For its openness to natural wonders, this poetry volume humbles and delights.
Freeman’s (The Infinite Song, 2013) new poetry collection offers an unabashed paean to nature.
Perfect for a backyard hammock or quiet moment in the great outdoors, this book uses lyrical descriptions of creatures and landscapes to celebrate the mysteries of the wild world. Beauty is pre-eminent—a virtue—and omnipresent; readers just have to know where to look and when to be watchful. “Today, it was the fish who were my teachers,” begins the poem “Rainbow Trout.” Under the rough surface “is a place of refuge.” The poet believes in the totemlike aspects of animals and their ability to carry messages. Her portrait of the pileated woodpecker working a dead trunk for food, for example, sees the bird as a harbinger of optimism in a challenging world. After he “chiseled the tree from different angles,” a lesson emerged: “See how it’s possible / to find nourishment / in what is broken, / beauty in decay?” This sort of reverence for nature’s teachings fills the book to bursting. Even the growth pattern of a wild geranium gives form to worshipful attention: “And so I point my storksbill seedpod / to the breathing hole of sky, / and uncoil my seed dreams / into the honey nectar of the heart, / to take root and flower.” Scientific knowledge informs the poems in the specific habitats and animal behaviors noted, but cultural legends (Egypt’s “special feather of Maat” that determines one’s afterlife) and mystical moments (“Blow the wind of your soul’s knowing into place”) also matter. Anthropomorphosis represents yet another way of knowing. In “Red-tailed Hawk Messenger,” for instance, a hawk’s cry takes phonetic shape, “Kree-eee-ar!” / Kree-eee-ar!” but also an English translation: “ ‘Speak up for yourself! / Speak up for what is true!’ / he cried, / his voice filling the hollows.” However readers find it, a sense of awe promises the best connection to the larger universe: “There are no doors to a meadow / but one crosses a threshold to enter.”
For its openness to natural wonders, this poetry volume humbles and delights.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9890897-1-5
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Halcyon Wind Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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