hadn’t considered.
In I Didn’t Know How Bad I Had It, he narrates boyhood memories on the North Side of Chicago living above two different taverns his first five years, one having “A brown bear on a leash would/dance at the juke box to “You Are My Sunshine.” At another bar, The Television Inn, he recalls they had the first TV in the neighborhood and that he cried when Whitey the bookie “was cuffed and loaded into a paddy wagon.” These fine details in many of the poems makes the reader feel present, yet back in time within Curt’s memories.
In The Spirit of a Norwegian Village, I envisioned the author’s relatives in a lovely town in Norway, with its Lutheran church, and “the joyous day when King Olaf stopped by,’” yet surprisingly ends with inviting the reader to “Stop in for a cup next time you’re close by,/Route 71, Norway, Illinois.”
Several black and white illustrations further complement poems. In Mighty Megan at the Bat, three photos show a six-year-old as she hits the ball, running to several bases: “Megan heads to first, she takes it in stride,/with a little smirk that’s so hard to hide...Megan reaches the bag with time to spare/two steps ahead of the ball getting there.”
My favorite poem, Shades of Grey, accompanied by an illustration in grey shading, relays in four stanzas a close-up portrait of a seaman: “The visor of his leather cap hides much/of his furrowed brow./Steel wool eyebrows head off in every direction.” Again, the details give a feeling that Curt knows the character well.
A fine collection of thoughtful and fun poetry. Highly recommended.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Cassandra McGovern retired as a reference librarian and began writing poetry and memoir. The latter have appeared in several journals, including The Massachusetts Review and OxMag. Two anthologies include thirteen poems: Five Poets Write about Aging, Illness, and Mortality, 2011, and Fresh Pipes, 2013. Additional poems have appeared in Atomic Press,Olentangy Review, and Not Very Quiet. Besides collecting and teaching about Illuminated Manuscripts, she is currently writing a poetry chapbook of fictional families in Medieval England.
Posted April 1, 2021
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Dead Shark on the N Train
By Susana H. Case
Broadstone Books, 2020
85 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1937968663
Review by Mike Freveletti
With Susana H. Case’s book, Dead Shark on the N Train, there’s brevity and substance. It has the ‘do this, do that’ poetic device made famous by Frank O’Hara and right on the next page the poet gives us a poem that would make the Surrealists proud. There is so much to love about this collection in its ties to New York City across some of the pages and its nods to names like Otis Redding and T.S. Eliot but that is not all, dear readers. Can you guess what was tucked right into the middle section of this collection? Poetry written as a response to small miniature crime scenes depicted with dolls. Yeah, that’s how eclectic this collection was. And yes, I understand you might be puzzled but let’s get to it.
The first section of three separate sections breaking up the collection is titled, “Living Dolls''. I was struck by the poem “The Unpublished Poems of Marilyn Monroe” which is an incredible title and one of my favorite poems in the entire collection. “Marilyn in a striped swimsuit, Reading Ulysses'' conjured up, of course, the photo of Monroe reading Ulysses, a book I love. Why take a photo of Monroe reading one of the most difficult books of all time? What was the point? The poet weighs in, “she wanted blondes to be thought sexy and astute/she wanted herself to be thought astute”. The poem is about self-image, it’s about Monroe, it’s about what the public thought about her and how she wanted to be taken seriously. We even get an appearance in the poem by Arthur Miller, right as he was defying the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The poem had me wishing I could see if Monroe had annotated her copy of Ulysses.
Section two, titled “Crime Scenes”, is by far my favorite section. We’re told on the title page for this section the following, “after Frances Glessner Lee, creator of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, three-dimensional crime scenes made in the 1940s and 1950s and used for teaching criminal investigation.” “Laundry Line”, written with the photo labeled Scene 2 Attic goes, “In the attic, love letters scatter/like dead leaves/beneath a woman’s dangling feet/it’s Christmas Eve”, sounds a bit like the start to a Patricia Highsmith novel, doesn’t it? That’s the first stanza and the bookend is, “the snow is muddled on the outside path/the door is open/looking closely, her face is scuffed,” The word choice is spare and it feels as though you’re reading a crime scene report written by an overly poetic detective who is sure to hear about their flowery language in the morning from a superior.
Section three, “Storm Clouds”, has a few poems with one word titles with the best being, “Hair”, inspired by a Jack Gilbert poem according to the poet’s notes. “I’d like to think you kept/those threads, the way someone in love/might have sealed them in a locket”, has two people who are clearly no longer in love. Alas, the final stanza illuminates the reality, “Of course you didn’t keep my hair/why would you want to do such a thing?” Hair can be more than just hair and just like anything else, it can be imbued with meaning. The poet shows how easily poetry can turn the quotidian into something truly magnificent.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez makes an appearance and so does Werner Herzog. There are so many different things going on in this collection, like a restaurant with a huge menu of questionable items. In here though? They all work together. I don’t often finish reading a book of poetry and say to myself, man, that was just fun to read. This was fun. Did I mention that it has a Bloody Mary recipe? To the book and the poet I say, cheers.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Mike Frevelettiis a poet, short fiction writer and occasional dabbler in literary criticism. His work has appeared both online and in print.
Posted April 1, 2021
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How Do We Create Love
By Michael H. Brownstein
Independently published, 2019
28 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1703570014
Review by Jacqueline Stearns
How Do We Create Love, is a visual feast for the eyes. The text is accompanied by gorgeous mural like photographs textured so the reader can almost see paint applications. My favorites are gigantic trees arching up into majestic dark blue skies.
How Do We Create Love, is one long prose poem, that tells the story of two couples, one earthly, one magical. The lives of the earthbound couple are depicted in chronological order. The young husband treks along the banks of the Missouri river, in search of a Christmas gift for his wife. He discovers a flower and an agate. He returns home to their woodland cottage. Husband and wife talk about their love. Hugs are enough for them. This couple doesn't need anything beyond each other.
The wife finds joy in nature. Singing birds. A coyote finding its way to the river for a drink.
The man and woman live out the seasons of their lives.
When they reach old age, they take in a young boy, who is lost in a winter storm. When the boy reaches adulthood, he travels to the Germanic forests. The inhabitants are starving. The young man conjures up a tree that provides sustenance. He marries a beautiful Viking princess. The young couple traverse the world, giving people music, trees, and food.
The symbolism of Christmas and the majesties of nature are skillfully interwoven. Water in the forms of snow and a mighty river dictate living conditions for all forest citizens. Humans live alongside deer, possum, raccoons, birds, and coyotes. A boy appears on Christmas Eve, and grows up to be a savior. The tree he creates for the people of the Germanic forests is akin to the tree of life.
I like this book’s depiction of marriage. Commitment is tied to the true meaning of love. What are values? What really matters? For the earthbound couple, the bane of their lives is connected to the sanctity of their relationship. Expensive presents mean nothing to them. For them meaning is found in a hug or meaningful glance. For the young man and his princess, giving to others is what brings them joy.
How Do We Create Love, has elements of a fairy tale. Love, magic, a lovely princess, and happily ever after. The book also has a folk hero. The young man is reminiscent of Paul Bunyan.
This work is a cautionary tale as well. Sometimes beauty needs to be sacrificed to practicality. While in the Germanic forests, the young man cuts down an oak tree, which is turned into firewood. He creates a fir, whose branches contain food.
How Do We Create Love, is a reverent testimony to the power of simple, romantic love.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Jacqueline Stearns holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Media Communications from William Paterson College now University. She is honored to have been published in Highland Park Poetry and several Montclair Write Group Anthologies.
Posted April 1, 2021
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Pictures, Postcards, Letters
By Lennart Lundh
Kelsay Books, 2020
81 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1950462-93-3
Review by Lynne Viti
In this moment in history, public poetry is ascendant. From newcomer Amanda Gorman to established poets like Louise Gluck, Ilya Kaminsky, Richard Blanco, Joy Harjo and Jericho Brown, poets are getting their work out to everyone, not just to the academy. Poetry is everywhere, with Zoom, Crowdcast and similar platforms temporarily supplanting the pre-pandemic venues for readings and poetry slams—community centers, houses of worship, libraries, classrooms, farmers markets, art galleries, food coops, pubs and the public square. Lennart Lundh’s Pictures, Postcards, Letters deploys free verse poetry as well as rich, dense prose poems, some comprising three sentences, others filling two or three pages, to convey deep truths about his life and the lives—and deaths-- of those around him. Both challenging and –with a bit of work—accessible, this writing speaks powerfully to the social and political issues of our day.
This collection, Lundh’s twenty-first, begins with a look back to the poet’s youth, moves on to snapshots of midlife, and concludes dramatically with the honest summing up that is part of aging. Lundh frequently writes persona poems: in “I broke a heel,” a gay man on holiday in France with his partner breaks a high heel that is repaired by a religious French cobbler. In “A terrible week here” a woman ambulance driver writes home about knitting during a lull in the shelling and shooting, just before her colleague is shot dead by a sniper. He alternates long, free verse poems with abrupt, compact paragraphs reporting on the range of human rituals: courtship, young love, marriage; a vigil for a fellow soldier who stepped on a land mine and “kept screaming until the morphine set in or he bled out.”
The three sections of this collection give readers minimal orientation: “In a Box in a Drawer,” “Wrapped in Old Ribbon,” and “From the Front.” It’s often a mystery as to who is speaking, where the story is set, and when. This demands some work on the part of the reader; one cannot just glide through these pages easily. But the work of rereading and discerning the time-place coordinates in each chunk of text is worth it, drawing the reader deeply into the emotional life of the poet.
My particular favorites are Section II’s poems of love, scenes lived and later reconstructed by the older speaker. In Pillow Talk, the words "they were talking" begins with “they were talking as true friends do when they trust each other” in stanza 1, and reprises that first line later, with “they were talking as two people do when they feel safe/ in their love for each other.” In “A couple seated near me,” the poet observes a couple kissing across a bistro table and is reminded of a day long past when his partner “stained your new cardigan with a cheap Cabernet,” and they hurried off to make love in their hotel room. These details are so real and so personal; the reader feels drawn into the speaker’s intimate space. Three Marriages charts a love affair that develops into marriage and soon thereafter, the birth of a daughter, then a son. They carry on even though “everything around them has screamed in flames to the ground.” Juxtaposed with that union is a trip across New Mexico towards san Diego, the assassination of Martin L. Luther King Jr., and an imminent departure to the speaker’s army duty in Vietnam. The last section of the poem chronicles an extramarital affair and its ashes; the speaker continues to write to the woman, the letters go unanswered, and he keeps her photograph in his wallet because when he remembers it, “it makes him feel good.” This is a man who finds it hard to completely let go of the past.
In these snapshots or imagined letters, the speaker’s identity may change from poem to poem, but the underlying focus throughout is humanity at its most fragile, imperfect, and sometimes tragically impotent. The soldier endures the war and loses his buddies, viewing the conflict as increasingly pointless. The adulterous lover learns that love is fleeting, and he is weighed down by the grind of daily life (“Eventually his wife forgave him. He works with machines now.”) The country presumably Vietnam, “here is amazing in its possibly infinite beauty…Except the parts we’ve bombed and burned the shit out of and pissed on” with Agent Orange, which the speaker calls “ misty Orange Crush,” in the sarcastic vernacular of young soldiers.
Near the end of the book, this old soldier/poet/lover, in 12 June 2016: Again We Get It Wrong, kneels in the garden, clearing out the Rose of Sharon seedlings with arthritic hands, pondering the loss of life in the Charleston church shooting of 2015 and the day’s news of a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub: “down in Orlando/the clean-up crews aren’t even starting to get ready.” He contemplates this carnage on American soil, asking, “Why does the wrongness of this take forever to process?” Here, in the twenty-first century lexicon of recovery, the poet fuses a moral judgment of actions clearly “wrong” with the desire to heal, through “process.” It’s a tall order.
The final poem, There was a die-in begins in the immediate present, where university students are demonstrating against violence, and returns to a vivid, searing memory of “the carnage on the flight deck” when helicopters brought those with ‘real blood from real wounds bathing real bodies, the/efforts at triage and the clergy trying to at least save souls…” Perplexed, he observes that all this “never made the news until just now.” His stoicism in the face of suffering does not detract from his empathy for those who suffer, in the Vietnam era, and today.
In sum, this book is the product of the poet’s “processing” of trauma, his brave confronting of the violence and loss in everyday life and in war and domestic terrorism, and the repetitive cycles of conflict and loss of life that our society experiences. It’s not an easy read, but in confronting the damage done, Lundh produces truth in his writing, and as Keats reminded us, truth is beauty. In that sense, this book achieves both, and bears reading aloud and rereading.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lynne Viti's most recent book is Dancing at Lake Montebello (Apprentice House Press 2020). A lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, she has published two chapbooks, Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018) from Finishing Line Press. She blogs at lynneviti.wordpress.com
Posted March 1, 2021
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Becoming Vulnerable
By Joshua Corwin
Baxter Daniels Ink Press/International Word Bank, 2020
72 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0996392778
Review by Mike Freveletti
The question has been asked before but the answer, if you get a genuine one, is different for each writer. Here it is: why do we write? Joshua Corwin’s book, Becoming Vulnerable, has a dedication to his grandpa, Mert, right in the introduction and it indicates that his grandpa’s last words to him were don’t ever stop writing. I’m sure that message is what propelled the poet from word to word in his honest collection of poems.
One thing you notice very quickly in Corwin’s poems is the varied experimentation: enjambment, the use of one word lines, the fractured stanzas. In the poem Little Ensos, these choices are center stage, “I can’t lift/my head/up/out/of/this/sink.” Notice the break of the lines? The drama of letting those words essentially fall off after one another? The poet also does a wonderful job with white space on the page and uses it to perpetuate the human drama in these poems. For me, it’s a skill that I think is incredibly hard to implement properly and at times can look lazy or forced. Not for Corwin though, he uses it wonderfully throughout.
On the opposite end of that spectrum in terms of form is the poem Hello Grandpa, which startled me at first with the presentation of so many words on the page. With this poem though I felt like I was opening the journal of a person I didn’t know. It was intensely personal, “God graced me with sobriety on August 13, 2015”, and other lines like, “I didn’t know why I was smoking & doing what I was doing/this substance, no longer sustenance for me.” Those are serious moments of internal inquiry and Corwin seems to be working those moments out on the page. I appreciated his willingness to share.
My favorite poem in the collection, Memory Smile, is a bit of a treatise on mental disorder combined with drug dependency. It is both beautifully written and stylistically simple for the subject matter. “His mind wouldn’t let him/he couldn’t say the words/when he tried to vocalize them/his mind fought back.” There the poet references a friend who struggled with addiction and mental disorders and how difficult it can be to get in the right headspace to feel better and reclaim your mind and body. I won’t spoil the poem but there is a line at the end, “so why not just smile?”, that hit home in the face of any difficult time in life. Why not just smile? Does the alternative to happiness help anything? Questions I asked myself while reading this one.
Another treat in this collection is Corwin’s photos of his own paintings and his own photographs. In addition to poetry, the author seems well equipped in both of those mediums. For what it’s worth, I’d happily flip through a photobook done by the poet if he ever decided to do so. A wide artistic breadth is on display in this collection that I’m sure many readers will appreciate.
A poem towards the end of the collection called, The Gate Is Not A Gate, felt for me like a modern haiku. “Until it speaks/until you don’t say/your mind is shut”, and then we get a break before it ends, “the gate is not a gate.” Corwin makes it clear that so often what is left unsaid is as important as what is said. A fine, thought-provoking collection.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Mike Frevelettiis poet, short fiction writer and occasional dabbler in literary criticism. His work has appeared both online and in print.
