Moving verse that reaches for the stars.
When Duckhorn (Flapping Soul, Words in Verse, 2013, etc.) looks up at the night sky, she sees angels and aliens; she tries to pull both down from the heavens in this poetry collection.
In the last moments of Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the astronaut David Bowman, floating far from Earth, gets one last message off to Mission Control: “Oh my God—it’s full of stars,” he famously intones before breaking off. Dave’s quote is enigmatic. Is he seeing God? An alien life form? Both? Whatever the case may be, 2001 is one of the most famous artworks in which religion and sci-fi collide—in which humans’ fascination with God and their attraction to the stars mingle and merge. Duckhorn’s new book features a similar mingling, and it is clear that in her work, space and heaven might be one and the same. In an early poem, “Ode to Orion’s Belt,” reflections on the constellation give way to thoughts about the deity: “Beckoning home to our ancestors / Shedding down life, if you will / Beckoning connect these dots / They were poured out in the Big Bang’s spill. / Don’t forget the ultimate monumental God / The God that improves all finds.” Then later on, in “Shreds of Evidence,” “galaxies swirl[ing] in spindles” become “meditation[s] of the God / Who put one universe on his shelf.” Clearly, the poet loves big thoughts, but it is to her credit that her own meditations seldom float off into the ether. She writes grounded, substantial poetry that both provokes and inspires. If there is any weakness in this truly original collection, it is the poet’s diction, which is occasionally nonstandard—and sometimes just head-scratching. One poem opens “Out of the darkness of the watchful night / Arrive the perpetrators of delight.” One may perpetrate a crime—but seldom a “delight.” Another begins “In the spew of the big bang / Space became / All inhabitants of the heavens / Had roots that grace blamed.” “Spew” is not a noun—at least not formally—and its connotation as vomit seems ill-suited for her lofty themes.
Moving verse that reaches for the stars.Pub Date: May 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5245-0346-8
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
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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