Spare, compact poems with rich allusiveness.
A set of poems that often pay homage to other poets in their explorations of love, memory, spirituality, and desire.
In his latest collection, Bussan (A Rage of Intelligence, 2013, etc.) shows his engagement with Robert Creeley’s work in terms of that poet’s compressed style, enjambment, and playfulness with word order. As in Creeley’s 1979 collection Later, Bussan emphasizes themes of time and memory. Bussan’s opening, titular poem speaks of “A new labor, not / entailing sweat nor death.” This appears to refer to Creeley’s work “Heroes,” in which the speaker quotes the Cumaean Sibyl’s reply when Virgil’s Aeneas asks about visiting his father in the underworld: “hoc opus, hic labor est” (“this is the task, this is the hard work”)—getting there is easy, the poet seems to say, but returning is difficult. Creeley’s poem continues: “That was the Cumaean Sibyl speaking. / This is Robert Creeley,” concluding that “death also / can still propose the old labors.” Here, Bussan proposes a “new labor” that has nothing to do with sweaty hard work (per the Sibyl) or with death (per Creeley). Just as Creeley goes beyond the Sibyl’s words, Bussan goes beyond Creeley’s, speaking for himself in this poem and in the book as a whole. It is, itself, a labor—a task he’s set for himself whose production could be said to relate to a return from an underworld. Like Creeley, Bussan employs subtle internal rhymes (“only I”; “Delphi”) and increases the poem’s impact with unusual word placement. Several other poems in the collection effectively play with word order in this way, such as “The Test,” which begins “Tired of, / before the swine, / casting pearls, I….” Bussan’s allusiveness can sometimes be confusing, however; for example, “At the Tubes of Liberty” will be a puzzling phrase for those who are unfamiliar with Pittsburgh. It’s not unusual for poets to write after a respected poet, and this book does include some examples of this. However, Bussan’s bolder stance is to write beyond them, as in “Beyond W.C.W,” “Beyond Robert Duncan,” and “Beyond Lew Welch.” This stance doesn’t always lead to an engaging payoff, though, as in the William Carlos Williams–referencing piece: “So much does not / depend / on fountain pens / that are / disposable / when they / are all out of / black ink.” Although this mimics the structure of Williams’ 1923 poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” it kills its engine—Williams’ insistence that something that seems insignificant requires attention and demands memory. Also, readers already know that a disposable pen is insignificant and replaceable. Similarly, “Fairmont Hotel, SF, CA” is “Inspired by Donald Hall’s ‘Gold,’ ” but it’s a much lesser piece. In other poems, however, Bussan’s compression works well, like pressure that creates diamonds; “Bonnie and Clyde” is one such jewel, reading in full: “Other than / the robbing / and the killing / and the running / and the ending, the way / it should be.”
Spare, compact poems with rich allusiveness.Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9726884-2-0
Page Count: 53
Publisher: PSB Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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