Posted March 1, 2021
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Haiku Rose
By Colleen McManus Hein
Self-Published, 2019
225 Pages
ISBN: B081DGC18X
Review by Hope Atlas
As I started to read Haiku Rose, I was intrigued by its unique format. While it feels like a romance novel in many ways, the author lets the main character, Rose, tell her story using original haiku, poetry and introspective diary entries. As the author was weaving the romantic storyline, I found myself waiting to see when the next haiku would appear. Each haiku presented Rose’s life in a different way – sometimes profound, at other times silly. The author captured the beauty of haiku - its succinctness, yet ability to convey complicated emotions and observations. She deftly used haiku in her novel as mini-illustrations of the Truth that made up Rose’s life. Reading the haiku in the novel encouraged me to revisit haiku and actually try my hand at it! Rose’s daily entries were an effective technique to reveal her inner thoughts and feelings and to maintain my interest. Rose’s journal writing inspired me to peer into my own memories, hopes, aspirations, regrets and feelings of loss.
While the plot carries some predictability, I found the characters engaging. The author expertly developed Rose’s many faces - the girlfriend, the trusting friend, the daughter and the writer. As I read the novel, I was pulled into the main character’s life and how she would fare.
The sudden loss of her mother is a common thread throughout and helps carry her through times of joy and sadness. She speaks often of the desire to plant a garden like the one her mother had – thus keeping the theme of renewal in the forefront of the novel.
Her use of haiku elevated the novel to a level of creativity rarely seen in novels. The author skillfully crafted the emotional layers of friendship, loss, grief and renewal. Her theme of nature is powerful. The garden and the emotional impact it has on the main character reminds us of the interconnectedness our lives have with nature. These universal themes open the novel to a wide audience. Indeed, as I continued to read Haiku Rose, I was moved to take out my journal and write about my life observations and my own journey.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Hope Atlas has a master’s in reading education and has been published in multiple literary publications. In May 2020, her book My Upside-Down World, Journaling Through Unique Quotes and Prompts debuted. www.quotehope.com.
Posted March 1, 2021
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Porch Swing Rhyme
By Lavern Spencer McCarthy
Self-Published, 2019
64 Pages
ISBN-13: 9780359975556
Review by Curt Vevang
Porch Swing Rhyme is a pleasant collection of rhyming poetry that should thrill the hearts of the rhyming community. A title such as Porch Swing Rhyme would lead us to believe that this 62 page book would provide us with rhyming poems that we could leisurely and enjoyably read while gliding back and forth on a porch swing. It does not mislead, it is indeed such a book.
These poems are not profound or difficult to read, just comfortable, feel good, reminiscent poetry. With chapters covering Rural Poems of Nature, Back in the Day, Country Critters, and Country Folks we know we are about to take a step back in time, to a quieter gentler place. Many of the poems in fact combine a delicate balance of all four, nature, olden times, and country critters and folks. For example consider these snippets from:
On Silent Feet.
There might be coyotes I must greet,
their shadows, gray from winter's chill.
Wild creatures mostly are discrete.
My feral friends deserve a treat.
If I can help them out, I will.
At night they creep on silent feet.
and from Coyote Songs
Coyotes wail
a lively tale
that gives my heart a thrill
of days replete
with green mesquite,
bluebonnets on the hill.
There was a day when all poetry rhymed. Today rhyming poetry is often snubbed, yet many still enjoy it. For them, as well as myself, this book contains a wealth of rhyme.
Porch Swing Rhymeis close to a textbook on the various forms that rhyming poems can take.Instead of relying on just one or two different rhyme schemes the poetry in this book uses a myriad of the most popular rhyme schemes. For example, you will find poems written with:
aabcbcaa
aba aba aba aba aba abaa
abab bcbc cdcd dede eaea
aabbccddeeff
abcb defe ghih
abab cdcd efef ghgh
While rhyming poetry is not for everybody, it is well suited to a porch swing. So if you are into rhyme or just curious as to how many ways rhyme can be used I suggest you take a look at this book.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Curt B. Vevang is active in the Chicago area poetry scene. He has published three poetry books, a scant bagatlle, the nature of things and poetry as we like it. He fourth book is poetry of the engineer.
Posted March 1, 2021
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Central Air
By Mike Puican
Northwestern University Press, 2020
80 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-4207-7
Review by Carol L. Gloor
Mike Puican’s book Central Air relies on sequences of images, rather than a narrative framework, within most of the poems. These sequences are always full of surprise, sometimes verging on magical realism. These surprises often work well, as in the poem “Man Digging a Sidewalk,” which is a miscellaneous, but interesting, catalog, of people on the sidewalk, including a teenager walking her “chihuahua dressed/as a honeybee,” and then the dog turns to the poet and says “Don’t fuck with me. I’m capable/of anything. I am boundless,” a surprising speech for a little dog. The whole poem “Unbridled,” tells of a fry cook dealing with many customers, but both the fry cook and the customers are all horses or colts, which makes for some surprising sequences, like “. . . A team/of colts, who are also graduate students, / exchange tips on how to locate hotel/ rooms rented by the hour.” In the first poem of the book, “The Lawyer Says,” the images of wish and reality are suddenly broken because “a lion enters/the courtroom.” So the unexpected, at its best, keeps us looking at physical reality in new ways.
This is not to say that this technique is always successful. Sometimes the strange images seem put there just for shock value. In “Clark and Belmont Ghazal,” a people-watching poem, which first grabs us with its specific images, like three brothers turning on every faucet in the church bathroom and then sprinting for the door, a waitress who is philosophizing then experiences a plane which “flies in her left ear and out her cheek.” Or again, the poem “Fall,” at first a lovely poem of rain, trees and hidden secrets, gets lost in the line “I watch a jet float through an el train.” The poet generally walks a careful line with the imagistic, non-narrative poems, but sometimes steps over that line.
Beyond form, Central Air deals with the universal themes of place, family, work, God and spirituality in complex and original ways. Of course the place is Chicago, and the city is both grit and beauty. In the poem “Chicago,” the city is made of “car alarms” and “Cigarettes/in a doorway.” But in “Tequila and Steve,” a love poem of sorts, the grit and beauty mix easily to end the poem:
The scents of fried eggs
and just-cut lilacs filled
the air while the back
of her neck and a can of beer
created a near-perfect tranquility.
The place poems decrease as the book moves on into the other themes, sometimes in “I” poems, where the poet speaks directly, sometimes in third person poems, in which the poet observes others, and sometimes in combined form. The poet’s father emerges as a somewhat relaxed figure, but also a worker and problem solver, revealing the poet’s complex love for him. The poem “Joke,” which is not really about the poet’s father, opens with “The one Dad told . . .. /A dog walks into a bar and orders a beer”. In “Drying the Dishes,” Mother wants to work harder, but Dad puts his hand on the poet’s arm and says “Let’s not get up today.” The poem “Settlement” describes how the poet and his father “would spend hours with our faces/inches apart fixing a sink, installing/a ceiling fan.” In the wonderful poem “When He’s Dead,” a catalog of the things the dead no longer have to worry about, the first lines ask, “why he never had the nerve to hug his father,’ and one can only wonder if this is the poet speaking of himself.
The family poems mix with the some of the strongest poems in the book, which concern the world of work and its hypocrisy, in a trenchant and sometimes totally laughable way. Again in the poem “Settlement,” the poet contrasts his father’s view of work, “He believed a person’s story /was told in their work,” with the poet’s own: “Most days my story’s told in dollar signs/I shake hands, smile, lie, and have lunch. /then am lied straight back to.” In “Why I’m in Marketing,” advertising becomes completely laughable:
The three-story woman in a negligee was my idea. It stopped traffic
but no one bought the oatmeal . . ..
We’re not selling breakfast,
we’re selling escape. Everyone pretends to write it down.
The unreality of the poet’s work in marketing comes home again in the poem “30 Seconds,” “It doesn’t have to make sense; it just has to sell product,” and “Dryer sheets become spring rain, ready-to-bake/ desserts are cookies in the oven at Grandma’s.”
Interspersed with the work poems, and often combined with them, are images of God, spirituality and religion. The poet has little respect for religion as such. In “Abandoned Church,” the poem personae leans against the stone wall, lights the day’s first cigarette and listens to a restless wind that is definitely “Not God’s voice.” And in “The Magi Ask for Directions” the three wise men are told first to “Turn right at the Olive Garden,” and are then led through a series of commercial landmarks that end with the admonishment “You can’t miss it. / It’s just beyond Land’s End.”
But religion is not God for the poet, and God keeps turning up in unexpected, and expected, places, in many different guises. In “Friday Night Poker,” God can’t help from loving everyone,” and everyone becomes “like babies, unjudged.” In the poem “Here,” everyone is doing the best they can, including “God in heaven, / silent as it is, is doing the best it can.” This clearly is the voice of longing, of wanting to know a loving God, or at least a God who pays attention. The last stanza of the poem “Loved One,” a visit to a graveyard, is really a prayer for that kind of God:
Let there be a God that sees this.
Then a light, a grieving, a swatch of childhood,
Let there be a father, an affection that suffices.
Let there be a memory that finally,
irrevocably resolves, even as it is also capitulation.
Let there be someone who sees this.
Central Air is not for those who want narrative or progression, but for those who can let disparate images wash over them, for those who are open to surprise and amazing originality.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol L. Gloor’s poetry chapbook, Assisted Living, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013, and her full length poetry collection, Falling Back, was published by WordPoetry in 2018. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Gyroscope, and she is a member of the Chicago poetry collective Egg Money Poets.
Posted March 1, 2021
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Dancing at Lake Montebello
By Lynne Viti
Apprentice House Press, Loyola University Maryland 2020
113 Pages
ISBN-13: 9-781627-202800
Review by Terry Loncaric
Lynne Viti snares the reader into the compelling layers and calculated nuances of poetry. Her latest collection of poems, Dancingat LakeMontebello, strikes that rare combination of evocative imagery, lyrical language, and potent themes. She has the capacity to delight and jar you in the immediacy of her narratives.
Viti's precision of language is evident in every line of every finely-crafted poem in her memoir-inspired collection. Viti's work is deeply introspective, yet a joy to read. These poems are clearly meant to be savored, mulled over, and reflected upon. Each reading of a Lynne Viti poem invites you to glean new meanings and discover fresh layers. The power of memory becomes crystal clear.
In "Biography," Viti exposes the stain of segregation, through the lens of a young woman growing up in the '60s in Baltimore, the most segregated Northern city. Viti was raised Catholic. During her life, she taught writing at Wellesley College and worked as a lawyer. She is the daughter of a tavern owner and school teacher. She captures some visceral memories in "Biography."
White girl, born in the city, grew up near the county line.
Catholic school, navy jumper, nuns in round white collars.
Negroes, only saw them when we went downtown,
on the streetcar -- after North Avenue when you looked around.
Viti bears witness with the grace of a poet and the brutal honesty of a memoirist. In our tumultuous times, this message seems less about the '60s than the scab of racism, which never seems to heal.
I breathed the air of segregation, taking it in,
hardly knowing how it worked in this border state city
of unstated rules, takeout only, segregated pools,
separate schools, public or private, secular or parochial.
Some of her poems are simply beautiful narratives. In "Matinee at the Shore," she shares a vivid childhood memory of sneaking candy into the movie theater with a surreptitious delight.
I followed DewAnn's long legs up the wooden staircase,
dragged my hand on rough painted wallboards as we went.
The candy bag bulged in my pocket.
Laughter met us at the landing.
"Labor Day" recalls a boating accident with haunting imagery. Viti skillfully juxtaposes softer images with the darker details of the event.
To say something went wrong that day
is to turn away from the sun on their faces,
the sun on gray water,
beer cans they drained, tossed overboard.
"I Can't Get No" describes with a tinge of wistfulness a basement party in which college friends flirted and danced to the sexy beat of the Rolling Stones. In the details of her narrative, Viti makes you remember your old crushes and sexual attractions.
you were the preppiest guy I knew.
I never knew anyone who
could dance like you, with such abandon.
It could be Mersey sound, blues beat, r&b.
You were an equal opportunity
music-loving dance machine.
In the same poem, the poet comes to realize, most friendships outlast the sexual attractions of our youth.
You were my friend, one who asked so little,
who made me laugh and shared
his cigarettes and his Scotch with me
his fake cynicism and his jokes.
You were never my boyfriend,
never my lover. You were
the companion who years later left a handwritten poem
rolled into my old typewriter,
blue-black ink, corrasable bond.
In "I Learned That Marilyn Had Died," Viti writes a poignant tribute to Marilyn, a free-spirited English teacher she met at the first school where she taught. Marilyn had a complicated life, grew up with an alcoholic father; she was once engaged, but she never married. Viti has regrets she lost touch with Marilyn, "one of those beloved teachers everyone remembers forever." She reflects on the fragility of life.
She had the saddest face even when she smiled,
black lashes against white skin.
Her dark wit made me laugh and wonder
really, what was so funny about what
was so sad. I wished I knew
what became of her, before
her short ticket was punched.
Often Viti mines poetry from the mundane. Like all great poets, she can capture and crystalize a moment, and then grasp its significance. The lovely images in "Last Sunday in July" linger in these simple lines. That last line slays me. It reads like a mantra.
Sun, then not-sun, clouds.
Then not clouds.
Warm, then not warm.
Not much to do save
listen to Bill Evans play the piano
wrestle with the crossword.
Turn off the phone. Dream.
A composite of life experiences, condensed into poems, Dancingat LakeMontebello is a substantial and enduring body of work. Lynne Viti captures with grit and grace the experiences that brought her full circle, through love and loss, social unrest and reconciliation. In its rhythms, Viti's poetry moves like a wave that keeps slapping you with its force, yet calms you in its serenity. Viti paints a landscape of emotional truth and intellectual depth. There is a cohesiveness in her storytelling that is never lost in the devices of poetry. Viti sharpens every one of her skills as a poet and academic to chisel lasting, precise, and beautiful life narratives.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Terry Loncaric, of Hampshire, Illinois, is the author of Crashing in Velvet for Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared locally, and nationally, on storefronts, newspapers, and anthologies. She has hosted many poetry events in the Chicago suburbs.
Posted February 1, 2021
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Decennia
By Jan Chronister
Truth Serum Press, 2019
156 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1925536980
Review by Carol L. Gloor
Jan Chronister’s book of poems,Decennia, is a journey through five decades of the poet’s life, from the 1950’s to the 1990’s, and through a changing world during that time. Each decade has its own section. From the publication credits at the end of the book, almost all of which are very recent, one wonders if these poems are primarily memory pieces written fairly recently, which is suggested the use of the past tense in many of them, or if they were written earlier and just now offered for publication. In the poem Thoughts on the Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh from the 1960’s section, she hints that she was writing poems early: “I had an angry heart /a city bus ride to college/ and a folder full of poems.”
Whether written then or now, poems traverse a landscape of alteration: of the body, of family, of gender relations. The poems are totally accessible and sometimes give the reader who lived through all or part of these decades a startling twinge of remembrance. In the 1950’s poem Self Portrait as Tea Kettle, she remembers how her father called her “Trixie/after my favorite cereal.” I lived through all these decades and fondly remember Trix as the cereal that always turned the milk orange. In the 1960’s section she notes “I am from a 60’s ranch house /built in a cornfield,” which certainly recalls the heedless growth of subdivisions during that time. On a more serious note, in the Brett Kavanaugh poem, in the 1960’s section, she recalls how women then always had to “Feel pretty/Feel important.” Similarly, in the 1970’s section, the poem Still in Alabama: recalls the still pervasive imposed impoverishment of African Americans, especially in the south, ending with the poignant lines “traces of cotton fluff/ catch on the roadside weeds.”
