Unalloyed energy from a fresh voice.
El is a brash, kinetic prophet for a new age, and his poetry is his message.
“I never knew I was a poet,” writes El early on in his new collection. And that’s a good thing, because the fledgling author fills his verse with a raw power that one seldom finds in the works of tamer, more refined poets. His words fire up off the page, and if they sometimes feel ragged and uncut, we’ll happily take the raggedness along with all the heat and light he sends our way. Also unlike stuffier authors, El is unwilling to sit on the dusty shelves of high culture; he has a delightfully omnivorous poetic appetite, and he’ll as easily shoot off a verse about Art Basel—Miami’s ultrachic contemporary art showcase—as he will lines about cable queen Kourtney Kardashian—“Hair blowing / eyes glowing / long lashes / red lips / pale skin / black dress / nice aura / nice hips / I sleep with you ever night / Is that considered cheating?” It’s about time the oldest Kardashian got some love. But El spends less ink on pop-culture princesses than he does on more serious subjects, most notably the search for religious truth. Here, too, he is comprehensive in his exploration: “I studied Jesus, Allah, and Yah… / Maat and Ra…Yahweh and Jah / The sun, the moon, the ocean and star.” But if others decide they must pick one of these spiritual options, El instead selects all of the above; in a poem called “The Boddhisattva,” he writes, “I’m the alchemist, the seeker… / The prophet, / the Buddha, / the avatar, / the teacher.” As is perhaps obvious from his divinely inspired nom de plume, El will take religious answers where he can get them. Yet there is one truth that he lifts above all others—the notion that God isn’t above us but inside us. He crystallizes this insight in his poem “Thoughts …”: “If you think you are god?? / Then God you will be!” The idea that we are gods is powerful and provocative, and El’s only mistake is reminding us of it once too often. Yet he’ll have a chance to hone his language in future work: “This shit ain’t over … / Until they cover me with dirt.”
Unalloyed energy from a fresh voice.Pub Date: June 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496915788
Page Count: 138
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
