Al-Yagout takes readers on a spiritual journey that will challenge and inspire.
This mystical poetry aims not merely to entertain or educate, but to enlighten. Al-Yagout (This is an imprint, 2014), in her most recent volume, writes often exquisite stanzas crafted to nudge readers awake. The first section is simply called “Awakening”; the second, “Dark Night of the Soul,” borrows its title from the 16th-century mystic John of the Cross; the last is fittingly titled “The Divine.” A poem from this final section offers perhaps the clearest understanding of Al-Yagout’s goal: “that something behind everything where / nothing makes sense and anything goes; / no mother nature nor angelic intercessors, / just You, transcending it all.” This You, this “something behind everything,” is unmediated experience, true reality, which the “Awake” poet distinguishes from the “Game of Pretending” mentioned in the collection’s title. “Pretending,” on the other hand, involves the shallow pleasures of the world, the “chauffeur-driven Bentleys / basking in their competitive streaks like circus / freaks strolling in overpriced farmers’ markets / dressed to the city-nines breaking hearts and / bank accounts taking pride in the materialistic / misogynistic.” Against all this superfluous fakery—which Al-Yagout effectively evokes with such breathless lather—the poet tells her reader: “You choose Love.” Throughout her volume, Al-Yagout animates this battle between the real and the shallow with energy and aplomb. She only occasionally falters, and she is most likely to do so when her abstract language lists into obscurity, as in “Forcefully without force”: “The warrior within you is not you / It is just the part of you / that will bring the rest of / you out of you.” But that near-nonsense is just one of a few small slips in an otherwise powerful collection.
Moving, illuminating verse.Pub Date: July 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6993-0
Page Count: 88
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A debut multigenre collection of short pieces presents vignettes focusing on the lives of African Americans from a variety of perspectives, both real and fanciful.
This eclectic anthology begins with an autobiographical sketch, “P Is for Pride and Perseverance,” in which King traces his early years from his 1979 birth to a 16-year-old mother to his incarceration for attempted robbery and his subsequent determination to do something positive with his life. “Baby Girl” reprises the story of King’s birth from his mother’s point of view, a girl whose teen pregnancy seems predestined by both her grandmother’s clairvoyant dreams and her own limited expectations. Other narratives are linked by shared characters, such as “Posse Up, Ladies First!” and “Thug Angel,” which provide somewhat idealized portraits of street gangs as building blocks of the black community. “Battle Kats” is an SF work about a group of humanoid felines from another planet who work undercover to defend Earth and its alien allies. The central section of the book is occupied by a collection of 21 poems. Some, like “Hold on to Love” and “Away From Home,” focus on romance while others, such as “The Rent Is Too Damn High!” and “Blockstars,” illuminate the experiences of working-class African Americans in inner-city neighborhoods. “Remember Me?” calls up the spirit of LaTasha Harlins, a young black woman shot by a Los Angeles shop owner in the early ’90s, speculating “I wonder what you could have been LaTasha?” King’s efforts to describe his personal struggles and the vibrant characters who populate impoverished black communities are ambitious and dynamic. His prose narratives are too short to feel really complete, but they deliver glimpses into a world mainly familiar to the urban poor, where drug dealing is one of the few available career choices, incarceration is a rite of passage, and street gangs view themselves as community leaders. While the author does have a tendency to romanticize life on the street, as in “Posse Up,” in which a girl gang maintains a strict “code of principles,” his writing presents a vision of what could happen if people worked to “play a part in the improvement of the community.”
A volume of poetry and prose that offers heroic visions of urban African Americans.Pub Date: March 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4568-8093-4
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Davis recounts the confounding pressures of his 1990s childhood in this debut memoir-in-verse.
When telling the story of your life, one might as well start at the very beginning. That’s exactly what the author does in this memoir, which he describes as “a thing like a very long lie to yourself.” Specifically, he tells of how “The White-Gloved Sheriff / kicked in the door / and / Pulled me” from his mother (whom he calls his “Supervisor”; he later calls her “the Computer Science Major,” “the Waitress,” and other occupational names). Unusually, he had horns and a lot of hair at birth, he says. He was immediately at odds with the people and other living things around him—his parents, his brothers, his family dog. As a toddler, he created an imaginary world for himself known as “FU,” which was “Filled with things that looked like me / And where things made sense / I was King.” His earliest years were characterized by horrible discoveries (school work, isolation, crushes, problems in his parents’ marriage), but his teen years proved to be an even greater series of highs and lows, involving confusion over geopolitical events, friends, computers, pornography, and marijuana. Like a novice who can’t quite figure out the rules of a game, Davis bumbles forward—all horns and fur and misunderstanding—inadvertently angering authority figures as he seeks an adequate method of self-expression. The poem is composed in short, direct lines, enjambed to emphasize particular words or phrases rather than establish a consistent overall rhythm. Davis’ idiolect is inventive in its names for things (siblings are “life partners,” pets are “prisoners,” teachers are “Part-Time Supervisors,” and so on), and his outsider’s observations of society are shrewd and often funny. However, the combination of snark and self-seriousness causes some poems to come off as petulant and cloying; as a result, it’s difficult to imagine anyone over the age of 22 finding the work emotionally affecting. Even so, the tone and style, coupled with debut artist Klimov’s truly engaging black-and-white illustrations should captivate readers of a certain anarchic mindset.
A nihilistic poetic remembrance that will appeal most to older teens and 20-somethings.Pub Date: May 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71806-449-2
Page Count: 143
Publisher: Nada Blank Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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