At best the poems focus on a specific event or object and use sensory images to evoke their meaning. For example, in the 1950’s section poem The Blues, the poet is going through drawers of old items and finds a piece of cloth she meant to somehow use and didn’t, but most importantly the smell of the cloth, “pine, touch of lake, tears” stunningly recalls the childhood moment when she saved the cloth. Similarly in Letter to Myself at Forty, she begins recalling many family vacations, both actual and dreamed of, then berates herself for not keeping an organized scrapbook as her sister does, and ends with finding a photo that both surprises her and absolves her from the roads not taken and from disorganization, a photo which “takes me back to that day/ in Tucson or Seattle/ when the four of us were still together.”
At worse the poet falls into the old trap of telling instead of showing. In I Never Eat Strawberry Sundaes, she recalls seeing her grandfather slaughter a pig in a scene awash with blood, and then being served ice cream with strawberry sauce, which sauce “pools in my mind,” a totally unneeded phrase because the rest of the poem and the title have already done the needed work of the poem. Or again, in Decorating Habits of the Male Sexual Predator she sustains a metaphor of comparing wallpaper to women, and uses strong verbs like “slaps” and “peels”, but then ends with the statement that this is how such a man “picks out his prey.” The ending is superfluous because the title, the sustained metaphor and the strong verbs have already gotten us there.
But these are small lapses in an otherwise satisfying trip through time. Does the poet grow and change? Yes, because by the 1990’s she confronts her own truths and the truth of inevitable final loss. In Car Crash and Three Minutes she movingly laments the death of a friend, and in All The Things I Did Not Mention she tells us “I never really believed in God” and “I also have sex with myself.”
Decennia is an easy read, and worthwhile one.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Carol L. Gloor’s poetry chapbook, Assisted Living, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013, and her full length poetry collection, Falling Back, was published by WordPoetry in 2018. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Gyroscope, and she is a member of the Chicago poetry collective Egg Money Poets.
Posted February 1, 2021
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the samurai
By Linda Crate
56Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1735023021
Review by Cynthia T. Hahn
What writer among us has not been surprised by a kind of déjà vu of the self? Linda M. Crate, in her poetic chapbook, "the samurai", has personified this discovery of a stronger, subconscious self, the stuff of dream incarnation, in a feminized samurai form, beautifully portrayed by the wood cut cover by artist Ann Marie Sekeres (annemarieprojects.com).
The dual self that author Crate describes, fuses into one as the text reveals her, that strong sword-wielding warrior, yet falling-from-a-roof self, the one who has lost her life and yet whose essence is prolonged as she is received, integrated and understood in the context of the narrator's current life.
This poetic text can easily be read as a river of words, as one poem flows to the next, in a continued inner monologue of self-uncovering, punctuated by poetic jewels along the reader's path such as, "the lyric of an honest wind," (31), "the starlight she put back in my eyes" (21), and "we have a future in new bones" (13). The thematic of current self in creation initially spurred by "little seeds of doubt and curiosity singing together" (7) encompasses both remembering a stronger version of self to supplant a more recent, weaker sense of self, one who has been rejected in love, and freshly grieving. As the narrator picks up the other 'self sword', her anger is given symbolic weight, and imbued with the power to free herself from past wounds. She projects herself both backward and forward, as if sewing a connection to a female samurai of the self, one who has fallen in a dramatic demonstration of loss, and yet also exhibits strength in her fall. In a sense, the author poetically catches her, or catches up with her in the words, and resurrects her past, envisioned self, re-"incarnating" her as she recovers from her own fall into the grief of unrequited love. As the author states, "we both know the misery of unrequited love" (31) "but choose to focus on the kindest moonlight" (31).
The cover's spectacular red samurai, falling head-first from a green-blue tiled roof into near night lit by full moon is a powerful image echoed by the text; the sword she wields whose arc echoes the shape of her unbound hair suggests a warrior who has lost her balance and whose white, outstretched hand reaches for the full moon's light. The back cover's image continues the front, a red sun setting into an ocean of blue-green, and whose white 'butterfly' birds suggest a free flight of spirit, while coasting and falling across the page around a red-boughed tree. These contrasting images of dark and light, of stability (tree, house, tranquil sea) and movement (samurai woman, birds, sun and moon) comprise a wonderful visual summary of the textual duality and movement towards healing that Crate underscores throughout the text; the poet notes that the samurai took the "monsters" and "sent them packing" (33). It is the samurai's look that reminds the author she is a "tiger" in the "Chinese zodiac" and can use her "claws" to 'slash' "through the throat of every painful memory" and depart from the clutches of death, in her poem, "14. a grave that was not mine" (33).
The three internal black-and-white renderings offer inscrutably strong faces of standing women, one with sword. The final greyed image of the samurai woman with cat, drinking tea at the window as she contemplates bird, tree and rooftop (reminiscent of the cover) also faces an open lock on a string, suggesting the undoing of the lover's bond, and new freedom to see the horizon, underlining the poetic journey of the text.
These twenty-one poems, moving from "lost in translation" to "there is no surrender" complete a textual identification and self-transformation that is nearly seamless, devoid of capitals so as not to interrupt the stream of consciousness effect, paused by only a strong image of sword-wielding samurai in the middle of the text, following "10. every monster will fall," (23), and the numbered titles of each page's poem. In Linda M. Crate's penultimate poem, "20. i won't stop fighting", the author clearly expresses the inspiration and healing essence of the samurai sword, and a path forward, in her broad statement of the movement of inner healing: "the samurai in me still lives through me and so I make my/ dreams, my words, my light a sword against/ the darkness of this world" (45).
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Cynthia Hahn has been a Professor of French at Lake Forest College, teaching language, literature, culture, film, translation and creative writing since 1990. She is also a published poet and author. Visit Cynthia's web site -www.cynthiathahn.com
Posted February 1, 2021
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Beyond the White Moon's Claw
By Patty Dickson Piecza
Red Dragonfly Press, 2020
128 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1945063329
Review by Michael Escoubas
Originally published for Quill & Parchment
In my role as a book reviewer few collections have moved me more than Patty Dickson Pieczka’s new work. As a poet I have learned that reading and writing poems brings about healing in the aftermath of stress. Pieczka avers in her introduction, “I needed to come to terms with the some of the murkier parts of my past.” Beyond the Moon’s White Claw, chronicles that journey and its results. She offers these poems in love, as a gift to her fortunate readers.
Divided into five parts, Pieczka invites readers to accompany her on a quest for healing. While the poems are strong enough to stand on their own, she urges readers to take them in chronological order.
Part I. Marriage to Vic and his father’s suicide Part II. Life after divorce and my friend Kinouk Part III. Vic’s attempt to return home Part IV. Dedication to all those affected by violence or war Part V. Epilogue, my present life
As a veteran of the Vietnam war, your reviewer is well acquainted with Pieczka’s profile of her husband Vic. At 18, he, like so many young men was
Young and in the war-singed jungle, his face as carved as an old man’s,
shadows of death weave through his hair, ghosts drifting past his eyes.
This excerpt is one of “Four Snapshots of Victor,” which open the collection. Each poem contains five couplets which correspond to Vic’s life in carefully measured decades, at 18, 28, 38 and 48. These poems form a kind of artist’s sketch of the man destined to influence the poet in profound ways and compel her to inspect both the beauty and undersides of situations that sparked and flared from her memory.
Like the changing of seasons in the middle-west, where nature signals gradual transitions, so between Patty and Vic, changes were subtle, moving from
Sing to Me
and make the rough-ridged rocks of this day vanish into the sun.
Unlace the afternoon; let its blue-gray ribbons fly loose in the silver breeze.
Your voice is a satin river that lifts me to its currents,
to things more sinister on the horizon
War Shadows
When dark wind and leaves cannot console each other, he thrashes the night into thin black rags as fear runs its hot tongue through his veins.
As the poems progress in Part I, my heart felt heavy for both Patty and Vic as their marriage gradually changed to the point of no return; Patty writes in The Well
I drag my emptiness behind me. it clatters along the stones like a metal bucket.
Divorce segues Pieczka toward friendship and hope as the she faces the pain of an appendage being ripped from her body. In a series of memorable poems Pieczka blends the visible outer world of nature with the invisible (but no less real) world of the human psyche. The moon, the collection’s pivotal metaphor, is present throughout. Even when it is not directly referenced, it is still there, as in this excerpt from
Silence and Echoes
Wind whispers Vic’s quiet laugh, gathers leaves and piles them against my door. Kitchen pots Speak in hollow voices. … Sometimes, I wake in the cool arms of night, feel his presence and know he’s traveling closer.
Perhaps some readers have felt the same as Pieczka, sensing that a relationship is moving toward crisis
Back from the Bayou
Vic appears from the Gulf, and we circle each other like suspicious cats, our once-flowing conversations threadbare and sparse.
As Part II develops Pieczka draws readers up close and personal as
I pour bittersweet August into my opened wounds and pray for light, tear the night’s fears into tiny black pieces for the breeze to hold.
Pieczka’s anguished heart brings forth powerful imagistic poems. In Part III, she reaches into the night to feel morning’s warm hand. Vic returns home from his sojourn in Louisiana, but things do not go well. The trauma to Vic’s soul from his military experiences finds expression for Pieczka in poems laying open the pathos of their relationship. Here is an excerpt from What Lives in the Dark
The day closes its heart, and I listen through gaps of dusk to the breath of black trees.
While darkness is profound for the poet, she does not give into darkness; she continually has faith that light will not forever be obscured
While Waiting for Sunlight
I ignored the moon, never noticed its shape was an unopened dream ready to bloom silver.
This poem, toward the end of Part III, marks a subtle transition moving the poet ever-so-cautiously into the orbit of hope anchored in love.
In parts IV and V, Pieczka unfolds a tapestry of poems, born of love, and dedicated to all affected by violence, racism, and prejudice in its many forms.
Though the poet is dealing with issues of profound emotional and psychic depth, she remains faithful to her poetic craft. She is an artist of amazing skill and range.
I would be remiss if I did not cite a particularly poignant poem from Part V; I leave you with this in power and in majesty
Autumn
I carry your breath in my hands like warm sun at dusk. Your laughter vines through my hair, roots growing into my heart.
Stay with me while the forest rings its small brass bells, and the lake reflects the oracle
of October’s bronze mirror, candling golds and russets of evening’s wild dance.
Hold to our branch and whisper your song of riffling leaves before wind clips our stems
to whirl us back to earth in our separate turns.
We have only until the moon blinks.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Michael Escoubas is editor, contributing poet, and staff book reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 19-year-old literary and cultural arts online poetry journal. This review was originally posted on Quill and Parchment.
Posted February 1, 2021
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Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises
By Marjorie Maddox
Kelsay Books, 2020
63 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1950462445
Review by Teresa K. Burleson
"Have you ever befriended a poem?" Marjorie Maddox asks in her book, INSIDE OUT POEMS. In this book, she takes a subject which could easily become rather dry and tedious and makes it a delight. With a whimsical and lighthearted touch, she doesn't just explain the major poetic forms and literary devices. She gives you original examples of metaphor, personification, simile, dramatic monologue, pun, paradox, alliteration, onomatopoeia, enjambment, caesura, eye rhyme, couplet, clerihew, triolet, iambic pentameter, English sonnet, Italian sonnet, sestina and villanelle.
I especially liked "Befriending a Poem," in which she talks about inviting a poem home for dinner and ends with the line, "Much of what he has to say lies between the lines."
Another of my favorites is "Tug of War between Concrete and Abstract," which discusses the limitation of the abstraction. It concludes with the line, "Meanwhile on the other end of twine or hemp, Concrete's daily dedications pump pictures weighing thousands."
All in all, I found the book a refreshing reminder that poetry is meant to be enjoyed. At the end there are nine insider exercises and a glossary.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Teresa K. Burlesonis the author ofA Pilgrim's LyreandRose Without Thorns. She has been free-lancing over 40 years and has credits in over 45 magazines.
Posted February 1, 2021
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Ministry of Flowers
By Andrea Witzke Slot
Valley Press, 2020
104 Pages
ISBN-13: 9781912436439
Review by Lois Baer Barr
Fasten your seatbelts! From the first poem to the last you are in for a thrilling ride. Don’t worry, you’re in the hands of a skilled driver. Not always one to race, Andrea Witzke Slot knows just what pace to take on dangerous curves.
Yes, Highland Park Poets, you guessed right, the book takes its title from Emily Dickinson’s poem #905. She invokes her muse with the second poem in the collection, “Between my country and the others–a sea.” This poem deals with the distance between the lover and the beloved. The citation is no mere nod to Dickinson whose slant rhymes and nature imagery infuse Slot’s book from beginning to end. One of the last poems is called: “Between my country and the others/As ministry.” This poem is about the painful process of finding forgiveness and forgiving: one of the main themes of the book. The flowers offered as she crosses a bridge to her “sister” stand for the work of the poet. This is no dozen carnations purchased at the grocery, these flowers represent an opening of the self to extreme scrutiny. “Please open our door. I have changed.”
Reconnecting with loved ones who’ve been wronged requires dealing with ghosts. Slot converses with the patients of the former owner of her house, a psychologist. Her stairway reverberates with the steps of others who creaked up and down them. In “Disguises” her friend comes back after midnight “in your absence, we talk/ and, sometimes, we laugh.”
The poetry allows us to be inside very intimate moments as Slot speaks of her annual breast exam or of sitting at a truck stop with truckers waiting for their turn to shower. As she waits for the tow truck that never arrives, she observes the truckers with warmth and startling images: “The odour of stale hotdogs coils/Around this truck stop of quiet men.” Her baby in “The Incubator” has “sapling lungs” and is an “unwrapped bundle of earth, bone, flesh.” There are sensual poems about making love and about carrying a sleeping three-year-old to the toilet. Direct address to the reader heightens the intimacy in poems such as “Remember when we thought we’d live forever?”
But do you remember the night
The boat left the shore
When we realized where we had been?–
And that the Island was gone?
Readers from Deerfield Poetry Workshop will especially like the tribute to one of our members, the late Helen Degen Cohen, in which the author addresses Helen directly. A Holocaust survivor, Helen was an elegant poet. She lived her life with joy and ferocity; she left no poem uncut.
Despite the serious tone of the collection, there’s lots of humor. In “Self-portrait, Desk,” a persona poem, the desk hears a piano upstairs and “wonders how wood can make such a noise.” A narrative poem in epistolary form, “Dear Police Officer,” tells how the poet got a ticket parking in Chicago when she couldn’t drag herself away from Sonia Sanchez’s performance of her poetry.
Ministry of Flowers is a compendium of poetic forms: sonnets, prose, elegies and visual poems. One visual poem is an ode to a cactus that blooms after three years of dormancy. The dashes at the beginning and end of each line and exclamation points at top and bottom form the needles. On the page, the piece looks like the pad of a nopal.
It’s not surprising to learn that Andrea Witzke Slot is also a scholar. She reveals her academic side with literary allusions and abundant Latin words. Slot uses Latinate words that go beyond our common knowledge, like proprioception and Lasius Niger (garden ant). In “Blood Ties, Circa 1932” she calls the work her grandfather did to commit suicide in his garage “the achene preparation.” I had to look that one up. Thankfully, Google lets you hear the word. It sounds like “a keen” which adds acuity and doggedness to the way he pursued death. As always, the sound of the word adds another level of meaning. It reminds the reader of aching preparation and of the aching that the grandmother would relive the rest of her life.
I started with the image of a joy ride. But after that experience, you’d feel the adrenalin rush but not remember many details. With Slot’s work, the images linger: a body collapsing like the circus tent billowing down or her grandmother finding her husband asphyxiated in his car. The plate with what would have been his last lunch waits on the table. Andrea Witzke Slot probes moments of terror and tenderness. There is so much to find in this short book: poems about social justice, poems about llamas and slugs in the garden. Poets, start your engines and race to the bookstore, or perhaps it would be safer to order from this website.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Lois Baer Barr lives in Riverwoods with her husband and her pandemic pup Aggie. You can read her poetry in Biopoesis (Poetica Press, 2013) and her stories in Lope de Vega’s Daughter (Red Bird, 2019). Her work is online at Alimentum, Ekphrastic Review, Highland Park Poetry, The Jewish Literary Review, Persimmon Tree, and Southern Women’s Review and in print at cream city review,East on Central, Valley Voices, and forthcoming at Rattle.
