A stunning poetic debut.
With her first collection, LeRoy delivers luminous, art-inspired poems that expertly balance the concepts of nature and the human struggle.
LeRoy, a retired science writer, could easily be an art historian, given her facility with the impressionists and Dutch masters. Many of these free-verse poems have the concentrated color and frozen action of a still life. “The Yellow Fields of Gennevilliers” compares two Gustave Caillebotte paintings, while “Wheat Field with Crows” juxtaposes past and present as Vincent van Gogh’s grief foreshadows an ill friend’s demise. “The Lady and the Unicorn,” a close reading of a Parisian tapestry, recalls author Tracy Chevalier’s literary approach to history. Permeated with color and light, many poems are like mood studies: “September” features “sapphire sky” and “afternoon’s blue”; “The Old House” exhibits shades of gray, a recurrent hue. LeRoy chooses alliteration and assonance over rhyme—the one end rhyme, perhaps incidental, comes as a shock (“fast / passed” in “Flat Run”). Repeated consonant sounds create soothing rhythms, as in “unsuspecting sea” and “fiddleheads unfurl: / fanfare.” The poems are carefully organized to bleed into each other thematically. For instance, in “Evidence for Strings,” physics—specifically string theory—cedes to talk of music and stringed instruments; the next poem, “Violin,” then follows seamlessly. Likewise, the striking intersection of beauty and violence in “Planting Tulips”—“a battlefield so strewn / with brightly turbaned heads / it was compared to a bed of tulips”—leads to the war-themed “Verdun.” The author’s knowledge of plants comes through in her delicate description of chicory (“this asterisk of color”) and in “Saguaro,” a poem inventively written from a cactus’s perspective. One stanza of “Ginkgo” resembles a haiku, making it germane to its Asian setting. LeRoy masters the confluence of art and science, joining writers such as Ruth Padel, Andrea Barrett and A.S. Byatt. Almost equally valuable, however, are her subtle relationship poems, such as “Firewater,” in which a collision of life-giving but destructive forces symbolizes the challenges of marriage. Five final poems about medical crises and death ease into a superb finale: “sorrowed by so much lost / hungry for what remains.”
A stunning poetic debut.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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