Moving poetry that kindly welcomes readers in to sit down and rest awhile.
In a new debut collection, Eiden writes of poems that “move me every time,” among other subjects.
In James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room, a character muses that “perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” If Eiden’s poetry is about any one thing, it is that irrevocable condition. It’s about the old home we leave without ever quite leaving it and the new home we build out of some uneven mixture of coincidence and desire. It’s also about marriage—the unlikely effort to forge a home with another human—and about children and our hopeful wish to strengthen a home for those who come after us. The poet is originally from Ohio, and although she moved away from there more than a decade ago, it’s clear that the state remains a gravitational center with real pull for her. In “To Know the Smell of Ohio,” for example, she writes that “You don’t have to / walk in the country / just step where / the river meets mud / Unlocked leafy smell.” She remembers this smell while in her new home in New Orleans, where she’s settled with her husband and new child. That city appears to be the other pole of the ellipse of her life and the other main setting of her poetry, as in the opening lines of “Moving back to New Orleans”: “I sit on a cardboard box in another new place, my in-laws’ unspoiled / white house four days before the anniversary of Katrina / there is little blood flow in my body, I haven’t said much.” Eiden writes frank, beautiful verse about her relationship with her husband: “two people who love each other / maybe unevenly, maybe not enough / can we ever articulate where we / fit together how far we will go in / I can only go on answering yes.” And then there’s the newest resident of Eiden’s home, which she sings of softly in “To My Child, For My Parents”: “I look around my tender room and / think of all the things / I want you, my child, to know / of me, of life / poetry art kindness.” On this tour of all her homes, the poet writes with pride but without arrogance, with wit but without guile, and with grace but without unnecessary ornament.
Moving poetry that kindly welcomes readers in to sit down and rest awhile.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mississippi Sound Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
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
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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