Emotional but rarely subtle poetry.
These verses explore issues of social justice and America’s legacy of slavery, together with relationships and spirituality.
Williams’ debut collection of 50 poems starts off with “People Wonder Why My Eyes Red:” (nearly all of the titles end in a colon). This statement about the speaker locates him in personal history: “My eyes are red because of my dad; he is not dead. / His trait passes down the family tree.” The redness here has to do with pain and bodily suffering, agony that can only be kept at bay with alcohol. In a later poem—“Red Eyes Tell My Struggle:”—the quality of redness now signifies not pain but rage, a consequence of the speaker’s “addiction for freedom.” This hints at a greater historical context for torment, although this insight gains the speaker little. Again alcohol comes into play, for which the poet pays a price, in this well-phrased line: “I drown my fire while drowning my cheer.” Many other pieces in the volume weave back and forth in this way between history, biography, and the toxicity of racism. This can become polemical, as in “Police State:” (“We feel the hand of the police state. / In parting freedom, we contemplate our fate. / As their system of laws turns protectors into the terrorist. / They lie, steal and imprison to maintain self-interest”). Typical of most works in the collection, this one reveals obvious alignments with slam poetry, which has roots in the oral tradition and tends to emphasize attitude, rhyme and slant rhyme (state/fate; terrorist/self-interest), repetition, and political engagement. The danger with polemics is that it can overtake poetic qualities like subtlety, imagery, and unexpected connections, allowing righteous emotion to substitute for a more thoughtful approach. Is it the system of laws itself, for example, or systemic racism that makes bad cops? Such lines read more like an op-ed piece than a poem. Sometimes Williams offers a fresh and intriguing line, as in describing an ambiguous revelation: “Plumes of smoke billowed out a prediction of zero.” For the most part, though, the collection has a heartfelt but amateurish quality. Williams too often makes word choices to fill out a rhyme: “I am a hero to some, to some others no identity, isolated and satanic,” he writes. What’s “satanic” about being isolated? Nothing, but the word provides a slant rhyme with “rabbit” in the next line. Some lines don’t make much sense at all, like “The planes were like horses that fly like vultures.” But horses don’t fly like vultures; they don’t fly at all. The love poems tend toward the saccharine: “You and me; me and you; our hearts blend too.” And one poem is disastrously misconceived, “A Poop Relationship:” (although the colon at last has some right to be there), which manages to combine the gross and the twee: “Poop is the waste from the digestive tract. / How does poop in a relationship interact?” asks the poet, concluding with “I offer you this tip: / Avoid a poop relationship.”
Emotional but rarely subtle poetry.Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-2535-2
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.
Heidish (A Misplaced Woman, 2016, etc.) presents an account of St. Francis of Assisi’s life, as told from his father’s perspective in poetic form.
St. Francis is known as a saint who believed in living the Gospel, gave sermons to birds, and tamed a wolf. Over the course of 84 poems, Heidish tells her own fictionalized version of the saint’s journey. In his youth, Francesco is an apprentice of his father, Pietro Bernardone, a fabric importer. The boy is a sensitive dreamer and nature lover who sees “natural holiness in every living thing.” As an adult, Francesco decides to pursue knighthood, but God warns him to “Go back, child / Serve the master.” He joins the Church of San Damiano, steals his father’s storeroom stock, and sells it to rebuild the church. His furious father chains him in the cellar, and the bishop orders Francesco to repay the debt. Afterward, father and son stop speaking to each other; Francesco becomes a healer of the sick and a proficient preacher. After failing to broker a peace agreement during wartime, Francesco falls into depression and resigns his church position. He retreats to the mountains and eventually dies; it’s only then that Pietro becomes a true follower of St. Francis: “You are the father now and I the son / learning still what it means to be a saint,” he says. Heidish’s decision to tell this story from Pietro’s perspective is what makes this oft-told legend seem fresh again. She uses superb similes and metaphors; for example, at different points, she writes that St. Francis had eyes like “lit wicks” and a spirit that “shone like a clean copper pot.” In another instance, she describes the Church of San Damiano as a place in which “walls crumbled / like stale dry bread.” Following the poems, the author also offers a thorough and engaging historical summary of the real life of St. Francis, which only adds further context and depth to the tale.
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9905262-1-6
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Dolan & Associates
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.
A debut volume of poetry explores love and war.
Divided into four sections, Osaki’s book covers vast emotional territories. Section 1, entitled “Walking Back the Cat,” is a reflection on youthful relationships both familial and romantic. “Dying Arts,” the second part, is an examination of war and its brutal consequences. But sections three and four, named “Tradecraft” and “Best Evidence” respectively, do not appear to group poems by theme. The collection opens with “My Father Holding Squash,” one of Osaki’s strongest poems. It introduces the poet’s preoccupation with ephemera—particularly old photographs and letters. Here he describes a photo that is “several years old” of his father in his garden. Osaki muses that an invisible caption reads: “Look at this, you poetry-writing / jackass. Not everything I raise is useless!” The squash is described as “bearable fruit,” wryly hinting that the poet son is considered somewhat less bearable in his father’s eyes. Again, in the poem “Photograph,” Osaki is at his best, sensuously describing a shot of a young woman and the fleeting nature of that moment spent with her: “I know only that I was with her / in a room years ago, and that the sun filtering / into that room faded instantly upon striking the floor.” Wistful nostalgia gives way to violence in “Dying Arts.” Poems such as “Preserve” present a battleground dystopia: “Upturned graves and craters / to swim in when it rains. / Small children shake skulls / like rattles, while older ones carve rifles / out of bone.” Meanwhile, “Silver Star” considers the act of escorting the coffin of a dead soldier home, and “Gun Song” ruminates on owning a weapon to protect against home invasion. The language is more jagged here but powerfully unsettling nonetheless. The collection boasts a range of promising poetic voices, but they do not speak to one another, a common pitfall found in debuts. “Walking Back the Cat” is outstanding in its refined attention to detail; the sections following it read as though they have been produced by two or more other poets. Nevertheless, this is thoughtful, timely writing that demands further attention.
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984198-32-7
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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