A powerful, picturesque take on rural life from an authoritative new voice.
Custer presents a luminescent poetry debut set in a Midwestern landscape.
Over the course of 61 poems, the Indiana-based poet envelops readers in free verse that evokes images of farms, barns, cornfields, and livestock. They exist in a place where residents “drink whiskey / and say crick,” compost smells like death, a local possum gets nicknamed George Jones, and women knead dough at kitchen windows. This rustic setting, described delicately, is Custer’s turf, and she infuses her homeland with awe-inspiring expansiveness in lines such as “whisper good farmland / yawning before you like a parable” and “tonight it’s all moonscape / and drought-starved grass.” The author doesn’t ignore the sinister and sorrowful sides of people and nature, however, as she describes a gutted yearling (“dead eyes wide, front hooves scraping / the slatted floor”), the weather (“a repetition of lies”), and a man “standing / like a lament.” Along with these visceral details of people and places, she also delves within, seeking a spiritual source: “God / is in the monotony we might worship / if we could just learn to sit still.” In her desire to make prayer just as tangible as the worms a speaker digs up from the ground, she writes, “I want to find prayer in a hole in the dirt, in the emptiness of a / moment somewhere, I want to hold it again, if fearfully.” Poems such as “Colossus” and “Dope Sick Monday” veer into sociopolitical territory and briefly threaten to interrupt the collection’s dreamy progression. Overall, though, Custer’s poetry proves sparse but fierce; tender in its portraiture (such as a speaker’s sister “pretend-napping naked in the hay”) but brutally blunt when it has to be: “you fucked me for thirty-eight minutes / the exact length / of history’s shortest war.” The depictions of Middle America will resonate with those who’ve experienced that landscape firsthand and also appeal to those just vicariously passing through. It’s a journey that readers won’t soon forget.
A powerful, picturesque take on rural life from an authoritative new voice.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944355-36-4
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Five Oaks Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
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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