Posted January 1, 2021
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Dragonflies and Algebra
By Dennis Trujillo
FutureCycle Press, 2020
82 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1942371861
Review by Ed Werstein
I had taken notice of Dennis Trujillo’s poetry over recent years in ezines like Blast Furnace and 3Elements Review, and also on websites like Your Daily Poem and, of course, Highland Park Poetry. So when opportunity knocked about reviewing his latest collection, Dragonflies and Algebra (Future Cycle,, 2020) including a free review copy, I answered the door.
One of the hallmarks of good poetry is that it can both surprise and challenge us. Trujillo’s book accomplished that before I even opened it. Reading the back cover I was amazed to learn that he is a graduate of West Point and that he had a 20 year military career, facts which both surprised me, and challenged my peacenik anti-military bias. That bias will be a long time in tempering. This brief review will focus on the poetry, which did not disappoint.
Maybe you’ve imagined what garden gnomes would say to you if they could talk. I haven’t, but Dennis has. Maybe you’ve thought about the taste of raven wings and black diamonds. I haven’t, but Dennis has. And maybe you’ve considered that dragonflies might be interested in studying the quadratic equation. I haven’t, but (you guessed it) Dennis has.
In At the Scrapyard, Trujillo offers us obsolete telephone booths waiting for demolition. “They wait/ like dinosaurs looking up at a sky/ of dark ash.” And in The Red Mower he shows us a weekend project of assembling a new mower. The narrator “poured myself into the job as if/ it were the Apollo Lunar Lander”. Later, “The mower loomed in the backyard / like a giant red ant from Mars.”
After his military career, which included time spent in Asia, Dennis became a math teacher. He is also an avid, avid as in daily, runner and has kept a journal of his runs for years. The result of this wide and seemingly unconnected experience is a poetry that covers an astounding variety of subject matter: Eastern myth and philosophy, astrology, long distance running, science, insects, math, parenthood, love and loss. There are even odes to the veins on the top of his feet, and to the lowly dandelion.
Dennis is a master of simile and metaphor. In My Heart Sprouts Wings, Trujillo happens upon a wounded pigeon while running. The bird “made me think/ of an escaped convict in shackles.” The next day the pigeon is still struggling and two other birds are there, “Two others/ kept company like sentries/ at a queen’s chambers.” And in Voices, “...strands of starlight/ murmured through the branches/ of the ginko tree outside/ my window in a language/ only fairies and fireflies/ could unravel.”
The poem titles invite the reader in: Wooden Bicycle, Shaman of Atlantis, Crayola Therapy, Meteorite Wine, and Where Angels Vacation, to name a few. These poems are full of the sudden turn to the unexpected, and the surprise ending.
Dennis Trujillo’s poetry is imaginative, speculative, whimsical, and yet, at the same time profound. And always, always, surprising. Buy this book.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Ed Werstein is a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and the 2018 recipient of the Council of Wisconsin Writers Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry.
Posted January 1, 2020
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Apricots to Za'atar: Across Oceans and Time Memoir Greets Persona in the Pantry of My Life's Menu
By Emma Alexandra Kowalenko
Self-published, 2019
129 Pages
ISBN-13: 9781701893696
Review by Dr. Jonathan Gourlay
Emma Alexandra Kowalenko’s book Apricots to Za’atar offers a cornucopia of poems tracing her immigrant experience through food. Each of the alphabetically arranged poems offers a first course of memory or association, followed by a second poem that adds dimension to the first. This structure, with two poems in conversation with each other around a specific dish, creates a depth that captures something unique about the immigrant experience. Her Polish parents’ longing for herring as refugees in Morocco in “Herring and Vodka” is complicated by survivor’s guilt in the next poem, when her mother is met with an abundance of herring as an immigrant in Chicago. The secret ingredient here is time. The way something as simple as herring, matzah, or a roasted peanut can link generations, suggest lost villages in Poland, bring loved ones back more viscerally than any photograph.
Kowalenko’s perspective on the past is also told from point of view of the objects and ingredients that witnessed it. Poems in the persona of “Garbanzos in Hummus Disguise” or a soup bowl further complicate her story. The poems are not only about how food binds our memories to our present and creates our sense of self but also about the objects we carry with us from place to place. These metaphysical poems suggest that cuisine is not an individual pursuit reflected only in the poet’s memories. From the perspective of hummus, after all, our lives are fleeting.
Kowalenko’s poetry derives its’ power from the noun-driven, deceptively plain-spoken way she spins her memoir in poems. Here’s a verse from “Borscht, Hot, Cool, Red, and White”:
Hot borscht, the eastern European, Ukrainian version, pork ribs simmered in Papa’s beet broth. He adds potatoes for body. Countering Papa’s version, Mama cooks beets in chicken broth, bay leaves, a touch of marjoram.
The specificity of the ingredients has an incantatory power, almost like speaking a spell to bring back the memory. Because of the tactile nature of her images, the reader feels the pull of time, the sense of loss, the full scope of the immigrant journey when she returns to borscht, and her Jewish faith, at the end of the poem. She understands why her mother never made the Jewish version of borscht:
Life secrets are better kept than told.
The poems remind us that, like borscht, we all have versions. For Kowelenko, a youthful fascination with couscous and tagine, an early education in the many flavors of Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, and later travels among the olives and cheeses of Italy.
Perhaps this interest in how food defines us is why Kowalenko calls her book “memoir greets persona.” Our versions of ourselves were created in the kitchens of our youth. And we are constantly adding new ingredients, as long as we are alive, from apricots to za’atar.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Dr. Jonathan Gourlay is a writer in Oak Park, Illinois. He is the author of a memoir, Nowhere Slow, numerous articles, and a dissertation concerning sea cucumbers.
Posted January 1, 2021
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Time Is Not A River
By Michael Minassian
Transcendant Zero Press, 2020
103 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1946460042
Review by LaVern Spencer McCarthy
Since I am relatively new to reviewing books, I will focus mostly on what I like about Michael's book. The first thing I noticed was the impressive amount of acknowledgements. That tells me that the poet is prolific and serious about his work.
In Is This History? the poems are well written with an economy of words. Verb usage is strong with sparing use of adjectives. I was especially fascinated by the poem, The Rosenbergs Come Out To Play. I can almost smell the stench of death from the electric chair and feel the fear Ethel undoubtedly experienced in real life. Powerful imagery runs through the entire book.
The poems' subjects are varied with a few rhymes interspaced. In the section, History Follows You Home, I felt a certain pathos for the pan-handlers, as though I were there refusing to help, feeling guilty and then giving all I had. I noticed an over-used expression in the poem, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." I feel that could have been omitted without detracting from the poem.
Michael's poem, I Heard a River, a villanelle, would read better if the meter was consistent. Otherwise, the poet did a good job writing the poem. In Remembering the Starving Armenians, Michael gets the point across on how seriously his mother disliked wasted food:
But I had to finish my dinner
no matter how full I felt
and if any scraps
remained on our plates
my mother stood
at the kitchen sink
and licked each one clean.
Part 2--Postcard Blues-- In Postcard From Key West, the poet explains love as "The overseas highway--sometimes the road doesn't go on anymore"--an apt description. Michael's poems have a certain poignance and elegance that I have rarely seen before.
Most of them have a haunting quality, such as The Children Send Postcards.
The children send postcards
to their parents, missing
since birth, lost in a parking
lot behind the empty hospital.
I liked these lines:
The old, wooden crosses leaning into each other
as if they would hear what the other confessed.
Postcard From the Edge of the Lake is another great poem. Its near-rhyme on certain lines did not detract from the poem. I know that rhyming is not the poet's strong point. I especially enjoyed reading This Autumn Day, where he describes the sky as:
an old cup of tea that swirls of oily milk.
Michael's poems are full of life where he uses all his senses to describe and relate. In Part 3--Let's Burn the Bed-This Winter Day has astounding imagery.
The clouds are piled up
like a train wreck
across the sky,
and tongues of rain freeze
before they hit the ground.
Then, the perfect last verse:
with only the memory of your glance to guide me home.
Part 4--Like Black Rocks--In The Short Story, the poem is not a true Shakespearean Sonnet. It would scan better if the rhyme was iambic and precise. The almost-rhyme does not detract from the poem too much. It was readable and enjoyable. In Early This Morning, the poem is whimsical, one of the poet's finest, I think. He compares his friend to Walt Whitman:
with his long hair and beard
he looked like Walt Whitman
wandering into the wrong century.
Throughout the book the poems have an unforgettable, haunting quality. I would recommend it as fine reading, written by a literary geniuswho goes to extraordinary lengths to make his writing superb.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: LaVern Spencer McCarthy is a life member of Poetry Society Of Texas. She has published five books of poetry and three books of short stories.
Posted January 1, 2021
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Other Maidens
By Toti O'Brien
BlazeVOX Books, 2020
146 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-60964-374-4
Review by Linda Imbler
Toti O’Brien’s marvelous collection, Other Maidens, has a common thread running through the entire book-angst. Bare, vibrating, soulful angst.
Yet, each work is penned so beautifully that one forgets that the poems are born of heartache or despair. Her masterful grasp of language graces each piece, and allusions to the arts are highly present. Toti obviously has significant knowledge of various art forms, and she employs that knowledge to sing, dance, and paint her way through each of this book’s poems. Furthermore, her scholarly appreciation for Mythology and History is used to best advantage, as she sieves references to these two themes through her eyes and heart, in order to create the treasures that become her poems.
Lines such as those following seem simple, but are lush with symbolism when read within the context of the entire poem. Lines such as:
“ you have seen many skies bleedingpurple” (Voyager),
“ don’t trust jaguars, it sighs. Not when they come in pairs” (House Of Jaguars), and
“ if she dares intruding the arboreal crowd without blinking” (Of The Palm).
I highly recommend this book for its intricacies, gorgeous language, and stunning revelations.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Linda Imbler is the author of Big Question, Little Sleep and That Fifth Element.
Posted January 1, 2021
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My Third Eye Is Blurry: Collected Poems
By William Vollrath
Highland Park Poetry Press, 2020
74 Pages
ISBN-13: 979-8681078173
Review by Arlene Gay Levine
Like the glorious multicolor helix gracing the cover of William Vollrath’s collection of poems, My Third Eye Is Blurry, the text itself is a fascinating kaleidoscope of the various experiences, musings and growth the poet encounters on his journey. The book is divided into two sections, First Vision and Second Vision, with a roughly equal number of poems in each. This presages the work’s dominant theme of seeking that flows beneath the words, as if the poet himself is on a quest for equilibrium, some method to weigh life’s questions and answers in order to find a balanced path.
A frequently jocular tone hides secrets, glimpses into mysteries both human and metaphysical. This is accomplished so suavely you will hardly recognize the depth these short, often amusing poems provide until you take time to read, reflect and reread. Of course, this is what the poet in his affable way, urges us to recognize as needful in understanding the day to day book of our own lives as well. The very first poem, poem-o-matic, provides a glimpse into Vollrath’s creative process and introduces another motif, cooking, whether it be a meal or a poem.
It is a concrete poem in the shape of a bowl holding varied “organic ingredients” such as “temptation, joy, anger, meter, beat and voice” with the direction to “mix/ and hope your muse steps into the kitchen.” It speaks of what will be recurring and intertwining subjects of creation and nourishment. The next poem, My Muse, awakens the poet at 4:00 a.m. with “Brain now boiling joyously/Twitching from her planted seeds/Nascent ideas nourish me.” The second stanza foreshadows the element of forthcoming spiritual concerns in the lines, “Inspiration on god’s platter/My Muse brings kisses from afar.”
Levity in the title Deep Fried Twinkies with the delicious metaphor in the first line: “Truffles for a weary soul” soon recants this mood with a list of woes including “weeds in the yard/ticks on the dog/foolishly lost love” yet once again returns to humor with the wonderful last line, “I’ll take a dozen to go” and who wouldn’t want to try those deep fried Twinkies, at least once? By the way, the dog with ticks makes for one of my favorite poems in section I, Taking My Dog Fishing. You feel the poet’s joy from the “sparkling sun, champagne air” and how the “clear water at the county park/begs for our presence/for our absolute focus/on the shimmering movements gliding just beneath.”
First Vision also contains the moving Pieces of My Soul that seems to me to be a synthesis of the human drama of the poet’s life and his plea for intervention of numinous forces to set things right. He speaks of “forgotten triumphs/hollow victories” that are “stacked in dim crawlspaces and/cobwebbed corners of the mind.” Poignant, the last few lines explain “pieces of then/anxiously waiting/a caretaker’s /healing broom.”
Section 2, Second Vision, more serious in tone, builds to a crescendo toward the growth of the soul through trial and tribulation toward wisdom and understanding. In Pregnant, Vollrath shares “I surrender myself…/servant to suggestion” who is “peaceful in my solitude” and closes with “I shall bear an idea.” Other stand-outs include Kill the Buddha, which speaks to the search for enlightenment, the eloquent Jade bi at the Freer Gallery, asking if the jade disks might “suggest the secret/to our sacred cycles/ of birth and death and birth” and the closing poem of the collection, Connected, which offers the pearl of wisdom the poet has won from his journey on earth thus far.
A seeker of answers, trying with his words to parse the duality between the real world and The Real, William Vollrath is at his best when he mulls over life’s paradoxes with the eye of an experienced traveler. My Third Eye Is Blurry: Collected Poems would make a fine guide and provide food for the mind, heart and soul of any reader.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Arlene Gay Levine is the author of 39 Ways to Open Your Heart: An Illuminated Meditation(Conari Press,) and Movie Life(Finishing Line Press). Her poetry and prose have found a home in The New York Times, numerous anthologies, and journals including Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, Quest and Frogpond.
Posted December 1, 2020
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Rites of Paradise
By Geoffrey Heptonstall
CyberWit.net, 2020
78 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-9389690491
Review by Barbara Eaton
Geoffrey Heptonstall, in his new collection, The Rites of Paradise, offers poems that are a comfort in these trying times. These poems are meant to be read in quiet solitude, and read more than once.
The Rites of Paradise is dedicated to Debbie, who served as inspiration. The first poem, “The Second Time I Saw You,” is a touching tribute and a wonderful introduction. But Debbie remains a shadowy figure. Most of these serious and learned poems deal with the arts: music, sculpture, and literature. As the poet claims, “There is no death in art.” His work quietly affirms his faith in a life after death.
While the poems in the first section, “The Bird of Paradise,” recall the Victorian poets, the second section, “Oceans and Islands,” brings the Romantics to mind. References to Odysseus and Moby Dick make clear that the oceans he speaks of are the strife of life. The islands, similarly, are islands of the mind, and we are “lovers in a storm.” But Heptonstall is confident that “life will last forever,” and the faithful will be guided gently home.
Curiously, the last five stanzas of “An Island in the Mind,” (pp. 29-30) are repeated in “Memento Mori” (p. 70). The poem, “Not Every Thought,” also appears twice (pp. 64 and 73).
The third section, “More Songs for Her,” is reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly the Rossettis. These poems are melancholy, but they resonate with understated emotion. In Heptonstall’s austere language, his well-crafted images come as a welcome surprise.
The Rites of Paradise is highly recommended for poets and anyone seeking solace in a storm.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Barbara Eatonis a poet and semi-retired community college instructor.
