An accomplished, ambitious, and highly original long poem.
Skanavis (Gaia: A Mystical Epic, 2012) offers a psychedelic space opera in verse.
Citing influences including Emily Dickinson, Isaac Asimov, and Terence McKenna, Skanavis tells, in metered, rhyming verse, the story of a man named Kreon. In a dystopian future Earth that’s nearly destroyed by war, he seeks to replant the world with vegetation to feed his tribe. He’s aided in his quest by the lowly mushroom, which revitalizes the soil and offers a doorway to the wider universe. What begins as a simple job of myco-remediation becomes a journey unlike any that mankind’s ever undergone. The story is told over 32 chapters, most comprised of three sonnets: rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. The result may be unlike anything the reader has ever seen—imagine Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man” on mushrooms. The number of ingredients in this literary stew is staggering: Skanavis name-checks James Joyce, Henry David Thoreau, filmmaker Richard Linklater, and author Daniel Pinchbeck, among many others; one epigraph comes from the arcade game “Galaxian”; and one poem is dedicated to the late heavy-metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Nothing about this book should work, and yet Skanavis manages to pull it all off with ingenuity and surprising restraint. Without irony or even a sense of pastiche, he synthesizes his influences into a cohesive vision, communicated by impressive, disciplined, and inventive poetry: “Eco-harmonious we must begin to be— / Mimetic—to each function of these bees— / & herbal allies’ pistillate release— / Of profound psychosomatic properties—.” Making ubiquitous use of Dickinson-ian dashes and Blake-an ampersands, Skanavis even plays with the visual properties of his lines on the page, slyly building to a point when a double helix of dashes rises like an optical illusion out of the poem itself. Is it idiosyncratic? Completely. Will it be every reader’s cup of tea? Certainly not. Yet it’s rare to find a book of poetry or prose that aspires to, and achieves, such a singular vision as this one. Anyone willing to follow Skanavis into this wormhole will find brilliance on the other side.
An accomplished, ambitious, and highly original long poem.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4907-6215-9
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.
Heidish (A Misplaced Woman, 2016, etc.) presents an account of St. Francis of Assisi’s life, as told from his father’s perspective in poetic form.
St. Francis is known as a saint who believed in living the Gospel, gave sermons to birds, and tamed a wolf. Over the course of 84 poems, Heidish tells her own fictionalized version of the saint’s journey. In his youth, Francesco is an apprentice of his father, Pietro Bernardone, a fabric importer. The boy is a sensitive dreamer and nature lover who sees “natural holiness in every living thing.” As an adult, Francesco decides to pursue knighthood, but God warns him to “Go back, child / Serve the master.” He joins the Church of San Damiano, steals his father’s storeroom stock, and sells it to rebuild the church. His furious father chains him in the cellar, and the bishop orders Francesco to repay the debt. Afterward, father and son stop speaking to each other; Francesco becomes a healer of the sick and a proficient preacher. After failing to broker a peace agreement during wartime, Francesco falls into depression and resigns his church position. He retreats to the mountains and eventually dies; it’s only then that Pietro becomes a true follower of St. Francis: “You are the father now and I the son / learning still what it means to be a saint,” he says. Heidish’s decision to tell this story from Pietro’s perspective is what makes this oft-told legend seem fresh again. She uses superb similes and metaphors; for example, at different points, she writes that St. Francis had eyes like “lit wicks” and a spirit that “shone like a clean copper pot.” In another instance, she describes the Church of San Damiano as a place in which “walls crumbled / like stale dry bread.” Following the poems, the author also offers a thorough and engaging historical summary of the real life of St. Francis, which only adds further context and depth to the tale.
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9905262-1-6
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Dolan & Associates
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.
A debut volume of poetry explores love and war.
Divided into four sections, Osaki’s book covers vast emotional territories. Section 1, entitled “Walking Back the Cat,” is a reflection on youthful relationships both familial and romantic. “Dying Arts,” the second part, is an examination of war and its brutal consequences. But sections three and four, named “Tradecraft” and “Best Evidence” respectively, do not appear to group poems by theme. The collection opens with “My Father Holding Squash,” one of Osaki’s strongest poems. It introduces the poet’s preoccupation with ephemera—particularly old photographs and letters. Here he describes a photo that is “several years old” of his father in his garden. Osaki muses that an invisible caption reads: “Look at this, you poetry-writing / jackass. Not everything I raise is useless!” The squash is described as “bearable fruit,” wryly hinting that the poet son is considered somewhat less bearable in his father’s eyes. Again, in the poem “Photograph,” Osaki is at his best, sensuously describing a shot of a young woman and the fleeting nature of that moment spent with her: “I know only that I was with her / in a room years ago, and that the sun filtering / into that room faded instantly upon striking the floor.” Wistful nostalgia gives way to violence in “Dying Arts.” Poems such as “Preserve” present a battleground dystopia: “Upturned graves and craters / to swim in when it rains. / Small children shake skulls / like rattles, while older ones carve rifles / out of bone.” Meanwhile, “Silver Star” considers the act of escorting the coffin of a dead soldier home, and “Gun Song” ruminates on owning a weapon to protect against home invasion. The language is more jagged here but powerfully unsettling nonetheless. The collection boasts a range of promising poetic voices, but they do not speak to one another, a common pitfall found in debuts. “Walking Back the Cat” is outstanding in its refined attention to detail; the sections following it read as though they have been produced by two or more other poets. Nevertheless, this is thoughtful, timely writing that demands further attention.
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984198-32-7
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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