Sound and subject serve to unite most of these spiritually resonant poems.
Raben (Terracotta Smoke, 2011) ponders motherhood and beginnings in a collection rich with Christian imagery and alliteration.
Though unpunctuated, most of the free verse poems of Raben’s second collection are written in complete sentences, as demarcated by capitalization. One notable exception is “Transcending”—all one run-on sentence built around three “When I” statements, with no concluding verb. Instead, the stanzas are alternative definitions of the title. The following poem, “When I Sleep,” echoes the conditional phrasing and dreamy tone. Spiritual language infuses many of the entries, especially in the first two sections. The Virgin Mary has a recurring symbolic presence; e.g., “I was completely pure / and the shower was just a symbol / for my Madonna-like purity.” “Mother Mountain” blends creation imagery with an allusion to the Sacred Heart to suggest a feminine deity: “Her heart beats out a message for me / She has created me / out of her molten blood.” Confirmation of this mother/creator’s identity comes in “Peace to All Mothers,” which insists, oxymoronically, “She has not given birth.” Throughout, Mary functions as an emblem of both innocence and sacred maternity. Meanwhile, “He Was Waiting” imagines Jesus’ thoughts on the cross. Raben also compares saints past and present in the lines “Mother Teresa / Mary Magdalene / In between a sinner and celestial angel.” The poems in the “Something Out of Nothing” section (perhaps referencing the doctrine of creation ex nihilo) dwell on mornings—specifically, breakfast. This works well in “Creation,” where a hard-boiled egg stands in for a newly revealed world; the narrator tells us, “A little pressure and the shell slips / A perfect white oval.” However, other breakfast-themed poems, especially the comic but literal “A Lonely Pancake,” seem trivial. The collection’s middle sections, their poems composed of vague vignettes, feel less essential. Yet they are more memorable sonically, with striking, short phrases and successful alliteration like “Women / with window shades / and wings” and “Crawling out of a coffin…Cheering clusters of crowds.”
Sound and subject serve to unite most of these spiritually resonant poems.Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499051094
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An entrancing book of poetry.
Ungar’s (English/Coll. of Saint Rose; The Origin of the Milky Way, 2007, etc.) new collection may not make her immortal, but it surely establishes her as a contemporary poet of the first rank.
This poetry collection is like a bowl of fruit and cream: it’s so delicious, and it all goes down so easily, that you forget how much nutrition is there. She’s also the rare talent who can take nearly anything and make it into poetry. Everything is ore for her refinery, and she pulls inspiration from numerous and sundry sources, from the natural world to mystical Judaism to an exercise class for the elderly to a student’s essay. (The author is a writing professor.) This last source fuels “On a Student Paper Comparing Emily Dickinson to Lady Gaga,” a poem that no one should ever have tried to write—and that Ungar turns to gold. This clever piece demonstrates the author’s slow turn from skeptical distance to full acceptance of her young author’s thesis; it concludes, “Should I google Lady Gaga? / Or just give the girl an A.” This collection is full of such unlikely experiments—all of which the author pulls off with easy grace. Two poems with “Medusa” in their titles show her admirable dexterity with symbols. The first, “Call Me Medusa,” takes the snake-haired sorceress as a metaphor for the author herself: “I was a brain, eyes and hair. / If not a beauty, are you then a monster? / Some say I was beautiful, raped, punished / for it, then beheaded in a rear-view mirror. / Even cut off, my head could still turn men / to stone.” The second, a poem that gives the collection its title, compares tiny jellyfish to the same mythic figure: “Tentacles resorb, / umbrella reverts, / medusa reattaches / to the ocean floor / and grows a new / colony of polyps / that bud into / identical medusae, / bypassing death.” Thus, Medusa is human and other, dead and deathless, beautiful and terrible and strange.
An entrancing book of poetry.Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-915380-93-0
Page Count: 98
Publisher: The Word Works
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sturdy, exuberant verse.
Like the demigod from which it takes its name, Defining Atlas is a durable, uplifting volume.
A strong current of self-affirmation, self-love, and self-confidence runs through this work, and readers will come away feeling their spirits improved. We feel some of this current in the clever “Limited”; Michaels takes the titular subject and turns it on its head: “I’m new, but I’m old / Not limited beyond my means and methods / But limited because I’m special / Special beyond the heavens and everything that surrounds me / That I’m among…limited.” Elsewhere in “From the ashes…I am,” he sings a hard-won song of renewal and rebirth: “I am victory in its rawest form / I am hope that never conform / I am the will, the drive, and the truth / I am like everyone, like you.” But Michaels does not hoard specialness or victory for himself; he wants it for his reader too, and in “Wake Up!” he urges us on toward a bright future: “There’s something good here for you / Your purpose can never be defined by just one blue / Your destiny awaits you.” Underpinning Michaels’ stirring message is a strong faith in God, whose presence infuses many of the poems here: “But I always thank God for the latter / For the strength and will it takes / Shines so bright / Shines so right.” Michaels often adopts a loose scheme of rhyming couplets, and this decision leads to one of the book’s few weaknesses. Too often, the poet picks awkward or odd pairings; e.g., “And if I could become a perfect saint / I would make believers out of the ones who say they ain’t” and the “you/blue” couplet mentioned above. But such missteps are infrequent, and they don’t dim the warm light that emanates from Michaels’ fine volume.
Sturdy, exuberant verse.Pub Date: March 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5035-4785-8
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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