Meaningful, edifying verse that tells of a beleaguered people.
Outraged, sorrowful and occasionally hopeful post-colonial free verse that gives voice to the oppressed.
In his unflinching debut, Hagher seeks to redeem the struggling African continent through the power of myth, song and poetry, but he finds it a rough go, even from the outset. Entertaining Homeric aspirations, he begins, “How can I write the epic / To celebrate your long forgotten history / And a new song of your heroes?” After cataloging his nation’s ills, though, he finds that both country and poetry are helplessly “[y]earning for lost unity.” “How then can I sing you a new song?” he asks. Hagher discovers challenges so deeply and systemically entrenched that neither action nor poetry seems to register amid the disastrous cacophony. With incredulity, he records the social pathologies that plague African countries, as in “Ballad of the Widow,” which personalizes cycles of self-defeating behavior by describing two men viciously and counterproductively fighting for the affections of a widow: “The quarrel was small / Their hate was big, bitter and strong / And now they sought to die / And double the widow’s plight.” Hagher both mocks and mourns the absurd fatalism of such cycles in the linguistic tautologies of “Dying in Africa’s Sudan” and the paradoxes of “Gbeji and Zaki-Biam.” Yet the problems are bigger than Africa. Economic and social inequalities afflict Mexican maids, too, who rank below even their hotel guests’ dogs: “Maids pray to Guadalupe for a miracle / To heal collapsed shoulder bags and heated muscles / Dogs see their doctors weekly for a fee.” Further, Africa is handicapped by the world’s gaze, symbolized by “wicked cameras” that “[s]ee nothing except flies sucking moisture / On mucus drenched nostrils of starving children.” Optimism is fleeting, and when it does appear, “hope flutters on the wing of a butterfly.” The epic of celebration and heroism is not fulfilled here, but the seeds of resurrection are sown in some of Hagher’s longer, more explicitly African pieces like “Ode to Gbaaiko Iyol” and “Predators of the Savannah,” in which the long arcs of African histories are revealed and celebrated. Ambitious yet aware of its own futility, Hagher’s project necessarily means poetry that is, by turns, bombastic, messy and opaque, but it can be remarkably powerful, too.
Meaningful, edifying verse that tells of a beleaguered people.Pub Date: June 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-1438946924
Page Count: 204
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
