A brutally honest and evocative account of anxiety and depression in poetry.
A collection of poetry focuses on mental health struggles.
Marín, who holds a doctorate in African American literature, found inspiration for this book’s title in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story that reminds readers that deep water and drowning are not synonymous. It is an apt metaphor for the poet, who has suffered from anxiety and depression for much of her life. In free-verse poems, she transports readers from her childhood in Málaga, Spain, to the adolescent onset of her symptoms and her challenging adulthood. She methodically unpacks the torment she experienced from the “demon in my mind,” her “tyrant” of a brain, and a “a mob of angry people yelling” in her head. She recalls being told her troubles were all in her head by a doctor whose only solution was Valium. Confessions follow regarding the “mask I wear to chameleon / my way through each day” and how a “list of mistakes I made this past year pile up in my mind like cars.” She examines the frustration of finding the right antidepressant and how she despairs at the drudgery of everyday life. She divulges the difficulties of maintaining a marriage and parenting children while experiencing mental illness. Marín boldly confronts her own and others’ emotions and behaviors. “Mom’s silence claims / its space between the ceiling, floor, / and four walls of every room, enshrouding / the house with a smothering cloak / of unanswered questions,” she writes in “Behind Walls.” Her descriptions are vivid and tactile; a compassionate teacher comforted the author with “arms like a blanket.” Marín poignantly depicts how mental illness feels in lines like “Fear kidnaps my nerves, / ties them with electric wire,” and “I’m tired of the iron ball, / stuck in my throat.” Though she does experiment with a handful of haiku, they don’t always resonate. The poet’s writing excels when it has more room to explore.
A brutally honest and evocative account of anxiety and depression in poetry.Pub Date: June 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73479-868-5
Page Count: 101
Publisher: Legacy Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A playful, eye-popping collection of poems.
A volume of visual poetry offers experiments with image and form.
Poetry is primarily a text medium, but it doesn’t have to be. “I wanted to do poetry that was inspired by other forms of literature and written in a manner where it could be seen as a piece of artwork as well,” writes Robles in her introduction. What follows are 82 pieces that do just that, making use of three visually striking poetic forms. Calligrams are poems written to take the shape of objects. “Playtime” is formatted to look like a kite, its lines enjambed into a diamond outline: “I / couldn’t / get mine / up. No matter / how hard I / pulled and tugged / on it.” Redactive poems, which feature erasures, highlight certain words or letters in found texts. For example, “The writing” is culled from a page of the novel A Wedding in Decemberby Anita Shreve: “a secret / story / lingered / impressing / i / n / to / her memory / the man / produced / her / anxiety / trailing / whiffs of / distance / between them.” There are also pieces that the author calls photographs, in which poems are written on or near objects and then shot. “Pretty Tiring” is printed on a hair comb: “You want me looking beautiful. As long as I see you before I head out. You won’t let me leave like I just got up after rolling in bed all disheveled.” Robles’ poems are free verse, their meanings related closely to their forms, as in “Deserted,” a calligram in the shape of a cupcake that tells the story of a waitress experiencing sexual harassment from a customer. The poems are plainspoken and rarely remarkable as pure text, though the author displays an economy of language and has an ear for the rhythms of normal speech. The most arresting pieces are the photographs, which feel more like contemporary art pieces combining photography, sculpture, and poetry. They are eye-catching in a pop-art way. “Bonding” is presented on the back of a glue bottle, while “Best Glove” is written on a pair of rubber gloves. The book is an undeniably fun one, and in the best pieces, the words and images come together to be more than the sum of their parts.
A playful, eye-popping collection of poems.Pub Date: April 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64314-518-1
Page Count: 102
Publisher: Authors Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An edifying and meticulous exploration of two saints.
A historical work examines the intersecting lives of two Roman Catholic saints: St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi.
St. Clare was born in Assisi in the closing years of the 12th century to a noble family distantly related on the maternal side to Constance, the wife of Henry VI, the Holy Roman emperor. From an early age, she was incorruptibly devoted to God and steadfastly prayed and fasted as expressions of her spiritual fervor. Her parents fecklessly tried to compel her to marry, but she resisted, sold off her inheritance, and used the money to rebuild the Church of Saint Damian, a project to which St. Francis was committed. In a show of remarkably painstaking research, Brady chronicles the turbulent journeys of the two saints. They were joined by their relentless religious ardor and an insistence on a life of poverty, a condition St. Francis could be “pitiless” enforcing—and a stricture that put St. Clare at loggerheads with Pope Gregory IX. In addition, the author brings to vivid life the religious and political tumult of the time—which included the Crusades—and astutely articulates the various lines of theological division. Furthermore, the book is lucidly written, a scrupulously thorough account enlivened by what Brady calls “novelistic details,” the minutiae, however imagined, that immerse readers in the drama. But the author’s tendency to interpret the miraculous elements of her subjects’ lives in narrowly scientific terms seems not only gratuitous, but also distorting. For example, she theorizes that St. Francis’ temptations by demons were likely the result of severe undernourishment: “Throughout his religious life, Francis would blame tribulations and temptations on the Devil and other evil denizens of Hell who knew how to taunt and vex him when he was most vulnerable, but his own mistreatment of himself and the ravages of semi-starvation were certainly responsible for much suffering.” This is more speculation than empirical science and doesn’t help illuminate the nature of the spiritual or existential crisis St. Francis endured; in fact, it obscures it. Nevertheless, despite the blandness of this obeisance to scientific explanations, the work as a whole is as captivating as it is rigorous.
An edifying and meticulous exploration of two saints.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73754-981-9
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Lodwin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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