Dark, enigmatic, depressive verse that’s often compelling.
Lurid imagery, squalid settings and redemptive epiphanies run riot in these vivid poems.
Morbid themes run deep in this collection, as forthrightly declared in “Poe Describing Me”: “This numbing, slow-moving self-ignorance runs through my veins. / Like embalming fluid being injected while my blood gushes into a sink.” Many of the lugubrious poems are set in the detritus of some unspecified personal or planetary apocalypse: “Back to the Future” surveys ruins where “Splinters of glass pop through each and every bare toe,” “God-given Situation” takes in another desolate tableau featuring “Maalox bottles packaged with barf bags. / An ant colony hired as full-time maids,” and “Nearly the End” imagines an eclipse that “left the world forever dark.” And ordinary life? In “Time-Bomb Rocky,” it’s a meaningless cycle of ritual niceties and ennui, of “Try[ing] not to belch out loud in front of the old lady’s mannerly kids” while “The clock still spins in invisible circles like helicopter blades” and “The determined time bomb of life leaves nothing but waste.” Relationships with the female figures that flit through the poems are evanescent or vampiric: “Tight leopard-skinned skirt. / Black sexy pumps. / Bit of a flirt. / …She’ll suck the life out of you with her deadly fangs,” promises “Her Deadly Fangs.” Yet amid all the gothic visions are a few incongruously heartfelt, even conventionally spiritual poems. In “Childless,” the prospect of adoption—“There’s no special blood for a loving child”—eases the anguish of a couple “willed by God to be without,” while “Thanksgiving” offers a prayer for “Giving our strengths to those who fear.” Donovan’s verse features lacerating metaphors that veer among lyricism, grit and the cynically prosaic, as in “Cold River”: “The bridge with moss-filled initials like a funeral home’s sign-in log.” His poems are so private—even cryptic—that it’s sometimes hard to find a way into them, but the strong imagery and the emotions they convey will linger.
Dark, enigmatic, depressive verse that’s often compelling.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2006
ISBN: 978-1419646027
Page Count: 64
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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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