A compelling set of poems that would benefit from less rigid experimentation.
A shape-shifting debut poetry collection by Pavlakis.
This book opens by asking fallen soldiers to “Come up, boys. / Come up from your moldy graves.” From there, readers begin to ride the fast current of the author’s poetry. Alternating between traditional verse, heaped lines, and poetic structures that recall those in the famous avant-garde poetry magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the author’s poems have a dynamism that’s similar to that of poet Ron Silliman’s The New Sentence. But although the poems propel readers forward, they never really arrive at a destination. The text is riddled with too many clichés—so many that it feels intentional—such as “Now is the ever-present / that is never done. / Now is a piece of always” or “Is a lifetime just that—a life of time?” Although the platitudes run freely, readers will continue on, ambling toward nowhere—deeper into the mind of the speaker, who never shines through the force of his poesis. Indeed, poesis is lacking here—particularly one that would use these formal experimentations to create something other than what contemporary conceptual poetry has already given us. For instance, “Know What I Mean?” emulates Stéphane Mallarmé’s A Throw of the Dice without using any of the white space of the opposite page as a canvas, and in “Wholeness,” the line breaks are just as jarring as they would be in a Robert Creeley poem but never quite slap like a contemporary reader may expect them to do. In another instance, Pavlakis shows a compelling interest in narratological concerns: “the poet walks his unshaped thoughts / down dim, deserted idea drive / turns right on word avenue / passes weedy vacant lots / comes stunned / to dead end.” Thus the author puts a Joycean Leopold Bloom before the reader, moving on to a different linguistic field, but he never does anything with it. Readers are left hanging, waiting for some bold, loud, and syntactically irreverent linguistic matter to arrive. Overall, the poet has done an intriguing job of juxtaposing various forms of contemporary poetry, but he never allows himself to go the extra mile.
A compelling set of poems that would benefit from less rigid experimentation.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-8809-5
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
That Rewak (The Orphan Bear, 2014, etc.) is a professor, a university chancellor, and a monk only makes the fact that he is also an accomplished poet more impressive.
It is difficult to talk about Jesuit poetry without invoking Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a monk, a spiritual seeker, and a poet responsible for some of the most moving, challenging English verse of the last two centuries. So it’s entirely fitting that Rewak—himself a Jesuit—calls out to his forebear in his new collection. “A New Task” is written in Hopkins’ memory, and in it, Rewak asks the poet, “Do you see, finally, after the dimness / that shadowed your black-robed walks / down lanes of half-opened eyes, / all the sentences left to be completed? / Is your pen busy with new, full-blown / wonders—stanzas that startle the saints?” Rewak’s own verse may not startle any saints, but it’s sure to please almost anyone else. But if Hopkins’ language is an ancient, gnarled oak, Rewak’s is a young birch, and his lines are smooth, white, and unbroken. Often flowing and conversational, his works are conceptually and emotionally ambitious but eminently readable. Take the humble, pristine “Rose”: “This little rose / is the best thing / I ever grew for you / on this small planet / you can take the dinosaurs / and mushrooms, the great / Himalayas, full of grandeur / (as an indication of My size) / but this thing I hold....” Here, the poet’s direct address and his coyly simple language remind us of the beauty of small things—even things so frequently praised as that red flower. Like Hopkins before him, Rewak addresses God less often than the beautiful, sublime world. But when he does turn his attention to religious matters, it’s with wit and insight. Here is “Verdict,” which is presumably about the trial of God: “They’ve put You on trial / I’m told: / it was whispered to me / proceedings are held tight / in a shuttered room… / but I notice the sun / still shines / because at heart You’re generous / and inclined to overlook petulance.” Would that all poets could write with such tact and humor.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5390-5255-5
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-intended celebration of Americanness that becomes mired in hyperbolic fervor.
Sharma (America Tattwamasi, 2016) explores American freedom in this collection of poetry.
In his previous book, the poet observed America through the lens of the Hindu Upanishads, with an emphasis on religion, politics, and universal spirituality. This second collection of more than 200 poems is “the continuation of the same vision, message, and mission,” he reveals early on. As a whole, it showcases an unswerving belief in American ideals; indeed, Sharma describes America, in his introduction, as representing “the supreme philosophy of freedom and liberty.” However, he also states that his lengthy, 52-page title poem is a lyrical attempt at “reinvigorating this great country” in the face of what he perceives as current “weakness and complacency.” Still, the poem portrays the nation as a wellspring of benevolent energy. Speaking directly to America itself, the narrator offers absurd exaggeration: “You are the one on whom is pinned the advancement of human / civilization, with all its sacredness intact.” He then turns a critical gaze toward people in politics, asking, “Why have our politicians relegated themselves to third world / demagogues? / Why are they twisting our sacred documents to suit their knavish / dispositions?” The result is a fervent cri de coeur that asks the amorphous American spirit to “arise and illumine the eyes of humanity,” as “It is time to bludgeon the dark that is trying to decapitate truth and / veracity.” Some readers may interpret these lines as revolutionary, aggressively nationalistic, or even colonialist in tenor, with their inference that everything that isn’t America is in darkness, waiting to be illuminated or crushed. In a later poem, the narrator declares, “The uncompromising advocate / Of racial harmony and tolerance, / O America, / I salute thee!” Sharma’s writing echoes the nigh-biblical, overspilling grandiosity of Walt Whitman’s literary style. However, there’s also a hint of zealotry here, and some readers, including those engaged in campaigning for racial equality in the United States, will likely balk at this collection’s assumptions of harmony and tolerance.
A well-intended celebration of Americanness that becomes mired in hyperbolic fervor.Pub Date: July 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-5150-7
Page Count: 358
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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