by Jay Sizemore ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2018
These piercing poems about firearms cut to the core.
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A writer brings poems to a gunfight and gets off more than a few clean shots.
It is a small miracle—and a testament to the author’s versatility—that Sizemore (American Love Poem, 2017, etc.) can write such a wide variety of good poems about firearms. But don’t let the title of his new collection fool you: This is not a celebration of America’s gun culture. It is a lament. The book is dedicated to “all the lives lost to gun violence in the United States, and to all the survivors,” so unsurprisingly, many of the poems read like dirges. Take “Prayer to the Cosmos,” a post-Parkland piece that tries to capture how that tragedy transforms readers: “School buses become potential hearses, / an ambulance but a carrier of bodies / from one panic attack to the next, / a diploma more like a participation trophy / in the obstacle course of a shooting gallery, / as we wring our hands and offer the wind / from our mouths as succor for blue light.” Of course, readers are changed by such bloodshed, whether it causes them to long for a peaceful future or hope to see the gun culture grow. To its credit, this collection imagines both possibilities. To the first, Sizemore writes “Needs of a Gun Enthusiast,” a lyrical, six-stanza poem whose every block begins with the same line: “I don’t need a gun.” In it, the poet gives readers an evocative, streamlined sketch of a life lived fully without firearms. But in the opposite vein, the title poem imagines a world in which guns grow “on trees”: “Is this the utopia we deserve, / land of breath by Russian roulette, / land of nitroglycerin smoke, / black residue left on the fingers / of the firing trigger fist, / land of forests where the wind / through the limbs / sounds like a chorus / of haunted pitch pipe barrels / whistling in the key of apathy?” The message here is clear: a land in which weapons are ubiquitous is no utopia. But in sketching such a possibility with sublimity and grace, Sizemore catches some of the allure of his fatal subject. That this critic of gun culture can communicate—even implicitly—some of its dark appeal renders his appraisals even more effective.
These piercing poems about firearms cut to the core.Pub Date: May 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71868-483-6
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Crow Hollow Books
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.C. Salazar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2018
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.C. Salazar
by Kate Lee Diehl illustrated by Kathryn Dimenichi John Powell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2015
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
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Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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