A triumphal work that addresses the incalculable horror of nuclear war yet offers a message of hope that redemption remains...
English-born South African author Fugard’s (Lady of Realisation, 2016) collection delivers 15 poems on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and five travel stories of Japan.
This timely and powerful book has been long in the making. The author writes that she first composed its poems in the 1970s after having a vision that showed her “with a mounting sense of horror, that huge clouds had massed in the sky….I was certain that an atomic bomb had exploded out there over the ocean.” Accompanying this sight, she says, were the voices of the dead from the Hiroshima bombing, reaching out to her across time and space. She immediately set to writing the poems, both as an outlet for her vision and as a memorial for the victims of Hiroshima. These free-verse works are difficult to read—not because they are narrowly typeset in a manner that seems reminiscent of traditional Japanese scrolls, but because of the terror of the author’s vision: they’re arresting, unrelenting, and encourage stunned contemplation. She strips her poems of superfluity and leaves the trauma and the weight of that dreadful day: “They are the dead / Who walk ahead / As Christ walked / Their religion the testimony / To the God of the mushroom cloud / Energy / The total atom.” Nevertheless, she doesn’t let her verses slip into hopeless nihilism. Her travel diaries, following the poetry, say that the attack on Hiroshima should not be held up as a cosmos-shattering event but as the consequence of beings trapped in their desires and bound to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This Buddhist view of events, Fugard asserts, opens one up to compassion, forgiveness, and healing in the face of one of the most terrible events in human history.
A triumphal work that addresses the incalculable horror of nuclear war yet offers a message of hope that redemption remains possible.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5245-3554-4
Page Count: 82
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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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