A forceful argument for Stock’s growing relevance as a West Coast poet.
A rousing retrospective of the more recent work of a prolific poet, by turns wide-ranging and piercing.
Ezra Pound taught readers most succinctly about the power of juxtaposition in his famous—and famously brief—1913 poem “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.” By bringing together two unlikely images, Pound opened up new meanings in both, and the relationship that links them remains tantalizingly mysterious. Such juxtaposition is one of the tools that Stock (Just Like in the Song of Songs, 2009, etc.) ably wields in her new volume of selected verse, culled from just one decade of her work as a publishing poet. In “While the Men Prayed,” for example, Stock sets people at prayer next to a “large sabra cactus” with “yellow blossoms / which grew red and exploded / before my very eyes.” In “Torture,” tiny jellyfish are compared with egg yolks “before / being broken into by the tine / of a fork.” Most startlingly, in “Cho,” the narrator describes the moment that a charging deer collides with her automobile and then deftly shifts to reflections on the man who killed dozens at Virginia Tech. This collection is thus a kaleidoscope of surprising images, arrayed in a pattern whose logic, while alluring, is sometimes elusive. The volume pulls from more than a dozen different books, but unlike similar collections by others, it’s organized in reverse chronological order, so that readers see Stock’s more recent work first, starting from 2008. (The final section, however, from 2009, is an exception to this rule.) This idiosyncratic arrangement is an excellent decision, for it turns the reading experience into a process of excavation and lets Stock’s mature work serve as a heuristic for earlier offerings. Throughout, she deals with heavy themes—death, war, religion—and yet never lets them become ponderous, instead situating them in the real lives of real people. For instance, she reflects on the murders of five homeless men while her “laundry is in the machines down the street.” Of course, the poet subtly reminds readers that laundry and murder exist in the same world—our world.
A forceful argument for Stock’s growing relevance as a West Coast poet.Pub Date: May 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909203-0-4
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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