Three poetic movements, each one valuable and affecting.
A poet bares his soul and eases his troubled mind in this debut collection of verse.
There’s a lot going on in Guest’s volume of poetry, and that’s a good thing. His book is divided into three movements that might roughly be described as the confessional, the observational, and the romantic. The first section, titled “Shards of Truth,” is the rawest, most honest. It features the poem “Plight,” whose opening lines could serve as an epigraph for the movement as a whole: “Words and ideas came to me / in a deafening multitude that could / have frightened the most abhorrent / behemoth you could have conjured up.” The poet’s muse here might be William S. Burroughs, who is similarly blunt and graphic in his explorations of his own mindscape. The second, mellower section is “Portal to the Soul.” For Cicero, the portal to the soul is the eyes, and this movement features many poems highlighting Guest’s visual connection to the world. Often, the author’s eyes fall on wildlife, producing works like “Scurrying”: “A pair of squirrels scurry up a tall tree noiselessly. / The merry couple jump off the branches to / Frolic along the wooden fences under the warm bower.” The poet clearly pays attention to details, and in this piece and elsewhere, he asks us to look with him at the wonders of nature. The final movement is “Love and What Comes Easier.” This is Guest at his most conventional, writing on relationships and romance. A representative poem from this movement is “Radiant Lips, Radiant Hips”: “Your radiant lips / mouth the words to a song / as you sway your hips. / The rhapsody is where you belong.” The great strength of this deeply personal collection is the fact that these three movements are both so distinct and so clearly defined. From them, readers learn that Guest is a poet with real range, and he has the ability to write well in a variety of discrete styles.
Three poetic movements, each one valuable and affecting.Pub Date: April 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71750-889-8
Page Count: 72
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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
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