Posted December 1, 2020
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Star Gazing: Poems of Astronomy
By Miriam Sagan
Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020
136 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-8651830473
Review by Jan Chronister
What most impresses me about this collection of poems by Miriam Sagan is that she could write so many that connect to one subject! Sagan literally takes on the universe and presents it in a way that is as awe-inspiring as the subject itself. There is a cohesiveness to the book that feels natural and comforting. One device that helps link the poems together is the repetition of certain elements: boats, water, moon, darkness, eclipses, telescopes, and, of course, stars. Recurring images such as the woman chained to a rock and keys to locks also tie the poems together.
Sagan presents straightforward experiences, often related to astronomy, and turns them into philosophical statements. Despite the warning we have all been given not to look directly at the sun (or similar blinding objects), she does just that and comes away with revelations she shares with readers. One of my favorite poems in the book is “The Astronomer’s Wife.” It is a college experience I definitely relate to.
Many poems seem to be written in some form, but only one piece is actually identified as a pantoum. The poems with repeating lines seem to reflect the nature of celestial events—they recur as predicted and often mystify the viewer. A table of contents (and even a page of “notes”) would be helpful, but then it would be hard to deal with the numerous haiku-like pieces that appear on a regular basis, usually several to a page. I personally do not care for poems that begin lines with capital letters when not starting a new sentence, but I know it is done by many poets. I find it difficult to follow the thought, but sentence style has always been a strong preference of mine, though other readers are not bothered by it. I do appreciate Sagan’s short lines, a style I also prefer.
Sagan deftly references her Jewish heritage without making it obvious. Her skill in doing this adds an important personal element, as does the poem “Cosmos” in which she answers the question about Carl Sagan that is sure to be on every reader’s mind. I find the strongest part of the collection to be the series of three poems titled “Star Axis.” Here is where we learn that Polaris is only our North Star for 2,000 years, and then things change. The collection ends on a masterful note when Sagan pens a poem for each of the planets. I especially like “Jupiter: Patriarch” where her voice emerges loud and clear: it’s never too early, or late,/to learn to say:/fuck with me, you die.
After reading Star Gazing, I found myself wishing for more personal, subjective details. The poet has been to many fascinating and exotic locales, but her reaction to them seems to be more scientific than emotional. In a way, this does allow the reader to step up to the telescope with her and stare directly at the sun, so to speak. In the end, Sagan proves to be a likeable, competent guide to the practice of star (and planet) gazing.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Jan Chronister is currently serving as President of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her chapbook, Target Practice, was published by Parallel Press in 2009.
Posted December 1, 2020
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Throwing The Crown
Jacob Saenz
APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner
Copper Canyon Press, 2018
80 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0983300861
Review by Mike Freveletti
What does it mean to be a poet of place? The best example, at least for me, is Paterson by William Carlos Williams. The poet Jacob Saenz with his collection, Throwing the Crown, has given us poems of a place, Chicago, and of the self. You see, what Williams gave us in Paterson was the connection between man and the city but Saenz, if I can continue with the comparison, tells a story about the evolution of self with the city as backdrop. This is a beautiful set of seemingly autobiographical poems, an exploration of what it means to grow up a young man of color in circumstances that not every reader will understand from their own history. That’s okay. Saenz is a welcomed Virgil, our poetic guide, through this beautiful collection.
It’s hard not to see this book in some ways as a guide to the poet’s Chicago. Poems like the “Blue Line Incident”, a reference to the “L”, puts you right there on the train headed through downtown. The poem kicks off with a startling line, “he was just some coked-out/crazed King with crooked teeth/& a tear drop forever falling”, an arresting image that prepares us for a poem not really about this ‘King’ but what he stands for. They speak in a language, the language of street gangs and develop a mutual respect even if it is a sort of facade. The unexpected violent lines at the end, “I was wishing for a life-/saver & he took, hooked him in/& had him say goodbye like we was boys/& shit when I really should’ve/gutted that fuck w the tip/of my blue ballpoint.” The contrast between the narrator pretending to be a gang member and the violence considered once the man has gone away not only takes the poem in a surprising direction but also says a lot about what situational awareness means for this young man. He’s both a pretender and not. What decision will he make next time?
Saenz is clearly a born storyteller, but he is not without formal poetic strength. The poet gives us a sonnet, “Sonnet of the Dead” that boasts the camp of a horror movie within the framework of a sonnet, all with a subtitle referencing Dawn of the Dead. A neat juxtaposition that will have some formalists both scoffing and slightly frightened at the same time. It’s important to point out that this is a perfect example of what Saenz does so well in this collection, fun and serious together. A poem about masculinity might sit right next to a poem entirely about baseball.
My favorite poem in the collection is written about a mother-son relationship. “Poem for the Mother” struck me emotionally because of its simplicity. It’s a lineage of moles and freckles that get passed down from generation to generation, “as a kid I grabbed hold/of the moles on your face & neck/handled them like pearls of the earth/you said it was payback for the times/you play w grandma’s when you were small.” I know as a kid I was pulling my Mom’s hair, her necklace, her skin, and you know what she did? Nothing. Just kept on loving me. How lucky we are to be reminded of the unconditional and really, unquestioning, love of a mother.
I can recommend this book for a lot of reasons. The historical sketches based around the city, the story of growing up as a boy of color, the formation of that boy’s body and beliefs, the family narrative as a through line throughout the collection. Any of those would do. Saenz is a poet of place and this unique book is a debut to remember.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Mike Frevelettiis poet, short fiction writer and occasional dabbler in literary criticism. His work has appeared both online and in print.
Posted December 1, 2020
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Get Up Said The World
By Gail Goepfert
Cervena Barva Press, 2020
124 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-950063-24-6
Review by Caroline Johnson
“How do we persist in this living?” asks Gail Goepfert in the opening lines of her first poem in this collection. Now, more than ever, do we need an answer to this question, which Goepfert attempts to answer throughout the 121 pages of narrative and lyrical poetry.
Each poem is preceded by a carefully chosen word and its dictionary definition, giving us a template and theme to the poem before we read it. In “What Keats Knew,” Goepfert explores the term “élan vital” and asks what matters. “There is risk in thinking / I have anything to say,” she writes, but in the end relies on Keats’s answer: “The poetry / of the earth is never dead.”
The narrative poem, “Tête-à-tête at Trader Joe’s,” describes the poet’s encounter with an elderly woman at a grocery store. Both are plant lovers and Goepfert describes their poignant conversation about flowers beautifully. “Do you know the secret to getting peonies / to bloom?” the narrator asks the woman by way of introduction. This is followed by a heartfelt conversation and attention to detail about a stranger who becomes almost a friend on the page by the end of the poem.
In “Life Lists Not Just for the Birds,” the poet describes an abandoned robin’s egg and other birds, relating them to a violent Chicago weekend. The word “incredulity” precedes that poem, “the quality or state of being unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true.” Other poems touch on witnessing a suicide, fishing, and a touching elegy for her coal miner grandfather.
In “Cold Calling,” a prose poem that starts out describing some unpleasant jobs, Goepfert writes in detail about having to call one of her older students who is falling behind. She describes the litany of real life problems the student talks about and we, as readers, are drawn into his personal tragedy. Similarly, Goepfert describes her mother’s double mastectomy in “While Spooning Jelly on Toast” with touching details that make us feel her compassion.
In all of these poems, the poet adds a human connection that is reminiscent of poets such as Philip Levine and his portraits of people he knew, especially workers. In “Salting Ash,” Goepfert describes her mother’s instructions for her funeral:
“I don’t want a casket beneath the ground.
Strew some ash of me
with the couch and crab that ride
the steady clout of wave--pain-free
I’ll tumble in the foam.
Let the gulls cry and the terns squawk
making tattoos in the sand.” (p. 57)
Goepfert also includes some ekphrastic poetry in the collection (“Sisters”), and many poems containing sensual language, such as this description in “Easing in”:
“…The bicycle bell’s jingle
breaks through,
clear and clean
as picked bone
like the luminous cells in me.
Can I settle
into the stretch of skin
I was given at birth?
I refuse to hush
the beebox
inside me.” (p. 71)
And in “In the Glass of My Eye,” she writes, “How is it possible / that I taste with my eyes?...I gather light / coming and going.”
Indeed, like Goepfert’s other books--the chapbook A Mind on Pain (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and Tapping Roots (Kelsay Books, 2018)--she explores human connections as if through a glass lens, each poem a prism of light. In one of the final poems in this collection, “The Practice of Gratitude,” Goepfert thanks her body for waking, for the dawn now before her: “Thank you, I repeat / these word to my body.” Thank you, Gail, for offering up such a beautiful collection to the world.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Caroline Johnson is currently the president of Poets and Patrons of Chicago. Her first full-length collection of poems, The Caregiver, was published by Holy Cow! Press in May 2018.
Posted December 1, 2020
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Little Kings
By Peter Kahn
Nine Arches Press, 2020
231 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-911027-97-3
Review by Elizabeth Joy Levinson
I am heading into year fifteen in the classroom, except I won’t be in the classroom this year, at least not to start. And while I am relieved that this is the direction my district decided to go in, I am heartbroken at the same time, missing those first few weeks of community building with new freshmen, and reuniting with students I taught last year -- though our time together was ended abruptly, our reunion will be all the more poignant. Which is probably why Peter Kahn’s Little Kings has me feeling some kind of way. The bittersweet nature of many of the narratives throughout, and the overall narrative effect of the collection, so closely mirrors my own bittersweet.
The poems in the collection are narratives, each a snapshot, a quick peek at a man’s life, his memories, the people he has loved, the people he could not love enough. And together, these poems build a life, but like memory, they do not move chronologically, rather, they move back and forth through time. They flow like recollection, that one time reminds you of another time, and so on. Something meaningful when you are six may inform something you need to learn at 36.
For instance, the title poem, which appears early in the collection, recounts a pre-teen’s experience getting drunk with friends, unsupervised “cautious/ then, as now, listening to the retching.” The narrator learns from his friend's mistakes, pacing himself with the maturity of memory. But this poem is juxtaposed with the poem, Tuesday Mornings at Neon Street Center for Youth, in which we see young people who did not learn from their friends' mistakes, and while the poet does not pull his punches, his lens is compassionate in its honesty, the recognition of someone who wasn’t quite there, where these youth are, but maybe nearly, maybe adjacent, as the previous poem intimates. “Do not look into the white eyes/ of the future or you will hit snooze/ until the sun puts itself back to sleep.” The narrator keeps showing up, despite the fatigue, despite the secondary trauma. This is the lens we all need right now, Kahn’s lessons in compassion a reminder to keep showing up for each other.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Elizabeth Levinsonis a Chicago based poet and high school teacher. Her second chapbook, Running Aground,is available for advance orders from Finishing Line Press.
Posted November 1, 2020
Late Night Talk Show Fantasy
By Jennifer Dotson
Kelsay Books, 2020
86 Pages
ISBN-13: 9781952326035
Review by
Gay Guard Chamberlin
Even before you open Jennifer Dotson’s delightful full-length book you may find yourself captivated by its inventive title and boldly colored hand-drawn caricatures. The cover practically invites you in to root for her imagined famous talk-show-circuit poet. Take a look at the opening lines in the collection’s titular first poem: The world famous poet / chuckles with the late night / talk show host and the two / trade dazzling word play…Indeed, this book is filled with “dazzling word play” – and more that will entice, entertain, educate, and fulfill experienced lovers of poetry as well as newcomers.
Smartly divided into four sections corresponding to a late-night talk show format (The Opening Monologue, The House Band, The First Guest, The Non-Sequitor Comedian), Dotson’s 48 poems range from quirky to deep, funny to philosophical, like a quickly shifting array of talk show guests. This is a poet who doesn’t underestimate the intelligence of her audience. Her writing is accessible, smart, and chockful of the tiny vivid details so essential to making a poem come alive. Here is a slyly sensual short poem called “Cooking Together”:
It wasn’t my first BBQ.
When we met, I feared
I was just a crust,
a shell, a broken yolk
but your savory attention
set my broth to boil.
You whisked my batter
to a froth and I quickly
flipped my outlook on
life and love.
You didn’t sear me
with your flame
leaving my insides
raw or frozen,
instead you braised
me with wine and herbs
and I’ve been simmering
your spicy stew ever since.
Dotson excavates both the historical and the personal past through pieces like “Edwin Booth’s Dagger” and “When My Mother Met John Travolta,” and imagines the future in “Space Tacos” and “Dear Future Self at 99” (and aren’t those four titles just deliciously intriguing?). Evocative memories from childhood and of family life, rural and urban, abound. Of special note is “Driving Lessons,” a 7- sectioned poem. Each part is titled with a car engine part or function relating to her first experiences learning to drive through the years until her own children are learning. Notice how adroitly the poet builds tension in this excerpted from Section II titled “Pressure Plate”:
A College junior at eighteen,
I am determined to learn
on my summer break.
Sears Driving School sends
Mr. Johnson to instruct me.
Today we’re going to learn drive-thru.
Not as simple as it sounds.
Pull the car close enough to the
menu microphone but not too close
to damage the mirror or door.
Mr. Johnson orders himself lunch.
I repeat the close but not too close
lesson at the windows to pay
and to retrieve his food.
Mr. Johnson has an appetite.
Our next session ups the ante.
My first time cloverleafing into
Beltway traffic, Mr. Johnson purrs
You would look fine in a pair of
black leather pants. My hands grip
the wheel, focus flits to the cars around me,
my mirrors and pressing
down on the gas. Is this a test
or calculated distraction from the
crushing rush of other drivers?
Nervous, I say nothing—not then,
not later—too afraid to lose
my chance to learn agere—to drive.
Dotson is clearly not afraid to tackle big issues such as aging and Alzheimer’s, climate change and sexual harassment; yet the book is full of humor and affection. Her rich sense of the comical comes through even in her titles like “Dionysus Has a Crisis.” (To this reader, there is a bit of Erma Bombeck in Dotson’s Erato!)
At times she plants small and effective electric jolts within benign imagery, such as here in the start of “Living With a Beanstalk Boy”:
Teenage boy knows everything
so he takes our only cow to sell
at the market and returns with
some magic beans and shrugs
whatever when I yell and scream
and choke on tears and bitterness.
I am back to my endless chores
of dishes and laundry, pausing only
to stare hungrily at the empty
pantry and wonder when the
power and the phone will be
turned off for good.
A few pieces seem prescient: “How to Prepare for Disaster,” “Pathogen Rampage,” and “Demeter Mourns” speak eloquently to our current pandemic times yet were written earlier. Take a look at how skillfully Dotson juggles tragedy and comedy in this passage from “How to Prepare for Disaster”:
The end of the world is near
and you are getting ready
just in case the Mayan calendar
is accurate after all and
Nostradamus knew a thing
or two about Arab Spring.
Later in the poem, she wisely encourages us to:
Make sure you have some
reading matter along with
your matches and duct tape,
your can opener and your candles.
Her poetic control and careful attention to detail are evident throughout in her expert handling of alliteration and assonance, rhyme and rhythm. She writes free verse and prose poems, list poems, and formal ones as varied as the Sonnet, Pantoum, Villanelle, Ghazal, Cento, Etheree, Golden Shovel, Luc Bat, and the Gwawdodyn. If you aren’t familiar with these terms, not to worry. Dotson includes succinct and friendly footnotes explaining them, which fits with her dedication to advancing the craft and community of poetry as Founder and Program Coordinator of Highland Park Poetry. (You can learn more about her at www.JenniferDotsonPoet.com .)
