A deeply felt, hit-and-miss collection that limns the conflicts and consolations of manhood in two different and sometimes...
Military life, lost loves, and the regrets of aging inform this debut collection of poetry.
Writing separately but presenting their poems in a single volume, Pattan, an Army doctor, and Brender, who led a platoon in Iraq, explore themes of duty and sacrifice, leadership and responsibility, feminine sweetness and sacredness, loss and remorse. Pattan’s poetry has a more conventional perspective, tinged with nostalgia and sentimentality and sometimes stiff with rhetoric. Praising “A Soldier,” he writes: “In his courage we all find protection / In his bravery he grants liberty / In spontaneous guile he’s bereft / But with a bully or trickster he’s deft.” In the stentorian “Bruder’s Boys,” a beloved high school coach subjects the team to “interval sprints until the muscles would fail / Make or run drills till fear of failure did set sail.” The political complaint “American Dream” decries “a border unguarded and bursting at that seam” and hears “the Hill/Bill’ies in D.C. saying profit must die / The noise of them printing money and taking their fee / too happy to bill this to you and to me.” In “Dreaming of Maxxy,” an elegy to a dog, the poet avers unpersuasively that “I’d surely give a thousand bright tomorrows / If I could only pet you one more time.” In a softer register, Pattan frankly hymns “The Last Great Kiss”—“Me standing quaking, naked and bare / Her reposed and cool and too austere / But fully clothed in beauty’s gear”—and recalls the chaste allure of a girl in his third-grade class, “spare or knowing or slyly coy,” in “The Joyful Smile.” While sincere, the emotions in Pattan’s poems often feel too processed and distanced by literary artifice to be compelling. Brender’s poetry is more personal, psychological, and focused on specific images and moments. In the haiku “Night Watch,” he evokes “korean snow falls / the foreign night air numbs me / I bear its cold weight,” while the austere “I’ve Sore Feet” starts with a soldierly grumble, then relaxes into yearning. (“I’ve / sore feet / in this old cot / that’d / gladly / walk a bit more / to / be by / yours, ’stead of not.”) Brender’s exploration of relationships ranges from the jaunty “Text Message,” which celebrates “subtle words / simple texts / flirty thoughts / wide-eyed sex” to the complex breakup poem “I Would that I Were Dreamt,” which plays on giddy inversions of desire as the jilted poet looks for his former lover: “I would that I were sought / instead of seeking / so each turned head might / hide my looked-for face / or that its ghost would steal your / breath with each unexpected phone call.” Deep sorrow erupts in “Fathers,” a rueful meditation on the price that “unrelenting life” exacts on adulthood, bewailing “my sin, it’s as black as night / it blots out the shining sun.” Brender’s poems are concise and simple in form, though not always in content; at their best, they explore masculine themes with an uncommon immediacy and freshness.
A deeply felt, hit-and-miss collection that limns the conflicts and consolations of manhood in two different and sometimes clashing poetic styles.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-4069-9
Page Count: 126
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2017
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
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