A dramatic but sometimes opaque volume of poetry.
A debut collection of prose poems explores feelings of frustration and isolation.
Anxiety seems such a constant presence in the current age that it can be difficult to know whether its sources are public or personal. In this slim volume of poems, Dostroevitch shows that it may not matter. In the apocalyptic opener, “Tales Gate,” the speaker worries over his lack of agency in a quickly deteriorating world: “Wish bones left in the western sun waiting for their habits to become useful in another life, another day passes by and it feels like there’s no way out, another day passes by and we’ve run out of time.” “Ample” has a more detached, frenetic tone, full of absurdist imagery and leaps in thought: “Double-sided gillies I’m doing drugs in Rome and wearing pink pajamas to my home in El Salvador, hope I don’t get shot.” “Tribal” is a neurotic romantic poem about how afraid the poet is to be left alone, though he eventually comes to the conclusion that love is worth it: “I said to her, I choose this, I want this because I love you, I love you, I love you.” From the motivational prompts of “Nurturing” to the accusatory anguish of “Transparent” to the clipped resignation of “Incoherent,” Dostroevitch removes the context of daily life and offers poems that twitch and scream like exposed nerves. The poet’s maximalist style has a somewhat barreling quality, rolling ever onward in long, serpentine sentences and rarely letting up until the poem’s end. Though working in prose and not verse, he has not abandoned all consideration of meter and rhyme, as evident in the skillful first line of the book’s final poem, “Pretentious”: “Ferocious and unbounded by eons of travesty, longing even before the consumption of slavery, listening to the emperor discuss his negligence and hopes for a reality worth majesty and this is honestly a laughable concept.” While intriguing imagery pops up now and again, it is difficult to get any sense of the physical world in which the speaker (or speakers) exists. Everything reads as metaphor, but the metaphors don’t carry much emotional weight when the specific problems—as existential as they often seem to be—go unnamed.
A dramatic but sometimes opaque volume of poetry.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73293-080-3
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Arete Patriarch
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
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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