Well-known poet Ellen Bass always encourages her audiences to buy two copies of a good poetry book; one for yourself and one to give to someone interested in poetry who might not know where to begin. Late Night Talk Show Fantasy & Other Poems is just such a book - accessible enough for beginners, but complex enough for poets and experienced readers of poetry. The latter will especially appreciate the high-wire acts Dotson performs with such challenging forms. There is truly something for everyone in this fine collection.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Gay Guard-Chamberlin is a Chicago artist and writer whose first book of poems, Red Thread Through a Rusty Needle, was recently reviewed on the Highland Park Poets site by Lennart Lundh. She and her sister, Anara Guard, perform poetry together as Sibling Revelry.
Posted November 1, 2020
Asylum
By Elizabeth Marino
Vagabond Press, 2020
71 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-936293-45-2
Review by Elizabeth Harper
What do you think of when you hear the word “asylum”? I think of a type of total institution, regimented confinement for the outcast and out of luck. Then there’s the other meaning of asylum: political asylum for folks fearing persecution and violence, seeking sanctuary and opportunity.
Elizabeth Marino’s title poem, “Asylum,” touches on both meanings. An encounter with a child at St. Vincent Orphan Asylum in Chicago is juxtaposed with images of children in Texas detention camps and Pakistani children after a drone attack, both “stacked up like cordwood.” The last two lines of the poem get me in the gut and make the book for me: “I must go out the door/ and decide to be alive.”
The themes of courage, abundance, and integrity reoccur throughout the book, along with historical, pop culture, and Chicago-specific references intertwined with personal history. There are also calls for peace and the meeting of human needs. The words “Grace,” Abundance,” and “Peace,” all have their own capitalized line in the poem “Abundance.” In “On the Cusp of the Big Moon,” we are reminded “that courage/ is feeling fear/ and acting anyway/ again and again.” In her signature poem,”My Mother Loved Spanish Rice,” Elizabeth Marino tells us, “My mother was abundant in a puny world.” Referencing Chicago neighborhoods in “Branches,” she mentions some of her roots: “I was born in Englewood,/ before we branched into Humboldt Park/ and Logan Square, and out again.” A standout poem for me is “What Keeps You Whole,” with the title repeated in each stanza. This is a poem for our time with lines such as “Deliberate distraction is everywhere.” and “This is a time of change and choosing/ how and when to let go….” Marino’s poems tell stories of family, of activism, of human need and human dignity. “Litany for Peace” includes the line: “We each have a right to exist.”
“Foul Fern” is a sympathetic portrait of a street woman. “In Amsterdam” features another woman character, a brief portrait of prettiness and joy. “The Direct Velvet Route” and “Body Language” deal explicitly with the topic of violence against women, providing the important insight that the lives of individuals and what’s possible in personal relationships are damaged and limited by this kind of nauseating, gender-specific violence in our world. One of my favorite poems by Elizabeth Marino, which I’ve heard her read, is “Performance Poet with Daughter,” a lovely description of trust between an adult and child.
The collection includes different forms, including haikus and a villanelle, and also humor and wit. In “A Man Walked Into Our “EL” Car,” we are treated to an inner monologue: “ Great. Socially engaged performance artists are the new mimes.” And in “An Otherwise Uneventful Sunday in March. Chicago,” our protagonist muses: “Perhaps/ casinos in vacant CPS school buildings,/ learning being such a crap shoot.”
The book ends with two important autobiographical poems, “A Safer Place” and “The Days of Bobby’s Passing.” One of the many strengths of this book is its descriptions of individual experiences and reflections inscribed by culture, bureaucracy, infrastructure, and history.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Many of the poems will stick with me and be worth rereading.
===About the reviewer: Chicago poet Elizabeth Harper is the author of several books and chapbooks including A Mercenary Girdler and No Solace in Memory. She writes for the Literate Ape website.
Posted November 1, 2020
The Eden of Perhaps
By Agnes Vojta
Spartan Press, 2020
74 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1952411007
Review by Jacqueline Stearns
The Eden of Perhaps is a sensitively written volume of poetry that chronicles the feminine journey as it pertains to a woman's place in the world.
Muse takes a reflective look at a woman who discovers a new, vibrant side of herself. She doesn't know whether or not to embrace these personality traits that could "Wake her up" and give her a broader view of the world.
Questioning talks about a woman who finds solace in Library books. She keeps her writing a secret. "The stacks of Library books reveal what torments her” and "The computer does not judge." The woman is relieved to find the “Librarian has an unfamiliar face."
Greeting Cards They Don't Make deals with the horror of domestic violence: "May only peaceful thoughts touch your heart today doesn't cut it when you're dictating your statement to the prosecutor." She couldn't write because her abuser beat her so badly she suffered a concussion.
The World Split Open, depicts a group of women telling the truth about their lives. They have teetered on the brink of suicide, have lost children, and/or have been sexually assaulted. This particular poem made me think. Women prevail, overcoming tragedies and obstacles, to seek and find love, peace, happiness.
We Live In A World Of Right Angles begs the question what if people broke with tradition and didn't always do what is expected of them?
One of my personal favorites in this collection is Never Too Late. The character in this work begins her life's journey in midlife. Vojta implores younger women not to mock her, explaining that life experiences will make this traveler’s adventures richer.
Agnes brilliantly weaves Greek mythology and classic fairy tales, into a seamless tapestry that asks what if our existences as we know them can change? Is fate really pre-ordained? Sisyphus Calls It Quits jokingly asks what if the gods didn't have a right to punish Sisyphus? What would happen if Rapunzel and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) struck out on their own, rather than waiting for their respective princes to rescue them?
Vojta also uses natural wonders as a plot device. Peace of the River depicts a woman yearning to cast off the shackles of an everyday routine to live by a river, becoming one with its seasons. Trip Tych On Highway 28 is a lovely tale of a person driving toward a beautiful magical rainbow. What is life without romance?
Unconditional is disturbing because one person wants to erase all traces of herself from her relationship so that the components will focus on her partner.
That Summer We Rolled Around In The Grass, tells a tale of piquant first love and innocent sensuality.
The Eden of Perhaps encompasses life and its citizens slogging through attempting to find their place in the world.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Jacqueline Stearns holds a B.A degree from William Patterson College (Now University). She was a feature writer for Clifton Merchant Magazine. Stearns has had been published in The Millstreet Forward, Grapevine Christian Magazine, and Highland Park Poetry.
Posted November 1, 2020
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The Machinery of Grace
Patrice Claeys Boyer
Kelsay Books, 2020
64 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1950462735
Review by Gail Denham
The Machinery of Grace, an amazing poetry volume, by Patrice Boyer Clacys, is entirely written in the Cento poetry form, using lines from a large number of works, all credited in the back of the book. Ms Boyer Clacys changed little besides tenses or plurals to singular, adding none of her own words.
To have amassed this enormous amount of lines from so many poets shows a skill and attention to detail that many of us wish we could master.
However, it’s not just the skill of compiling these lines into poems which have form and extend a theme – the book is a revelation of how the author viewed grief over her mother’s illness and passing. Then how she progressed to a renewed look at life. The book is both comforting and a book of encouragement.
To point out a few poems – “The Beginning of Forgetting” talks of her mother slipping away: “Her childhood streets, those old recipes she’d been saving,”…”All this time, and it comes back like this – the end humming along.” The poems are put together in such a way as to make complete sense, using a variety of lines.
“after all these years I can still …taste the morning rush, …keep reaching into the past for that muscle memory of love.” Then the book moves into healing: “Just when you thought your history complete, the peach trees blossom.” And “Thank God some things stay the same."
So much to absorb in this book of poetry, published by Kelsay Books Inc. and also available through Amazon.
===ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Gail Denham says, "Writing keeps me sane at times - Have had stories, essays, poems, and newspaper articles, plus many photos published in magazines, newspapers, books, over the last 45 years."
Posted November 1, 2020
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Still Life With God
By Cynthia Atkins
St Julian Press, 2020
112 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1733023306
Review by Tina Cole
In Still-Life with God, Atkins takes us on more than an exploration, it is a quest. These are poems that pose questions and present a still life arrangement for us to consider. What are the relationships between objects, what is there and what is not and what about the gaps in-between? The poems probe the possibilities of something sacred in the now, the everyday, a relationship with God in many guises, A wishing well/ A medicine cabinet/ A bullet/ An alibi. We are drawn into dialogues and disputes about gender, body, illness, gun violence and mental health. Conflicts of inner and outer worlds, the personal and the communal including up-to-the-moment challenges of the twenty first century are brought out of dark closets. These are fragments gleaned over a lifetime, what has been taught, what has been learned and a reflection on the world and womanhood in all its facets chaos, struggle, triumph.
The 46 poems are arranged in four parts. Atkins’ voice is loud, bold even fierce, she assaults the reader with imagery that explodes like soap bubbles, like fireworks, like missiles. Layer upon layer of filo pastry allegory and metaphor, focus and re-focus her painful, apposite and over-arching themes.
Part one begins with the sonnet, ‘God is a Wishing Well’:
lit-up in the parking lot of my heart,
which kick-starts us immediately into the landscape we are to inhabit. Following on, ‘Hello Stranger’, calls us to reflect on human isolation.
it’s me the voice inside a tin box
inside the intention to be a voice
…we are lonely
in our cars, we are little cubicles.
I particularly liked, ‘Imaginary Friends’, …
because you needed to belong
you sought the debutantes who flaunted their
fixed prom dates. See how they build their houses with bricks of silence.
A head butt of a poem that fixes us clearly in our twenty first century world.
Part II moves on to a younger self, a lighter perspective and begins with,‘God is a Treasure Hunt’
I am a gawky kid jumping into a pile of leaves.
Atkins pulls us along those perplexing adolescent tracks of who am I? These are poems of identity and self-discovery. My Persona – is a teenage rant, a listing of the positive and negative, a shouting out of self-belief and self-doubt. The obdurate nature of self-reflection and trying to make sense is well forked over.
my persona has a pecking order …
is filled with yearning…
is behind the curtains where loneliness dwells.
Part III takes us beyond the reflected self into the harsh realities of adulthood, where God might be found in a medicine cabinet, or in a library. There are powerful poems in this section that grapple with adult themes, grab you with heavily concentrated meaning.In ‘House and Home;
where I’ve left so many arguments in lamplit rooms…. my archive of scars..
a shantytown of loneliness.. we tell ourselves to face the music of our grief..
it is a constant assault.
And equally strong, ‘Domestic Terrorism’
every action has a terrible twin
every dictator knows there is power in fear.
This section also contains three insightful exploratory self-portrait poems.‘Self Portrait with No Spare Parts’
this is how
everything is fine until it is not.
The final pages contain a kind of modulation – moments of quiet reflection – a Goddess appears, ‘The Goddess in Purple Rain’
and stars allow me to follow her..
rooftops are hunkering down to sing lullabies.
There is a feeling of some reconciliation with the self, that some kind of still-life can be attained after facing one’s own demons and the demons of society. That a search for the authentic self may bear fruit despite everyday contradictory evidence.This is a brave collection that ends with, ‘God is the Myth’ prompting again the question if he is or not?
Every day..
we mark the calendar with one more hangnail of grief
These are complex poems, a roller coaster of themes, written with skilful imagery and conviction. The still life we are asked to observe and meditate on is sketched out in bold colours. Atkins language is sensitive, emphatic, and impactful, every poem seeking the divine in the everyday. The power and the passion in these poems and the journey that you are taken on as a reader leave you in no doubt that God can be found in who we are, what we do and how we do it.
=== About the reviewer: Tina Cole is a U.K. poet who lives in a rural area near the border with Wales. She has been writing poetry for many years, her collection – I Almost Knew You (2015), focussed on dysfunctional relationship themes. She has won a number of national Poetry competitions and her published poems have appeared in many U.K. magazines, collections and one in The Guardian newspaper. Her second collection, Nothing but the Strength of Names, will be released by Yaffle Press in 2021.
Posted October 1, 2020
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dancing a dizzy holiness
By Larry Janowski
After Hours Press, 2019
91 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-578-56655-9
Review by Ed Werstein
It was with a bit of skepticism that I started reading Larry Janowski’s recent book, dancing a dizzy holiness. After all, Janowski is an ordained Franciscan Friar and I’m a former seminarian and a recovering Catholic. However, I am happy to report that I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this collection. I thoroughly enjoyed, and was frequently amazed by it.
Right from the opening lines of “Religious Poem,” Janowski lets the reader know that he’s not going to be preached to: I hear you secretly groaning, Jesus-- not religion! Well, yes, but not a sermon in poem’s clothes, but the thick Latin root of religion, the lig of it-- as in ligament...
And near the end of the poem the word ligature creates a nice echo with the opening. These are poems for word lovers. Poems to be read aloud.
If you like poems with titles that point the reader down a path that ends in an unexpected place, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here as well. For one example, given some of the history of the Catholic priesthood, one might cringe before diving into a poem titled “Abuse.” It ends, though, in a decidedly pleasant little turn. And which of us has ever read a confessional poem written from the priest’s side of the screen? The last poem in this section, "Severe Thunderstorm Warning," is a narrowly constructed poem of abrupt line breaks evocative of the poetry of Todd Boss or Eavan Boland. Many of the short lines could stand alone as poetic prompts.
The book’s 45 poems are grouped into seven sections. As if planned that way, the shortest section (two poems) is titled, Coming Up Short. Both poems are quite humorous, self-deprecating riffs on the author’s own diminutive stature. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Short Guy," is a series of backhanded insults, each in its own particular style:
Diffident Sorry. I didn’t see you.
Optimistic When it rains,
you’re the last to know.
The six poems in the section, The City, make up a collective ode to the place Janowski calls home, Chicago. They take us from colorful descriptions of pedestrian-watching while stopped at red lights, through the city’s fickle changing seasons, and ends with election night 2008. Like many poems in the book they are full of creative metaphors. Have you ever heard slow traffic described as the thrombosis of arterial streets? Family is a section of poignant, often tissue-grabbing poems that venture from the author’s childhood to the parenting of his own parents in their old-age. The evolving relationship of boy and father is especially heart-warming.
The poem, “Life Expectancy”, which opens a section called, The Waning Crescent, is a thought-provoking read for those of us living under the delusion that the longevity of our parents has given us a free pass into our old age. But my favorite poem in the entire collection is one called, “Skin: A Letter”. It is a dreamy, speculative tribute to the authors two poetic heroes, Gerard Manley Hopkins (also a priest-poet) and Walt Whitman. In it Janowski imagines an afternoon of skinny-dipping with his heroes.
These are accessible poems written for everyone, writers and readers alike. So, leave your dictionary and mythology encyclopedia on the shelf, grab your favorite beverage, and sit down for a thoroughly enjoyable read.
===About the reviewer:Ed Werstein is a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and the 2018 recipient of the Council of Wisconsin Writers Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry.
Posted October 1, 2020
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Body Falling, Sunday Morning
By Susana H. Case
Milk and Cake Press, 2019
34 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-7341066-0-2
Review by Joseph Zaccardi
Every day, the shoe factory and then,
one day, inevitably, the shotgun.
With these startling first lines from the first poem, “No Sign of Activity,” from Susana H. Case’s, Body Falling, Sunday Morning, the reader begins a journey filled with mystery and revelation; from the cover art, whose background of newsprint is set in reversed type, that is, light color text on a dark gray pallet, to Frances Glessner Lee’s photos taken of her crime-scene dioramas, reproduced here in black-and-white, from the originals done in color. This stark rendering, along with the text of the poems, adds a cinéma vérité feel to unveil truth and highlight the horror of murder, either because of passion or revenge or greed.
Case gives voice to Glessner Lee’s dollhouse-sized dioramas, created by her in the 1940s and 50s. Although the crimes depicted were composites of actual cases, the characters and decorations of the dioramas’ interiors were Glessner Lee’s invention; she disclosed the dark side of domesticity and its potentially deleterious effects––many victims were women led astray from the cocoon-like security of the home––by men, misfortune, or by their low stations in life.
