A rich, thoughtful collection that generously breathes life into its ancient subject: very fine.
This cycle of poems focuses on Palamedes, credited with inventing letters of the Greek alphabet and dice.
In these poems, some previously published, Anderson (Songs of Bethlehem: Nativity Poems, 2014, etc.) takes the few surviving references to Palamedes from ancient texts and tells his story. According to mythology and surviving fragments from sources including Euripides, Plato, and Ovid (but not Homer), Palamedes was a Greek, the son of Nauplius and Clymene. He reputedly invented dice and 11 consonants in the Greek alphabet, and he notably made an enemy of Odysseus after exposing his stratagem to avoid the Trojan War. In one version of the story, Odysseus writes a fake letter that gets Palamedes stoned to death as a traitor. Paradoxically, the creation of writing is Palamedes’ doom. And though the miracle of written language is that it withstands living memory, almost nothing inscribed about him survives. Anderson conjures a vivid life for Palamedes that fully explores these paradoxes and others. The author’s voice ranges flexibly from lyrical to conversational, as when Palamedes’ brother tells him his efforts are futile: “Palamedes, stop.... / Before you finish this book of alphabet / A thousand poets will have sung what you want to write.” These strong lines, seeming both inevitable and surprising, are characteristic of Anderson’s poems. This effect can be emphasized by rhyme, as in “Sea Language of Palamedes,” in which the Greek imagines fleeing Earth’s demands for his grandfather Poseidon’s realm: “On a sea horse, I will ride the surf and breathe salt air. / Warriors, if you want to go to war, walk there.” The collection is deepened and complicated by several sequences in which figures address and respond to each other. Palamedes replies to Odysseus’ reluctance to leave Ithaca, not seeing his own danger to come: “Here you will rot like fruit in ripe manhood / While we write on the walls of Troy.” In his poems, Anderson beautifully considers the ghosts that haunt language.
A rich, thoughtful collection that generously breathes life into its ancient subject: very fine.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5245-2694-8
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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