More characterized by sentimentality than strength.
These collected verses address matters of nature, faith, time, and love.
Several themes stand out among the nearly 100 verses, mostly short, in Brazwell’s debut collection. Images from nature appear in most of the selections, often connected to the speaker’s faith or strong emotions. Raindrops and tears, or raindrops as angel tears, appear frequently: in “Across Texas,” “Angel tears are falling across Texas / Tears of joy are covering the plains.” Grateful tears find expression here as much as those of sorrow, and hope usually tempers melancholy emotions. For example, in “Summer Dies,” a willow weeps “lonely tears,” but the verse ends by affirming connections between the willow and the creatures for whom it weeps. Brazwell also draws on autumnal images, including falling leaves, to convey a blended sense of loss and beauty. The speaker describes the freedom of his boyhood, swinging on the tree “out into space / And back to earth.” Neither he nor the tree can fully defy gravity and time, but the tree’s steadfastness in old age is a lesson in unbowed strength: its golden autumn leaves are not a sign of diminishment but a royal crown. Portraits of childhood also offer memorable images, though readers will be surprised and/or put off by verses like “The Remedy Tree,” which perhaps idealizes cutting switches for beating children. At their best, Brazwell’s offerings make an impression with original metaphors, such as a tree after an ice storm: “The streetlights reflect off you / As if you were some high-priced chandelier.” The last phrase effectively conjures the speaker’s humility and sense of wonder; he doesn’t mind depicting himself as an admiring commoner in the mansion of nature, a charming stance. Less effective, however, are clichés such as “memory lane” (twice); “good old days”; “nature’s choir” (twice); and “the test of time,” as well as twee ruminations like “When I see butterflies fluttering in a meadow / I think of angels playing in the clouds of heaven.”
More characterized by sentimentality than strength.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4808-2092-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: ArchwayPublishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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