An exceptional poetic trip through an author’s life, loves and intellect.
A remarkable life in verse.
Schwab has had a full life to look back on and transmute into poetry. His book ranges over several subjects, from finding love and growing old, to giraffes and Oscar Wilde. His story begins in high school and spans through his time in the U.S. Navy, in academia and beyond, and touches upon themes that speak to both common and unusual experiences. The poems cover many different periods in his life, even touching on his 60th and 89th birthdays. Schwab’s perspective on American gay life is one that’s increasingly rare—he didn’t come out until he was 26 and didn’t have a relationship until he was 38. The author came of age in a gay culture before the age of AIDS and before meaningful civil rights advances. This experience colored his friendships and love affairs, as well as his poetry. Over the course of the book, he outlines relationships that range from one-night stands to long partnerships, always with a keen eye and a ready sense of humor. There’s more in the book than romance, however; Schwab writes about old friends, world events and historical figures as well. A series of poems on Wilde is particularly tender and showcases Schwab’s affection as well as the Irish author’s art: “No pioneer or fighter for the cause / Directly, à la Ulrichs, Hirschfeld, Ives, / His paradoxes were the subtle knives / He wielded in his battle with the laws.” Although Schwab writes more directly on social themes, his poetry wields words and imagery in a way that can be cutting but always demonstrates his deeply held beliefs. Readers who enjoy autobiographical portraits will have plenty to linger over, as will those particularly interested in the lives of gay men. Those who love poetry for its own sake will also find themselves charmed by this collection, which is frank and, as Schwab says of Liberace after death, “stark naked as uncovered piano strings.”
An exceptional poetic trip through an author’s life, loves and intellect.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496904867
Page Count: 192
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thrilling in its courageousness, breathtaking in its vividness.
Moving, psychologically nuanced free verse on death, rebirth and the powerfully generative potential of loss.
Billone’s debut poetry collection opens with the distinctly violent thud of metal on flesh: “I was raped by a speeding train. I asked it to. / I threw myself before it….Oh what enormous / metal thighs. Oh what fast thudding hips. Again / again against my blackening eyes, skull, chest, waist.” The rattle of crushing bones reverberates through this volume as Billone revisits again and again this vivid moment of loss, of clarity and of new beginnings. For all the isolation this act of surrender implies, Billone’s narrator seems as concerned about the repercussions for her father as for herself. Recently emerged from a coma, she peers from the buzzing confines of her damaged skull and notices his small discomforts: “Now almost dead I wake to feel him stroke / my hand with his weary feet in buckets / full of ice.” Though headed by epigraphs drawn from Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—their influences here are undeniable—this volume’s insistent attention to self-violence, suffused with a complex longing for, and yet wariness of, paternal blessing begs for comparison to Sylvia Plath, a comparison in which Billone more than holds her own. Poems such as “Invitation from a Carnival after a Storm,” “Paris to London” and “If Nothing Else” demonstrate her ability to convey a rich, fraught sensuality with sharply lucid verse. Like Plath, she evokes a father both omnipotent—one who can tear down her “tiny words” with “bare / gigantic / father arms / overwhelming”—and omnipresent, a hovering, suffocating presence whose “terrified eyes” and “gasping face” may have been prescient or may have pushed the narrator to attempt suicide. Unlike Plath, however, she learns—from her father’s fears, from that thudding train and from her late mentor, the poet Jack Gilbert—to savor the profound intensity of approaching loss. As her attention moves from her own recovery to the birth of her son, she cherishes each exquisite moment preceding the loss of their shared bodies: “My God, I have never loved / anything as much as these / ripples inside me.” Indeed, in this tightly woven exploration of how to hold onto something important amid constant change and loss, the “gray light changes / will change // is changing now / as it always does.”
Thrilling in its courageousness, breathtaking in its vividness.Pub Date: June 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989074001
Page Count: 78
Publisher: Hope Street Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An undeniably positive collection hampered by overexplanation.
A debut collection of poetry and prose that blends a straightforward memoir with a motivational treatise.
Mathur covers a range of topics, from her views on global politics to her experiences in local restaurants, returning repeatedly to the theme of positive thinking. Through a spiritual, implicitly Hindu lens, the author—a practitioner of reiki and energy healing—asserts her conviction that “you can always survive and come back to life’s central emotion: love.” She explores this notion mostly by recounting episodes from her own life as poems, with short prose explanations accompanying each. Motivational platitudes, such as “Once we are comfortable within ourselves, we can be happy with other people,” appear often throughout the text. Frequently, however, the prose sections hinder the poetry, as the explanations sometimes make the verses seem less original than they might have seemed on their own. The poetry itself tends toward the trite, often prioritizing conventional rhyme schemes over creative expression; for example, one entry commemorating the 2010 World Cup begins: “I am full of happiness; / I am full of cheer. / It makes me very happy / The World Cup is here.” Throughout, there’s an odd tension between the author’s focus on specific people and events in her own life and her stated goal of promoting love and positivity; for example, there may be a connection between the author’s experiences in an exercise class and the overall value of community, but including the names of her classmates probably isn’t necessary. Still, Mathur’s writing is consistently heartfelt and sometimes inspiring, and many poems are likely to resonate with fellow spiritual seekers, as when she writes, “Yes, there is always time. Listen—and stay quiet. / It is the voice of the divine.” Although such ideas may not be particularly original, they may be useful for readers looking to live mindfully.
An undeniably positive collection hampered by overexplanation.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0620563116
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Sarita Mathur
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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