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ALMA MATER

VOL. 1: THE MIDWEST

A thoroughly unique poetry project.

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An unlikely but engaging poetic tour of Midwestern colleges and universities.

If your best years were the ones you spent at the University of Wisconsin, Ferris State or Purdue, you’ll love Aidoo’s love letter to college life in the middle of the United States, where campus activity fuels the civic scene in a way that it doesn’t on the coasts. In this collection, he devotes one poem to each of 100 institutions of higher learning from several different states. Some of them readers will know: Ohio State, Notre Dame; some they probably won’t, such as Emporia State University in Kansas, but each one gets a voice. Readers familiar with these stomping grounds will get more out of his frequent references to regional landmarks, such as Milwaukee’s Bradley Center; the “M” on the Diag in Ann Arbor, Michigan; or Shakespeare’s Pub in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The local color shows that the author has done his research, but this collection is adventurous not only in its content, but also in its style, as Aidoo experiments with a variety of delightfully unexpected poetic forms. His paean to Eastern Michigan University opens with the energy of a stadium cheer: “SWOOP DOWN! / SWOOP DOWN!” “Ball State” plays cleverly with the monosyllables in that university’s name: “We Party Hard— / This Ball State.  / Ball Hard— / Party Late.” The Northwestern University poem features some playful appropriation of found verse, artfully taken from “the Rock,” on which students spray-paint slogans. Only occasionally does the poetry lapse into language that sounds like it’s cut and pasted from a university admissions pamphlet; for example, while singing the glories of the University of Illinois-Chicago, the author writes, “Our oncologists excel in cell research, / We nurse professionals in physics and pharmacy, / UIC leads Illinois in the health care birch, / A Medical Museum of the Science Industry.” Readers may not nominate Aidoo for a Pulitzer, but they may want to check out UIC’s microbiology program.

A thoroughly unique poetry project.

Pub Date: March 3, 2014

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 229

Publisher: Real Print for Real People

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014

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MY SON, SAINT FRANCIS

A STORY IN POETRY

An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.

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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

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BEST EVIDENCE

POEMS

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

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