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DEAR YOU, I DARE YOU

An uneven set of simple and mostly uplifting verses.

Debut author Dixon offers a poetry collection that doubles as a self-help book.

Positive thinking, encouragement, and faith form the basis of these free-verse poems by a New York City–based poet. It begins with “A Letter to Myself,” which, along with a later pair of poems, “I Dare You to Begin” and “Start Today,” push readers to take the first steps toward their own goals. “Untitled” and “Short Letter to Pride” ask judgmental people to reconsider their behavior, in line with the golden rule. Family-focused poems explore healthy boundaries and the legacy of fatherlessness (the author is a single mother). In “Mommy, I’m Watching You,” the speaker recounts efforts to change her life in order to be a better role model for her daughter. Toxic romantic and platonic relationships take center stage in “I Dare You to Walk Away” and in “Mean Girls,” in which the speaker warns “Love is blind, / In friendships too. / We often deal with those we knew / for longer than we need to.” Simple illustrations, reflective of the content, are sprinkled among the poems and include images of pregnancy as well as empowerment symbols, such as a crown and a butterfly. Dixon’s poetry is unstructured, other than the fact that it uses stanza formatting and occasional rhymes; the most complex are a pair of haikus. Inconsistent capitalization and punctuation, as well as intermittent profanity throughout, may detract from the reading experience for some. Self-help aficionados, however, will likely be attracted to many of the author’s maxims, such as “Just because you have an excuse it / doesn’t mean you are excused” and “Solve the problem before adding another factor to the equation.” Dixon excels in the most personal and descriptive poems, such as the lusty “I Want”—the strongest work here, and one of the few in which the author uses truly original similes: “I want it boiling hot / Tonight I want to scream / As loud as the whistle / Blows on the teapot.”

An uneven set of simple and mostly uplifting verses.

Pub Date: April 17, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-73211-770-9

Page Count: 102

Publisher: Dear You

Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019

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ONCE UPON A GIRL

Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.

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Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.

The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.

Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6

Page Count: 196

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019

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Endings

POETRY AND PROSE

Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.

A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.

Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.

Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2

Page Count: 120

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016

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