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
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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