Remarkable poetry, good for the body and mind.
Free-wheeling yet carefully wrought, this free verse collection is a joyful reminder that, at its best, poetry is music.
Alberts’ jazz-soaked debut jukes and jives in unfettered celebration of the musicality of poetry. When his scat-singing, finger-snapping narrators exclaim, “Rhythm just naturally beats / All the hell right out of me,” it is no lamentation but a sly proclamation of the heavenliness of a strong, interesting beat. Good poetry, he suggests, is at least as much for the body as the mind and more for the ear than the eye. Thus, deathbed reflection is punctuated by onomatopoeia—“When the film of your life runs out / When the screen glares white / When the film strip’s tail end / slaps, slaps, slaps”—and melody itself becomes a body to be exploited for musical effect: “Inside her rib-joints start a rattle, / like a snare, stick-stuck-staccato.” Not surprisingly, then, Alberts’ poems take a fully embodied, forward-moving perspective. In Adam and Eve, he sees not regret and original sin but other, more exciting firsts: “So ribs were the rub ’til one night in the tub / while scrubbing each other, errr, randomly, / they both started acting, umm, randily. // Now bed springs never rest.” This playful, life-affirming sensuality reappears in poems like “You Will Need a Pencil Today” and “Bacon ’n Eggs.” Sex, though, is only one type of play, a subject this appropriately titled collection takes seriously. Play, for Alberts, is a mindset and a way of interacting with the world. His narrators play with form, with sounds and with the boundaries of time and space. When, in play, a ball is hit, “the ball will arc / out of the field of play / lost to the game, to the players. / Just gone,” just as happened to Roethke that fateful day when he “Dove into a swimming pool in 1963 / And came right back up. / Left only his body behind.” Play can even become the organizing principle in making sense of tragedy, as Alberts demonstrates in the poignant “War Games.” The sheer fun of Alberts’ poetry, coupled with its virtuosity, may occasionally distract readers from the poetry’s deeper currents, but they’ll have no problem catching the rhythm.
Remarkable poetry, good for the body and mind.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491811559
Page Count: 100
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
