A noteworthy exploration of a parent’s grief.
Through poems and vignettes, Brenner’s moving debut memoir commemorates her son’s death.
Brenner began writing poetry in earnest the night 6-year-old Riley died of an arteriovenous malformation brain hemorrhage. “The pain had to go somewhere,” she recalls. Instead of crying, she crafted poems. These free verse selections, mostly written in complete sentences, rely on alliteration, assonance and striking imagery rather than straight rhyme for impact. Perspective morphs subtly, starting in the third person and moving into a more intimate first-person present, with occasional outbursts of second-person address to Riley. “The Perfect Latch” tenderly equates breast-feeding with bonding, despite pain and ambivalence: “Nipples raw and cracked, / burning like resentment, / she squeezes her left breast / to achieve the perfect latch.” In “Shifting Sand,” alliteration makes for memorable lines about flux: “grinding the finite grains / against the scarred linoleum.” Several passages are gently morbid: “Funny we called it permanent, / you only had it for a week” (“Your Permanent Tooth”) and “A washing machine outlives a little boy.” Inventive, extended metaphors personify death or mock opinions about God: Here is “Death’s finger pointing, / Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”; and in “God as a Waiter,” one must only “Place the order, / [and] Thou shall receive” another baby. Brenner contrasts the blithe early days of marriage—“We offered ourselves to each other / lightly as happy hour hors d’oeuvres”—with the strain Riley’s death placed on her and her husband, Lee. She also dwells on Riley’s physical remains—clothes under his bed, a rosebush he loved, as well as the organs he donated—and on others’ well-meaning but trite responses to her grief. Just as powerful are the one-page autobiographical vignettes interspersed throughout. Of these, best is “Choices,” in which the vocabulary foreshadows medical crisis: “coffin-shaped room,” “a cracker that clumps like ash on my tongue” and “the doctors file in like pallbearers.” However, the subtitle should indicate that nearly a quarter of the text is prose, and 17 continuous pages of family photos are perhaps excessive.
A noteworthy exploration of a parent’s grief.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692267479
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Silver Birch Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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
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