An uneven but consistently intriguing collection.
Former attorney Cabado collects a lifetime of writing in this debut volume of poetry and drama.
The Filipino author, a lifelong writer of poetry and plays, saw most of his work destroyed in a 1989 fire. He went about searching for old drafts and copies in a recovery attempt, but the bulk of those papers were carried away in a 2008 typhoon. “What the fire didn’t devour,” he recalls in his introduction, “the flood washed away or buried in mud.” This book represents nearly all the material that’s left, covering some five decades of work, including Cabado’s first adolescent efforts; poems he wrote during four years as a political prisoner of former President Ferdinand Marcos’ regime; verses written as a free man, lawyer, and civil servant; and finally, late works, composed during retirement. The early writing possess an earnest frivolity, as in the playful “Seascape” (“seas / licking / sands / laughing / splashing stones / loving / living”). The prison poems ruminate on the nature of confinement and the loss of hope, as in “Liberation”: “Like a seed in a fruit / that has dropped from the tree / my freedom caresses its grave.” Other poems cover a range of topics, including skyscraper workers, marketplace observations, historical commentary, and the many dimensions of love. The play—his first of eight that he wrote, and one of only two that survives—is Orphans and Orchids, written during a 1975 house arrest. It tells of three women—a mother and her two adult daughters—who share a room in what appears to be a hospital. Soon, they must contend with a fourth, unwanted roommate. Cabado’s poetry is varied, encompassing both short lyrics and lengthy narratives. The longer (and later) efforts tend to be the strongest ones, offering readers frenzies of sound and imagery, as in “Meditations on an Earthen Ashtray”: “I will undin the night / with my insucked scream! / Perchance I’ll dream / of the delicate tinkling treble / of beaded beasts and Buddha bells, / bedouins charging muted hoofs / through the desert sand under the limpid light / of long-dead stars.” The verses are a bit mannered, however, and will likely appeal most to readers with romantic tastes. The three-act play is polished but somewhat hard to grasp; Cabado mentions that he was legally unable to speak about his imprisonment at the time of its composition, so it’s plagued by a certain vagueness in its language: “THERESA. (After a while, distant) When the rain stops, everything becomes noisy. All of a sudden. Like. . . guilt. . . after the tears. . . . / (Pause.) / LILY. The stars are beyond guilt. / THERESA. (Distant) And the rain never bothers the stars. / LILY. (Distant) And the rain never bothers the stars.” Still, the collection provides a lot for its readers to chew on, and many of them will be happy that some of Cabado’s work has made it permanently into print.
An uneven but consistently intriguing collection.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-67404-200-8
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
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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