In this collection,Susana H. Case, the poet, shows her mastery of the ekphrastic poetic form when she connects the extraordinary with the ordinary; she redefines perceptions with linguistic agility. Few contemporary poets of ekphrastic poetry, in my opinion, can so effectively accomplish such artistry. It would not be accurate to label her poetry, and Frances Glessner Lee’s dioramas, merely as artwork paired with words, for the poems in Body Falling, Sunday Morning are seamlessly controlled, and, because of Case’s attention to detail, the reader can envision the subtle nuances in the scenes that ask: is this murder, suicide, or accident? Case employs metronymy and drumroll by her deftly chosen words and phrases to place us at the center of crime scenes, and guides us through the case study of the murdered, and fingers those suspected of murder: from the poem “Body in the Closet,” she writes: Her neck is slashed…. // female sexuality / begets violence; the hooker / always gets it in the end. And this from “End of the Affair,” He bent over and shot himself / his mistress insists…. No matter that the gun’s not under him…. This is not poetry for the faint of heart, one must stand awake, eye on the photographic images, ear attuned to the sound and significance of the words on the page, for they will not stay still; readers may find themselves turning back pages to re-read and re-view what has transpired. Where is the truth, one may ask; you the reader become the chief inspector and coroner, perpetrator and victim.
Case goes a step further in her placement of the black-and-white photos, assembling her poems in six scenes, each scene foreshadowed by one of Glessner Lee’s dioramas. The poems explore in detail not only the dead bodies, but also the décor of the middle class and the ne’er-do-well; there are the dotted curtains and floral wallpapers, the spill of dark blood on carpets and bed sheets, a woman lying on the floor with a knife in her body. Here’s four lines from the poem “Bite Marks,” A pervert, one she knows / has bitten up her torso and legs… She’s cut, mis-loved, teenager / in ballet shoes, knife in gut.
It is the mission of the poet to find the primitive understory and bring to life, with quiet force, the victims who suffered this fate. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but words, especially in the hands of a poet with the acuity of this poet, resurrects the deceased imagistically to reveal their story. She further explores the relationship of the real world to its encapsulation in rooms (stanzas) via the dioramas, and effectively melds the distinction between the actual and the perceived.
What we have here is a poet who shares her heightened appreciation of art, for her language underscores the most consequential subject matter; in the last line, in the last poem, “Wallpaper with Fish,” she shows us the devastation in its summation:
You don’t know what to think.
===About the reviewer: Joseph Zaccardi served as Marin County, CA poet laureate (2013-2015), and during his tenure published and edited Changing Harm to Harmony: Bullies & Bystanders Project. He is the author of five books poetry, the latest being The Weight of Bodily Touches, from Kelsay Books. www.josephzaccardi.com
Posted October 1, 2020
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Wild Fruition: Sonnets, Spells, and Other Incantations
By Christine Swanberg
Puddin'head Press, 2017
98 Pages
ISBN: 978-0981975634
Review by Barbara Eaton
Christine Swanberg's Wild Fruition: Sonnets, Spells, And Other Incantations starts out as a journey, illustrated by her husband Jeffrey's well-chosen photographs.
The first photograph, a dark interior of what appears to be a covered bridge, revealing a vista of trees, is particularly apt, and the first few poems, "Something So New," "Great River Road," and "Bridges," create the excitement every new journey presents. Swanberg is especially good at satisfying and surprising last lines, and "Great River Road" contains an unusually fresh last line: "spring green promise now springing forth."
"Black Mesa Magic" and "Dangerous Woman" also have great last lines: "a thousand miles from home again," and "a woman with chemicals, Marlboros/and a lighter that works. Watch out." A little disconcerting was the error of "ice sickles" for "icicles," which occurred twice.
The book also traces a journey through the seasons, and a journey through life. Many of the poems celebrate the simple joys of life in one's later years, such as "One October Morning Past Your Prime," and "One January Morning Past Your Prime."
"Spell to Enchant a House," luckily, the spell of a good witch, is both entertaining and amusing.
Lovely garden poems follow, and "The Joy of Unimportance," sings praises of life after one's sixth decade: "We no longer have to please all people!" "The Sweet Spot," too, ends with a wonderful line: "the sweet life--/the long, luxurious meander,/mid-afternoon for no good reason/whatsoever."
These poems are very welcome to readers in their later years who are ready to slow down and simply enjoy life. This book is a pleasure to read, and the pleasure deepens upon rereading. This book would make a thoughtful gift for a recent retiree. Well done, Christine!
===About the reviewer: Barbara Eaton is a poet and semi-retired community college instructor.
Posted October 1, 2020
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Angular Embrace
By Sylvia Cavanaugh
Kelsay Books, 2018
49 Pages
ISBN - 13-978-1-947465-42-8
Review by Barbara Eaton
Family and childhood memories form the focus of Sylvia Cavanaugh's collection of poems, Angular Embrace.
The poet grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 1960's and 70's, not far from her Irish coal mining relatives in Schuylkill County.
What strikes me about these poems is their imagery: simple, humble, homespun, yet paradoxically rich. "Finding Frozen Peas" follows a day's winding journey in the life of a child, ending with the return home to Mother preparing dinner on the stove. Very moving.
"Black-eyed Susans" describes a peak childhood experience -- hiking through the Appalachian mountains with grandmother, grandfather, aunt, and mother and coming unexpectedly upon the profuse wild blooms. The poet tries to re-create this experience for her own children, so they might know how she was "once loved/by the wild mountainside."
In "My Lipstick," Cavanaugh recounts a trip to the opera with her grandmother, and muses on youth and aging. "Who does a grown woman become/anyway/when she coats her lips with color?"
The poet closes with "Seed Pod," my favorite poem in the collection. She describes summer turning into fall, all the colors and the music "in the memory of her waning years."
As Joseph Weitzel, former Lancaster County Poet Laureate, notes, even though these poems present memories of childhood, Sylvia Cavanaugh "has a keen awareness of the adult she has become."
One wonders if these poems are a gift to the poet's children. They certainly are a gift to us.
===About the reviewer: Barbara Eaton is a poet and semi-retired community college instructor.
Posted September 1, 2020
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Body of Water
By Jeff Santosuosso
Clare Songbirds Publishing House Poetry Series, 2018
29 pages
ISBN:9781947653399
Review by Elizabeth Levinson
This chapbook functions as a body of water. Each poem informs the next, the way a river feeds a body of water, or the way a one wave gives way to another. Water, as the thread that pulls these poems together, does it with its natural fluidity, allowing for poems to move through a variety of topics and forms, while still tied together enough to lend this chapbook the same satisfaction reading a chapbook with a more focused subject might have. Because that is the real joy of reading a chapbook, yes? That it allows us to see a thing in new and multiple lights. To be both expansive and specific, and contained, so that it doesn’t simply feel like a truncated collection.
The first poem, “Warmth,” is appropriately a birthing poem. While a little on the nose, its mention of ice gives the poem an almost primordial feel, the opening line, “I was born in a thaw” calling to mind the end of an ice-age or at least a reminder that we are all thaw, all the water that births us, that moves through us or washes us over as we emerge. In its economy, this poem sets up the rest of the chapbook -- water appears in lyrical musings or as a character in a single narrator’s life story. But each poem can be traced back to this motif as can anything in life.
In “The Blue,” there is a lapping back as well, to the Aegean Sea, which functions as an ode, until the last stanza when the narrator recalls his Greek grandmother and the whole history of the Aegean takes on new meaning. The narrator recounts so much history, but then becomes a part of the history.
But we also travel through land, through Missouri and Ontario, we drink milk from Greenland and taste maple syrup from Canada. We are bathed in rain, we are bathed in sprinklers. And finally, we are bathed in Walden Pond. Body of Water is a beach read for the landlocked: sensual, musical, reflective.
===About the reviewer: Elizabeth Levinson is a Chicago based poet and high school teacher. Her second chapbook, Running Aground, is available for advance orders from Finishing Line Press.
Posted September 1, 2020
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Steve Henderson in Poetry and Paint
By Michael Escoubas
Self-Published, 2019
83 pages
Copies available through Amazon or order directly from the author at farside747@hotmail.com
Review by Charlotte Digregorio
In Steve Henderson in Poetry and Paint, by Poet Michael Escoubas, we are offered an exceptional collection of ekphrastic poems complementing the art pieces of Henderson, a nationally-known painter. Escoubas’ poems are inspired by thirty-two of Henderson’s pieces, the latter reproduced in the collection.
Through the flow of Escoubas’ pen, all five of the readers’ senses are stimulated, as we experience nature’s glory through amazing detail, leaving the gloom of everyday life and struggles behind– just as Henderson strives to achieve through his art’s “emotional realism.”
William Wordsworth said that poetry “takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquility,” and we are reminded of this in reading Escoubas’ stunning collection. He writes with an uncommon facility of language. Alliteration and assonance please the readers’ ear throughout, and the line breaks are skillful.
Even if one doesn’t normally read and write nature poems, they’ll likely change their minds after reading this book. Escoubas leaps into nature scenes from Henderson’s work, writing elegantly. His poems are a celebration of the landscape, seasonal changes, and the natural phenomena around him– sparked by Henderson’s work and the poet’s spiritual and creative soul.
Many of Henderson’s scenes prompt Escoubas to reminisce of childhood experiences. In “Autumn Memories,” the poet writes:
I leave the car by the gate/ to recall again the white-rock path/ I walked as a boy: / I still love the white dust on my shoes, / the ancient maple’s flaming leaves, / its bark brittle with age. / A gaggle of geese compete/ for space as I slow-walk the lane.
On a personal note, I was born and raised in the Northwest, and Escoubas/Henderson take me back to the region in “Along the Salmon River”:
. . . I feel the bubbly rush /of Chinook, Sawtooth and Kokanee/ their opalescent bodies shimmer/ in sunlight. I lose all sense/ of myself. I’m a twig/ among purple mountains/ the mountains wrap themselves/ in chiffon clouds.
Escoubas’ imagistic poems reveal his spiritual side. Often, in his work, we are struck by the beauty found in the ordinary–shapes and colors in nature that we often take for granted. In “Banking on the Columbia,” we read:
How could I have missed it? / Love, I mean, given that God/ has surrounded me with Himself, / in the way the river kisses the shore, / in the way woodland colors take me/ back to Joseph’s coat. In the sun’s/ dependable rise, like God, always there, / in the clouds, white as swaddling clothes.
Escoubas remembers many of his childhood experiences with his brothers and sister. In “Verdant Banks,” he vividly describes experiencing the spiritual in nature on a Sunday morning before leaving for church.
As we dip our feet in the stream, / dragonflies in purple robes/ sing hymns, a croaking bullfrog/ adds the bass-note, the breeze/ and trees bid us stay for potluck.
Still other artistic pieces by Henderson, allow him to reminisce. This is a scene in the meadow with his sister :
. . . shoes drenched through/ to our socks, washed by/ high grasses–fragrant/ apple blossoms fell/ in clumps after spring’s/ first rain.
Throughout the book, the reader is struck by precise nouns, adjectives, and verbs that make us feel as if we are present. In “Emergence,” we experience:
. . . Colors emerge, / reticent at first: half-green/ grasses yawn as snow recedes/ in splotches down the hill./ Violets/ take a bow, first lilies sport/ saffron gowns. Everything seems/ a little tipsy as the breeze/ teases, Let’s get up some mischief.
Here is a beautiful analogy in “First Light”:
How dawn appears/ without sound/ on tippy-toes, / like a mother checking/ on her sleeping child, /
Further, in “Dreamcatcher,” we share in the poet’s delight:
I catch my dreams/ on the sticky strings of a spider’s web/ I catch my dreams/ mirrored on a raindrop on a lilac’s leaf/ I catch my dreams/ in the emerald shimmerings of wet grass/ I catch my dreams/ in a burst of juice from a fat blackberry/
When I recently asked Escoubas if he first started writing poetry in the ekphrastic form, he replied: “I didn’t begin writing ekphrastic poetry, but worked into it gradually, allowing photos/ especially works of art, to stimulate me in particular ways . . . I try to write in such a way that my reader wouldn’t need the visual to “see” the picture.”
Escoubas has certainly succeeded in his goal.
This book is highly recommended. Readers will learn about the art of writing fine poetry through Escoubas. He is the editor of Quill and Parchment.
===About the reviewer: Charlotte Digregorio is the author of seven books, including her latest, Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing.
Posted September 1, 2020
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Poetry With A Passion
By Storiword/T.J. Morris
Self-Published, 2019
86 Pages
ISBN: 9781076042439
Review by Mary Beth Bretzlauf
T.J. Morris has created through her poems what every woman needs to hear at some point in their lives. Our mothers, sisters and best friends who know us the best, who give us words of love and support are present in this publication. She has combined a selection of poems from her previously published poetry book “A True Heart” with her new poems to give us a journey - her journey, our journey to self-love and confidence.
Ms. Morris begins with an appropriately titled poem, “Starting”. She captures the angst of starting anew.
Starting
That personal human revolution…
It was time to stop lying to the true me,
So I could get to the true me
Starting at Point A
Maybe I might make it Point B
Her poem “Do Yo Thang!” is an anthem to being yourself. It reads like a song or even like a girls’ night in with a bottle of wine that fuels introspective conversations. Her words resonate with you because her experiences are our experiences. When she straps her proverbial boots on, we do it right along with her.
Poems like “Fear” and “Where’s the Dream?” hold up a mirror for us to see her life clearly
fear keeps us in prison
and we have to learn how to set ourselves free
and
What happened to the dream?
The happy times and wedding rings
In ‘Why Am I Angry?’, Ms. Morris writes:
I’m sleeping with my car keys in my hand….
Her line about sleeping with the car keys in her hand is a haunting image. There are probably women all around this world that do the same thing – clutching onto the last token of freedom for a chance to achieve it.
…that woman that I wanted to be
a woman that has strong roots
like a big beautiful tree
That big beautiful tree she wishes to be, that we all have wished to be and have become, is just another example of how much we have in common with the poet.
Ms. Morris shares her survival, her self-discovery of strength and courage during her husband’s addiction and you can feel her pain, sorrow and fear along with her vulnerability. Her poems are cathartic monologues and in saying that, I can see one day perhaps they could be performed on a minimal stage by women of all shapes, sizes, economic backgrounds, and colors. So many of her poems sing with honesty the raw pain of betrayal and how she came out the other side.
For full disclosure, I saw Ms. Morris read a couple of these poems before I purchased the book. I felt this was an advantage, a test drive of sorts, because when I sat down to read this book later that night, I had her lyrical voice in my head. To see her recite these pages is like that performance I mentioned above – powerful.
Ms. Morris also writes historical fiction. In reading her book, “Blood is Thicker Color” (also available on Amazon), I discovered her gift for writing authentic dialogue stems from those monologues we read in this book of poetry.
===About the reviewer: Mary Beth Bretzlauf is a member of Poet & Patrons, and the Illinois State Poetry Society of which she is North Chapter Facilitator and Board Member.
Posted September 1, 2020
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Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick
By Wilda Morris
Kelsay Books, 2019
115 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-1949229608
Review by Mike Freveletti
Located in Chapter 53 of my copy of Moby-Dick I’m provided with the definition of “gam”, a whaling term that is explained as the social meeting of two whaling ships where the captains meet on one of the ships and the first mates on the other. Sound familiar? No? Yeah, me either but I’m sure the poet, Wilda Morris, of this Moby-Dick themed poetry collection, Pequod Poems, Gamming with Moby-Dick, absolutely knows what gam means. In literature, reading Moby-Dick is a feat that has tested readers for eons. This is not a review of Moby-Dick. What this is, is an appreciation of a book of poetry broken into five parts crafted so meticulously that it not only holds the spirit of the novel but expands on it in a way that’s fresh and interesting. The sheer volume of poetic devices, which I’ll get to later, is one of the stars of the show reading this collection but what I was most intrigued by was the poet’s interpretation of the source text.
