A first-time author’s poetic experiment that samples a wide breadth of forms at the expense of depth.
Elliott’s debut offers readers 15 stylistically diverse poems.
Elliott, a Bahamian poet, wrote each of these poems in a different style, from lyric and ode to haiku and sonnet. Less common forms, like the “diamante” (a seven-line poem shaped like a diamond), also appear here. Elliott touches on her love of words and the piano; she conjures a hungry boar in limerick form; and she frequently places her poems in the natural world. In a riff on the color green in “Verde,” she writes: “Green is everywhere. / Green is a sign of life. / Green is glimmer of hope. Green is permission to move forward.” A pair of poems in sonnet and ballad forms explore the agony of unattainable love. In the free-verse “My Heart is a Stone,” the author meditates on the aftermath of heartbreak: “God please, / I know You’re the only one with the power to melt my frozen heart / (I’m below zero degrees).” An epic poem flirts with sci-fi as a guardian endures the pain of a broken arm because his father, “a drill sergeant from the underworld,” taught him to protect the women in his care no matter what. Throughout the collection, Elliott deploys clever turns of phrase. In the narrative poem “I Am,” for example, the poet embodies the voice of sound itself: “I come from anything. / I can be pleasant or disturbing;” and in “Skyward Wishes” she evokes a smile with “I wish I was a wish. / Then everyone would want three of me.” Comparisons, however, tend toward the unoriginal, e.g., the “smooth ivory keys” of a piano or a cloud that’s like a “puffy cotton ball.” And characters are ill-defined. In “A True Guardian’s Strength,” a guardian, a captain, and a mistress are mentioned by title only and afforded few attributes. Assuming this book is meant for fellow novice poets, it would have been helpful if Elliott stated the rules of the forms used. (For example, that a sonnet is 14 lines and has rhyming schemes.)
A first-time author’s poetic experiment that samples a wide breadth of forms at the expense of depth.Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4907-8297-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 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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