The many snappy, animated lines bolster this discordant, wandering collection.
More than 300 pages, Callahan’s debut poetry collection is chock-full of well-known and obscure figures from pop culture, mythology, and history.
Poems cover everyone from Lady Godiva of Coventry to Taylor Swift, Lilith and Eve to Erica Jong, and Schrodinger’s cat to Henry David Thoreau. Irish folklore, Christianity, and the author’s travels also inform the work. Many of the poems rhyme, especially the earlier ones, but the rhyme schemes do not dictate or force the meaning. Rhyming aside, the author’s surprising linguistic combinations and usage of alliteration gives his work vitality: “Came big brown bears / Humongous hairy hushed grizzlies / Stumbling along eating salmon” and “cracked seashell salty shores.” The author examines incidents of historic violence, such as the Omagh bombing in Ireland, asking whether such acts have led to any healing or peace. “Would this bloodshed change history?” Later poems echo this idea: “I ponder my significance / If history will change from this day forward.” Other poems, like “Annabella, What Did He Do?” and “Ox,” consider social and environmental justice, including the mistreatment of animals. “Baboon Reciting Poetry” and “C’mon Dinosaurs, Tell Us What the Hell Happened?” are quietly funny as they examine human nature and science. This wide-ranging collection leaves few topics unmined, but the themes are so broad and meandering that they lack a central cohesive idea. The author includes an explanatory footnote for almost every poem, which is unnecessary and distracting; grammatical errors also muddle the writing (“to hard too bare”; “kissing girl’s goodnight”).
The many snappy, animated lines bolster this discordant, wandering collection.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5376-0982-9
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body...
Wandzilak’s debut poetry collection spans a lifetime, musing on place, change, and mortality in light, occasional verse.
Built in the 1950s, the real-life East Deck Motel in Montauk, New York, was a mecca for beachgoers, surfers, and tourists of all stripes. But in 2015, its future was uncertain. In a sense, some of these poems, set at the motel, read as elegies—nostalgic celebrations of the seashore’s many moods. The title poem’s speaker reminisces about a night of love in the dunes, away from the crowd, and it’s gloomy with foreboding: “I could barely tell land from sea / I knew where I was, but not exactly.” With the lover’s “cold hand” in his, the speaker glimpses “the heart of a tear.” Other poems cast an eye over cultural high points, as in the longish poem “A Partial Autobiography.” The short, free-verse lines begin with oddity (“I was born with a remnant third nipple / I did not know what that meant for me”) but smooth out to more familiar touchstones: “I saw Yul Brynner play The King and I…. // I have seen the unicorns at the Cloisters //….I caught a wahoo in Turks and Caicos.” The oddity gathers and increases, however, in another cultural-event poem, this time on the occasion of seeing famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in concert in 2013. The lilting cadence of “I ate elk with a runcible spoon!” proceeds to a playful but peculiar after-concert meal: “Later we fed Mr. Ma toasted farro / As he proceeded to eat my bone marrow!” Whimsy is one thing, but word-pairing for the sake of rhyme is another, as in this quatrain: “I have delivered fourteen lives / Each followed by fourteen placentas / Therein, I found elation upon this earth, / Unequaled to a dinner of lobster polenta.” The poet’s background as a surgeon also appears with a poetic nod to delivering bad news; in it, the narrator glances daily into a nearby cemetery, where a patient will soon be buried. A compilation of similarly medical-themed poems would be truly select.
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body and soul.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-6727-5
Page Count: 54
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious collection—which asks the world to stop its destructive ways and recognize the importance of Africans—that...
A narrator rails against racism and ignorance in this debut poetry volume.
Celly’s book contains hundreds of poems, most of them quite short, that describe a man who is living in a universe full of unenlightened individuals who cause destruction because of their lack of knowledge. In particular, they do not appreciate the contributions of people of African descent and confound the narrator with their bigotry, murderous ways, and inability to become edified. Nevertheless, he is self-assured and encourages others to follow him. “I am the maestro without the orchestra,” he writes in the volume’s opening poem, “A Maestro,” but notes that humans won’t have the privilege of discerning what’s in his mind “until they stop killing each other.” As the many poems in the volume progress, he begins to refer to himself as “The Negus,” an African emperor or king. He has the “noble blood of the Kongo Kingdom” in “Legendary Blood,” descended from warriors, geniuses, and visionaries. The tone of the poems overall seeks to be high-minded, with references to The Prince by Machiavelli and the French Revolution. There is also a call to emulate African rhythms, such as the Congolese rumba or the songs of Bob Marley, in “It Must Rhyme and Flow.” A mysterious “they” is often mentioned, though it is unclear if this is a reference to Western society, racists, or uneducated people. Yet the narrator, who has a commanding presence, does describe an overall war on Africa and encourages Africans to rise up. Moreover, he transcends race and the color barrier and desires something mystical. “I am not a Negro. I am renegade. I am the Negus straight from heaven,” he writes in “Defined by Color Only Not So Fast!” Celly’s expansive volume, which aspires to thoughtful and strong lines about humanity and its failings, is not hostile but uses grandiose language to ponder and decree. While there are hundreds of poems, many are quite vague and are just one line or a short paragraph. The work is not entirely an exercise in self-aggrandizement, but the collection’s message can get lost amid the numerous ambiguities and repeated proclamations.
An ambitious collection—which asks the world to stop its destructive ways and recognize the importance of Africans—that remains hampered by nebulous and unspecified pronouncements.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68319-824-6
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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