Evocative and lyrical free-verse poetry.
A translator offers two poem cycles—supposedly uncovered in two scrolls—that involve the politics of love and reading in ancient China.
This book includes a mysterious explanation about the unearthing of the Xian scrolls. The translator of these poems from Old or Classical Chinese into English, known only as E.O., relates that the anonymous archaeologist who found the two scrolls died under “mysterious circumstances.” This requires “circumspection” about the details of the scrolls’ location and the identity of E.O. and his contacts in China. These two collections of verses—“The Poems of Cangjie” (circa 2650 B.C.E.), by the Chinese historian, and “Visions of Cangjie” (circa 213 B.C.E.), by a poet and translator called the Sculptor—share vivid styles and themes. Both poets write in shimmering free verse about Cangjie’s forbidden love for the Yellow Emperor’s favorite courtesan and the consequences. The “furious emperor” forbids Cangjie to speak to the woman, and the historian, to circumvent the order, invents the written word to deliver his message to the object of his affection: “What you hear / is not what I hear. / I grieve / as at death.” Over 2,000 years later, the Sculptor demonstrates a similar ingenuity when he translates Cangjie’s poems onto a silk scroll. He hides that treasure, along with his own poems on a second scroll, in one of the hollow bodies of the terra-cotta army figures he labors to create. He thus saves both his and Cangjie’s work from the First Emperor’s massive book burning. Cangjie’s images are more concise (“Like your lashes / your hands flutter— / quails in a bush”) than the Sculptor’s: “One woman walked / as a falcon in soar.” The parallelism of the two collections remains pleasing in its symmetry. For readers who can let go of their need for undisputed proof that these are indeed lost poems, gems await, including this line from Cangjie: “Sly slip / of moon, / you made me wait the night / to see you.”
Evocative and lyrical free-verse poetry.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9848403-4-2
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Risk Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An entrancing book of poetry.
Ungar’s (English/Coll. of Saint Rose; The Origin of the Milky Way, 2007, etc.) new collection may not make her immortal, but it surely establishes her as a contemporary poet of the first rank.
This poetry collection is like a bowl of fruit and cream: it’s so delicious, and it all goes down so easily, that you forget how much nutrition is there. She’s also the rare talent who can take nearly anything and make it into poetry. Everything is ore for her refinery, and she pulls inspiration from numerous and sundry sources, from the natural world to mystical Judaism to an exercise class for the elderly to a student’s essay. (The author is a writing professor.) This last source fuels “On a Student Paper Comparing Emily Dickinson to Lady Gaga,” a poem that no one should ever have tried to write—and that Ungar turns to gold. This clever piece demonstrates the author’s slow turn from skeptical distance to full acceptance of her young author’s thesis; it concludes, “Should I google Lady Gaga? / Or just give the girl an A.” This collection is full of such unlikely experiments—all of which the author pulls off with easy grace. Two poems with “Medusa” in their titles show her admirable dexterity with symbols. The first, “Call Me Medusa,” takes the snake-haired sorceress as a metaphor for the author herself: “I was a brain, eyes and hair. / If not a beauty, are you then a monster? / Some say I was beautiful, raped, punished / for it, then beheaded in a rear-view mirror. / Even cut off, my head could still turn men / to stone.” The second, a poem that gives the collection its title, compares tiny jellyfish to the same mythic figure: “Tentacles resorb, / umbrella reverts, / medusa reattaches / to the ocean floor / and grows a new / colony of polyps / that bud into / identical medusae, / bypassing death.” Thus, Medusa is human and other, dead and deathless, beautiful and terrible and strange.
An entrancing book of poetry.Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-915380-93-0
Page Count: 98
Publisher: The Word Works
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sturdy, exuberant verse.
Like the demigod from which it takes its name, Defining Atlas is a durable, uplifting volume.
A strong current of self-affirmation, self-love, and self-confidence runs through this work, and readers will come away feeling their spirits improved. We feel some of this current in the clever “Limited”; Michaels takes the titular subject and turns it on its head: “I’m new, but I’m old / Not limited beyond my means and methods / But limited because I’m special / Special beyond the heavens and everything that surrounds me / That I’m among…limited.” Elsewhere in “From the ashes…I am,” he sings a hard-won song of renewal and rebirth: “I am victory in its rawest form / I am hope that never conform / I am the will, the drive, and the truth / I am like everyone, like you.” But Michaels does not hoard specialness or victory for himself; he wants it for his reader too, and in “Wake Up!” he urges us on toward a bright future: “There’s something good here for you / Your purpose can never be defined by just one blue / Your destiny awaits you.” Underpinning Michaels’ stirring message is a strong faith in God, whose presence infuses many of the poems here: “But I always thank God for the latter / For the strength and will it takes / Shines so bright / Shines so right.” Michaels often adopts a loose scheme of rhyming couplets, and this decision leads to one of the book’s few weaknesses. Too often, the poet picks awkward or odd pairings; e.g., “And if I could become a perfect saint / I would make believers out of the ones who say they ain’t” and the “you/blue” couplet mentioned above. But such missteps are infrequent, and they don’t dim the warm light that emanates from Michaels’ fine volume.
Sturdy, exuberant verse.Pub Date: March 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5035-4785-8
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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