Perceptive and honest, Newton manages to be profound without being abstruse. Though stylistically unremarkable, this is...
Short, free verse poems on the psychological and sociological complexities of life in London.
Wendell Berry once suggested, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” In this tightly focused collection, Newton (Tales out of School, 2009, etc.) seeks to demonstrate the difficulty of knowing either half of that conditional. With a nod to Dickens’ famous opening, Newton launches his tour of self and city with dichotomous uncertainty: “London is old and new, good/bad, / great and small…/ It is rich and poor, work/play, dull and / vivid.” Later, he suggests that “LA is the city of angels, Paris the city of light; / London is toy town, with puppet rulers/ raggedy / dolls/tin soldiers / upon painted sets…set in / motion by clockwork make-believe; it is magical / and comical, silly and daring.” Like Bukowski, whose influence is unmistakable, Newton is most interested in the social divides and tensions that define the city, with a clear sympathy for the ordinary, workaday resident. London is a place where the “Princess waved/smiled/gestured” at a narrator taking a walk and is the place “where cats and / such can look upon a queen,” but it’s also the place where narrators stumble across absurdly petulant and oblivious royal correspondence, where the social pressures weigh so heavily that those who fail are apt to fall “thru the modern world to a stone- / age period in full view of everyone” and where death is “shocking, raw and / untold.” Despite London’s many charms and majesties, Newton resists the allure of topographical verse. London is too perilous: “The taxis— / a heavy black mass running / across my paths, across all / the ways of my days. / Quiet and ugly, ugly and / dangerous; tearing past my / shins as I slip past.” It’s also confusing, as the traveler looking for Talbot Gardens finds when a local points him to Talbot Court, Talbot Road, Talbot Avenue and Talbot Crescent before admitting, “Sorry, can’t help anymore.” At least for those readers confused by all the specific references, Newton provides an arbitrary, but helpful, set of notes.
Perceptive and honest, Newton manages to be profound without being abstruse. Though stylistically unremarkable, this is clear-voiced and self-aware poetry that any city dweller will appreciate.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1907140044
Page Count: 88
Publisher: emp3books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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