A vibrant compilation that will appeal to poetry aficionados and amateurs alike.
In a new poetry collection, Ireland eschews the heavy hand for the light touch.
In a 1962 interview with fellow director Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock explained why he thought Psycho was his greatest work: “Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to filmmakers, to you and me.” In brief, it’s a filmmaking purist’s delight. It’s appropriate, then, that Ireland opens his new collection with a quote from that movie, as it proves him to be a poets’ poet—a verse-maker who saves some of his best effects for authors like himself. Ireland prefers more formal structures, and many, if not most, of the works in this set are rhyming poems in tight stanzas. Take, for example, the gorgeous piece “Lockwood,” which borrows its name from one of the narrators in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; one block reads, “She gave the grave such life: / The moths, the dew-steeped flowers, / The murmuring summer streams… / So much like living’s idle hours.” The imagery here is so rich, and the diction so precise, that one almost misses the elegant end rhyme in “flowers” and “hours.” In this way, the author’s technique is carefully deployed without being flamboyantly displayed, showing Ireland as a craftsman of real subtlety. Another highlight, “Mountain Development,” displays not only the writer’s skill, but also his debt to his poetic ancestors. It opens, “How long will it be / Before the path is gone, / Cleared, graded, / And gravel piled on?” It’s hard to read this piece through without thinking of Robert Frost, who famously wrote of lonely woods and untraveled paths. But again, Ireland’s tact prevails, and the influence remains a haunting echo. There are many such treasures hidden throughout the book, and it will be a pleasure for astute readers to seek them out.
A vibrant compilation that will appeal to poetry aficionados and amateurs alike.Pub Date: June 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62549-234-0
Page Count: 102
Publisher: Cherry Grove Collections
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Clean, spare poems that resonate.
In this poetry collection, Gillman (The Magic Ring, 2000) considers his father’s slow descent into dementia.
Gillman had a brilliant father who was an accomplished classical pianist and a distinguished mathematician known for his work in topology. But in the stark poems that make up this book, readers see the father’s confusion and weakness as Alzheimer’s steals his autonomy bit by bit. Even in the past, the two couldn’t always connect; music sometimes seemed like a barrier, part of the father’s autocratic distance. In “A House with Music in It, II,” the 12-year-old son tiptoes into the house where his father plays piano; shutting the door to his room, he prefers the radio and Chuck Berry. In the title poem, the narrator recalls how his father used to hum along while playing the piano, an indistinguishable drone: “One couldn’t tell / from listening to you drone / what piece it was, / all tuneless and the same.” Three poems engage with the haunting image of the parents’ twice-daily journey up and down stairs, something like divers: “Going down, / she has a rope, / tied to his belt, / wrapped around her waist,” which “will somehow stop him.” In one of the book’s most potent poems, Gillman sees his father, strapped upright in bed, “as if / fastened to / the piling of a dock” while the tide slowly rises, which powerfully conveys the slow, awful dread of waiting for someone to die. Sometimes, the poems edge into the prosaic, with too much explanation, more like a journal entry, perhaps: “It’s been hours / and I’m still angry / at what this brings back up: / how you imposed / your one right way / on everything we did.” Poems about connection appear as well. In “Requiem,” for example, the poet imagines lingering reverberations in the father’s music room, “lower and lower / till they have reached a place / ear can’t hear / but heart still knows.”
Clean, spare poems that resonate.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-936482-37-5
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Antrim House Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A solid, spirited take on poetry and life.
A charming, accessible collection of poems on nature, everyday life and the benefit of hindsight.
One of this slim volume’s first poems is an ode to humility. In life, Dawson (Yesterday’s Moon, 2010) writes, “your odds improve for a better ride / With more humility and far less pride.” Such simple lessons abound early in this collection, as does a deep respect for simple pleasures. The “Wallowa” of the title refers to the author’s cattle ranch in Wallowa County, Ore., and many of his poems hail its majestic attributes and particularly its ability to help him put things in perspective: “the primal power of the repeated theme / Belittles my importance in the larger scheme.” Dawson is an unapologetic formalist—a traditionalist who jokes that he believes in rhyme and goes on to prove it in every poem. Although he’s not a groundbreaking poet, he can certainly turn a phrase, and there’s a certain lay quality to his work that serves him well. As a narrator, he’s hard not to like, and his poems have a rolling melody that’s pleasing and admirable. His unabashed fondness for nature may grate on some readers, but the collection is far more than a mere homage to mountains and trees. In fact, Dawson interjects “real life” throughout, grounding his retreat in a quotidian reality; at one point, he delicately references the housing bubble: “We purchased our place / When the prices had peaked, / Then struggled thereafter / To make ends meet.” The book has a distinct melancholy that comes, it seems, from the harsh juxtaposition of living in these two worlds. At such moments, the author might have challenged himself a bit more formally by veering away from neat, dependable rhymes, but overall, he manages to make the verses’ tones interesting and varied enough. Toward the end, instead of offering more lessons, he does a fine job of turning the lens on himself, second-guessing decisions he’s made and bringing them to light in a powerful way.
A solid, spirited take on poetry and life.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4917-1085-2
Page Count: 154
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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