Pequod Poems is clearly of labor of love for Melville’s creation and by extension poetry’s ability to tell stories in a multitude of different ways. The poet at times strikes a somewhat metafictional investigation by taking a chapter from the novel and creating her own narrative poetry through augmentation of Melville’s plots and sub plots. From “White according to Ishmael”, an erasure poem, we’re treated to a story from the poet on how Ishmael might’ve interpreted the whiteness of the whale or simply what can be imagined about white as a shade. Lines like “whiteness enhances beauty/in marbles pearls/snow-white charger/ermine”, an image that pushes the ever-present metaphor toward a fascinating point of view.
You cannot read this book of poetry without appreciating the experimentation with different forms both known and obscure or even thought up. I’ll name a few here: sonnets, terza Rima, rondeau, erasure, lipogram and my personal favorite the pantoum titled “The Song of the Maltese Sailor”. Lines from that poem sing off the page, “a voluptuous swell would waltz me off/hug me, kiss me and caress me/as I glided to the vibrant rhythm/of the ocean’s pulsing dance”, beautifully rendered as a parallel between the swaying of the ocean and the way one can sway on the dance floor. The book is educational in its ability to expose you to new ways of poem construction, teaching you how to read it as you go along which is something I’ve heard in my reading of poetry that I agree wholeheartedly with.
One section of the collection titled, “Memos to Herman Melville” was particularly fun to thumb through for the poet’s inquiry into why Melville made the choices he did throughout his writing of Moby-Dick. A standout is “Whales” that starts with, “Ishmael was convinced whales are fish/of course they aren’t/I think you knew they are mammals just like us/this was just one of your little jokes wasn’t it?”, playful isn’t it? A dialogue between poet and novelist on the page some 150 odd years later. Again, it bears repeating the analysis the poet has undertaken in the way she synthesizes different situations and themes in the novel and puts a poetic spin on them. A ton of fun to read.
To enjoy this collection you need not have read Moby-Dick, this is true, but I would recommend reading Pequod Poems and considering a Moby-Dick novel reading voyage after you’re done. If you don’t end up reading the big book so be it, at least you’ve ended up with a fascinating journey through the text via poetry. Not a bad way to journey through a classic.
=== About the Reviewer: Mike Freveletti is poet, short fiction writer and occasional dabbler in literary criticism. His work has appeared both online and in print.
Posted August 1, 2020
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Poetry As We Like It
By Curt Vevang
Self-published, 2020
49 Pages
ISBN: 9781725941335
Review by Mary Beth Bretzlauf
Poet Curt Vevang presents a bold statement with his title, Poetry As We Like It. I mean, how does he know what I like? Perhaps I’m a sonnet girl or a prolific haiku poet (yeah, right). Even our poet acknowledges the “ambitious goal” he set for himself as you read his forward. However, this poetic old soul does not disappoint.
Personally, I bow to anyone who can rhyme with the ease of lazy summer mornings. I find I have to tackle that when I’m in the mood. In this collection of poems, we discover Mr. Vevang is a master at rhyming. I was also pleased to see his non-rhyming poems were just as masterful.
In “America’s Back Roads” Curt takes us on a trip across America, snippets of scenes so common we overlook them.
Cemetery grave markers, tall enough to be seen from the road,
tilt at random angles on a neglected landscape
that has heaved and settled over the years.
The poem “The Awards Banquet” is so timely during this pandemic that I wonder when he wrote it. He reminds of the everyday heroes we are saluting these days – and nudges us to salute others who are overlooked.
As a writer and poet, I adored his poem, “The Blank Page” which pays homage to every writer who battles their inner critic and a defiant computer.
I thought a muse was supposed to help?
But she, he, it, only asks questions,
raises doubts, assaults my character
This is a poet with a wonderful sense of humor. In “Twenty-Four Roses For You”, we see his missteps in sending sentiments to his wife. In “Dawn’s Early Light” we are entertained by the narrator sneaking off at before daybreak to spend time fishing.
Poignant poems like “To My Grandchildren”, “The Man Who Came for Dinner”, “May you Always Brake for Butterflies” and “Owed to the Life of a Soldier” grab our heartstrings and form a lump in your throat with lines like these about a soldier named Jane:
I have what she earned, I’ve hardly a care,
She lies in that bed. War is not all fair.
Or in “To My Grandchildren”he gives them wise words to follow:
Be your own person, follow your conscience.
And of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” he writes:
A few steps and we realized he didn’t ask for money,
he was asking for food.
We looked back. He was gone.
Mr. Vevang is happy to share one of his poems each month if you send him an email at curt@curtvevang.com. You won’t be disappointed with a little sunshine in your inbox.
Every poem holds that part of this poet that is most honest and completely him. I enjoyed this collection and I look forward to more, because this is poetry as I like it – very much!
===About the Reviewer: Mary Beth Bretzlauf is a member of Poet & Patrons, and the Illinois State Poetry Society of which she is North Chapter Facilitator and Board Member.
Posted August 1, 2020
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Sympathetic Magic
By Herb Berman
Self-Published, 2020
Copies available for $15 ordering directly from the author. Proceeds donated to Highland Park Poetry. Send email tohmbsib@gmail.com
Review by Gail Denham
One of the first things I appreciated about Berman’s poetry is that it’s so easy to read, follow, and understand. That’s a biggie for me – as often poetic works are long and seem rather ornate, rather than meaningful or readable.
The theme of Sympathetic Magic is life itself, enjoying what is here and now – a great message. Berman’s poems spoke of growing older, making the most of today. “sing, laugh, exult…May (the month of May) may never shine this way again.”(pg. 38). The theme that we won’t pass this way again is valid. Underlying themes were death and dying.
Berman wrote of the seasons: In Winter, “Walk in the wind…feel life in the ice.” (pg. 48) And I liked the ending of that poem, “Those who are blessed must bless the world in turn.” Berman wrote about how fast the seasons speed by (page 41) “the tireless dance of seasons.”
Sympathetic Magic deals with many subjects – cities – the poor – growing older. There’s a section on love, and I enjoyed touches of humor – acceptance of snow, but “I won’t say I love the soft spring rain.” (pg. 19) Me either. I’d rather it only rained at night as (I believe) it did in the garden of Eden.
And I especially appreciated his take on poets (pg. 12). Poets “swallow the world…The world we know hates poets. The world we know dies without us.” Well said.
===About the reviewer: Gail Denham's stories, poetry, newspaper articles and photos have appeared in numerous publications, nationally and internationally.
Posted August 1, 2020
Gathering the Harvest
By Mary Jo Balistreri
Bellowing Ark Press, Second Printing, 2020
81 Pages
A signed copy is available through the author. Email: joeybfl@gmail.com
Review by Charlotte Digregorio
In Gathering the Harvest, Mary Jo Balistreri has created a stunningly beautiful, deeply personal, and generous collection of poems that brings us closer to insights, truths, and wisdom relevant to our own lives. Balistreri has the courage to face life’s challenges and write about them with clarity, thoughtfulness, and honesty. The poet shows us that life’s problems can be overcome. Her poetry speaks of losses, such as the death of her young grandson and her parents, and her own illnesses, throat cancer and Mitochondrial Disease, the latter that resulted in hearing loss, and involved two years of recovery, learning how to walk, eat, write, and speak clearly again.
However, this book offers much delightful reading, rather than just expressions of sadness. Balistreri shares precise memories of enjoying friendship and family, the awe of nature, and childhood memories that are all relatable.
There is, for example, her sightless great-grandmother touching her life as a young girl, and likely influencing her later in life when she lost her hearing.
In “A Letter to Great-Gramma Belle,” she tells of baking sugar cookies with her, writing skillfully with unusual line breaks, as she does throughout the book:
You taught me to see with my hands. If / the texture felt thin, it needed flour, too thick, / it needed milk. When the dough was ready /to shape you said to me / Close your eyes. Let the dough sing to you.
You taught me how heat has different / smells as it rises. I learned to sense when the oven / was hot enough, when the cookies were done.
In the collection’s title poem, “Gathering the Harvest,” her precise imagery is especially captivating for its alliteration and assonance:
We picnic on a knoll overlooking the river / that wears its skin like a party dress / aglow with glistening beads, its curves like hips / as it moves sinuously around the bends. / Clusters of berries glisten in the bushes.
The poem’s final stanza seems to speak to us all in broader terms with the wisdom to keep moving forward throughout our lives:
We look now over the distance we’ve come, / layer upon layer of golden-green hills/ airbrushed to ever softer hues in the distance. / We scoop them up into the net of memory, / winding back upon itself, moving forward.
In “The Bracelet,” a very touching poem, she recalls her mother’s last breaths:
I unfastened/ the magnetic bracelet/ from your wrist, / the one we thought /might cure you/ and put it on . . .It’s been two years, Mom / and I still wear/ the bracelet./ The drifts shift, / a hint of my heart/ song returns. Still, / the rawness bites/ and seeps into/ the cracks when/ I least expect it./ It’s then I hear/ your voice, / the one that called me/ “Joey.”
(I, too, put a magnetic bracelet on my mother’s arm when she was bedridden, hoping that somehow it would cure her. We never give up on loved ones, and hope for miracles.)
There is wisdom throughout Balistreri’s poetry. Wondering whether her throat cancer has spread, she is left in limbo in “After the C-Scan.” We can feel her fear and anxiety, and her analogy about life’s brevity is insightful:
I walk to the stove, wait for the teakettle’s whistle, / thinking how fast the fog erased everything in sight. / Like an undetected cancer cell? The starlings were there/ then not, / leaving no trace of ever having existed.
Balistreri, the ever-hopeful and grateful poet, always sees the positive in her life’s experiences. In “Beneath Van Gogh Clouds,” she writes of her hearing loss, a profound one, as she was a concert pianist:
I can no longer hear Chopin. I can no longer hear music/ at all. My brain refuses to recognize the sound/ of the piano I played for years. But today, / the music of sails, smooth legato of the boats, / connects me to the Chopin of memory.
Read this book. It’s a treasure! Through all the poet’s trials, we see Balistreri lives graciously, accepting what comes with measured perspective and gratitude for life at each juncture, aware of the beauty around here. Her book gives us all hope. You will come away with a sense of profound gratitude and appreciation for both the small and large “goodness” in your life. You will also know that painful experiences are not in vain, but will spur you to experience future goodness more deeply.
===About the Reviewer: Charlotte Digregorio is the author of seven books, including her latest, Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing.
Posted August 1, 2020
Ripples of Air
Poems of Healing
By Charlotte Digregorio
Artful Communicators, 2020
236 Pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-9912139-1-7
To order, email artfulcommunicators@icloud.com. Also available on Amazon.
Review by Michael Escoubas
“I get discouraged when I encounter poetry that is supposed to be great poetry but is so hard to understand that I give up after reading just a few lines.”
I frequently hear this among friends when I mention that I write poetry. I didn’t always have an adequate comeback . . . until now. Today, I would introduce my sincere but uninformed friends to Charlotte Digregorio’s new collection, Ripples of Air: Poems of Healing. Packed into a mere 236 pages, lucky readers encounter some 14 distinct poetic forms. The volume contains something for everyone: from compact oriental forms, to sonnets, to the little known etheree, to fun forms such as acrostics and limericks, free verse and more. It is all here, written in an accessible style for all to savor.
The book is arranged in 12 sections. These include: Nostalgia, Peace, Creatures, People, Work, The Heart, Season’s Potpourri, Solitude, Art, Wonder and Whimsy, The Spiritual, and Aging, Illness, Death (these last three comprise one whole section). Each section is introduced by a short narrative that provides background, context and life-application to the poems that follow. Variety and mature craftsmanship showcase each section.
Like many readers, I tend to shortchange introductions to the books I review. Not this time! The collection is subtitled Poems of Healing. For Digregorio, the introduction becomes a vehicle for making her case for the entire book. Who among us has not needed healing? Who among us has not spent time in the cave of despair? Who among us has not needed an outlet for anger or loss? Who among us has not strolled through fragrant gardens and longed for a way to express how it felt? Trust me on this one: spend quality time on Digregorio’s six page intro.
In section 4, “People,” Digregorio reveals her sensitivity to the human condition, with poems about the plight of the homeless, and these excerpts from Foreigner
He arrives in his fifties
from his native land
living unknown.
Soft gray eyes, a calm smile,
voice cadenced
approaching a spring song.
As the poem develops . . .
He tells me today is
the best of yesterday,
something to remember
in twilight skies when
winds are with him.
Heightening the emotional effect of “People,” is an impressive array of modern haiku, senryu and tanka which capture the poignancy of human interaction or, at times, the despair of people in great need while the rest of us have plenty
at our thanksgiving table
i say grace, mindful of
the young man in the park
cocooned from hunger
face buried in his knees
I’ve provided no more than a gentle breeze in this review; but hopefully, just enough Ripples of Air, to make purchasing a copy of Charlotte Digregorio’s Poems of Healing, the next important thing you do today.
======ABOUT THE REVIEWER:Michael Escoubas is editor, contributing poet, and staff book reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 19-year-old literary and cultural arts online poetry journal.
Posted July 1, 2020
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Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era
By Cheryl Caesar
Thurston Howl Publications, 2020
42 Pages
ISBN-13: 979-8630347008
Review by Barbara Eaton
Cheryl Caesar, in Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era, adds her voice to the growing chorus of outrage in the United States today
The poems chronicle political events from September 2018 to May 2019. And while there is not much new here, the poems aptly express the American people's response to being thrown under the bus time and time again.
To be fair, Caesar's portrayal of President Trump is no more than a caricature, a two-dimensional puppet-villain who survives on Big Macs. Trump is first and foremost a businessman, and the strengths and weaknesses of his presidency can all be traced back to this one simple fact.
Most moving to me were "Flowers and Candles," "Michael Cohen Testifies Before Congress," "Letter to Our Lady," and "Don't Give Up on Us, Baby: A Letter to Europe."
These lines from "Flowers and Candles" rank among Caesar's loveliest: "They have guns but we have flowers/and candles. Look: people/are laying flowers everywhere," and "your face and your son's like bright planets/in the darkness, your arms/circling like a protecting sky."
"Letter to Our Lady" paints a beautiful, evocative picture of Notre Dame cathedral and asks a most poignant, pertinent question: "Why do you mourn a building, and burn your world?"
In sum, Cheryl Caesar's poems provide us with a detailed record of American history that is informative and should prove useful in the years to come. I would like to have seen more compassion for the American people, such as we see in Garry Trudeau's cartoon in the Chicago Tribune on June 14, 2020: after praising himself and blaming others (former President Obama, governors, the press), President Trump reluctantly acknowledges the daily death toll from the Coronavirus.
And I would like to have seen a little compassion for President Trump. He did not, as the back cover of the book explicitly stated, "unleash" the Coronavirus. That was done in Wuhan, China. Like it or not, he is our current president, and if he goes down, we all go down.
By all means buy this book, read it, and vote. Vote your conscience. And pray.
===== ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Barbara Eaton is a poet and semi-retired community college instructor.
Posted July 1, 2020
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Archived Book Reviews posted January - June, 2020
Gay Guard Chamberlin, Through a Rusty Needle (review by Lennart Lundh)
Anara Guard, Hand on My Heart (review by Lennart Lundh)
Frank Watson, In the Dark Soft Heart of the Earth (review by Mary Beth Bretzlauf)
Mary Jo Balistreri, Still (reviews by Mary Beth Bertzlauf & Charlotte Digregorio)
Gregg Dotoli, Everblue Soul (review by Mary Beth Bretzlauf)
Barbara Garay, Beneath The Surface (review by Mike Freveletti)
