A glorious set that weaves together the ethereal, earthly, and mundane.
Bitting (Notes to the Beloved, 2017, etc.) offers a poetry collection that combines environmental, religious, and familial themes.
This lush new book of poems, which won the 2018 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast poets, invites readers into a space that’s both contemplative and visceral. From the very first work, “An Hour North of Lee Vining, California,” about fishing in the Golden State, the author’s descriptions evoke vivid, lively settings. Religious imagery also abounds, from God’s rampant destruction in the book of Genesis to the stained glass, pews, and cup of Sunday services. Some of Bitting’s lines even read like prayers: “I remember what matters. / Please don’t ever remind me again.” Motherhood emerges as a theme in the latter sections, as when Bitting’s speaker expresses awe at her offspring in “Touched”: “I don’t know how / we got so lucky / to say we know you well when / clearly you are from somewhere else.” A father-son plumbing repair sparks equal amazement at how a fitful teenager became a man who’s patient enough to unclog a sink in “sometimes i want to look away.” In “Everything Crumbling Becoming Something New,” the narrator alternately grieves and celebrates her daughter’s declaration that she wants to be a boy: “woman now man / all your multitudes I’m learning to sing you,” the poet writes. Throughout, the metaphors are masterful and fully engage all the reader’s senses; water balloons are “watered organs that want to burst” (“What the Rain Made”), female genitalia is a “vinegar cave” (“The Slaying”), and coffee is “dark fluid sun” (“After”). Bitting is a seductive writer who eases readers into the darkest depths; she’s able to open a poem in the seemingly benign setting of a high school darkroom and end it with the untimely death of a brother in Yosemite. Fans of Sharon Olds’, Margaret Atwood’s, and Louise Erdrich’s poetry will find much to admire in Bitting’s vulnerable, emotive free-verse style.
A glorious set that weaves together the ethereal, earthly, and mundane.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9848403-6-6
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Catamaran
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Poems and stories from an agile, curious mind less concerned with formal writing conventions than with self-expression and emotional connection.
Petrocelli’s (A Peddlers Son’s Travel Through the Twentieth Century, 2014) collection resists easy categorization—and he likes it that way. Part memoir, part poetic assemblage, with quotations and photographs sprinkled throughout, the result is a literate scrapbook cataloging the musings of a witty octogenarian. Petrocelli finds artistic inspiration in the transition from being the “child of my children” to communing with a “society of elders” at the StoneRidge retirement community. While writing lightheartedly about “Friendship and Love,” “That Old Brain,” and “The Poetry of Physics,” Petrocelli shares glimpses of his life, from growing up speaking “Italian in the house / English in the street” to a satire of wealth in government. In the titular section, named after a spot where the author and his friends meet and chat, he offers portraits of such people as Teeny Drakos and her “Nine decades of elegance” and Donald McCluskey, who was “Twice baked in the ovens of Yale,” where he received two degrees. They celebrate long histories and continued engagement with the world: “More than just existing, we are alive with humor and stories and romance and memories.” A few poems have a Whitmanesque quality: “When quiet calls, when I am called from the madding crowd, / I close my eyes / And look to find a stream flowing gently to the sea.” The most successful pieces ground the emotion with imagery: “a slice of lemon balanced / on the rim like a circus acrobat.” Other pieces read as more Allen Ginsberg–ian, more first-thought-best-thought than carefully crafted: “You will not kiss what you see for fear you will not get a prince / For fear…you will get…warts!” But “respected poets and accomplished writers” aren’t Petrocelli’s intended readers—they are his fellow residents, in order to repay them for their joy, inspiration, and love. For anyone beyond the “Magic Table,” this book holds accumulated wisdom, shared with humor and purpose.
Pub Date: June 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5346-3060-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With this invigorating torrent of words, the author should leave readers energized and inspired.
Amos (The Embryo of My Manhood: First Edition, 2014) offers a new collection of poetry, influenced by rap.
The line between rap and poetry has always been unclear, and lyrical masterpieces recently produced by Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Eminem have only blurred it further. In this volume of poetry, Amos plays quite productively in the space between these two art forms. In “Genocide,” he writes, “My style of teaching is similar to Tupac and other great lyricists.” But perhaps a more obvious influence is a fellow Detroiter: “My favorite rapper was Eminem,” the author adds. Eminem is relentless with his rhymes; in older songs like “Stan” and newer pieces like “Survival,” the rapper doesn’t let artificial schemes determine the number of his rhymes. He will stop when he’s good and ready. Amos is similarly (and admirably) persistent. Readers see his doggedness in poems like “Flatline”: “I can’t save you. / I wasn’t given the utensils to open society’s wound and surgically remove its / stereotypical labels. / I can, however, persuade you / To loan me your ears as I defer the repayment of the loan, and the interest / alone can make you ethically stable. / These words will aide [sic] you, if you’re able.” There’s a brilliance to this long linkage that moves from “save you” to “persuade you” to “aid you”—and then assonantly shifts to “stable” and “able.” There’s no similar thematic throughline in this book as a whole, as the author himself admits: “bear with me as I do a little sorting.” But whatever the collection lacks in polish, it makes up for in drive and thrill. Amos takes on desultory topics, from his dad’s absence in “No Fatherly Image” to sex in “The Big Bang Theory” to race and racism in “Black Privilege.” And he ends his elegant, powerful volume with arguably his best poem, “Imperfect.” That piece concludes, “And me? / I have a great family, a full stomach, an education, and an abundance of / support, / And apparently // I have the nerve to be complaining.” Amos can complain, but readers likely won’t. This is fine stuff.
With this invigorating torrent of words, the author should leave readers energized and inspired.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 68
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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