An accessible volume of poetry rich with vivid imagery and grounded in Buddhist and New Age thought.
In this slim collection of 47 verses, a debut poet explores everyday experiences through the lens of spirituality.
On his introductory page, Nathan includes a definition of the volume’s title, attributed to the Japanese Buddhist teacher Dogen—“The psychological process by which we break free of our habitual states of mind to discover inner peace.” At their best, the free-verse poems that follow work as prisms to fracture common occurrences into their component spiritual parts, hinting at an overall cohesiveness that the writer can imagine even if he cannot quite grasp it. Some touch on the contradictory connections of a relationship with evocative accuracy, such as “Triggers,” in which the poet protests, “you refuse to acknowledge my reasonable / objections on those never mind afternoons,” and “My Dear Doppelganger,” where he exults, “I love myself now / because together, and more than once, / we have challenged the language of self.” Other verses reveal Nathan’s grounding in Buddhism, astrology, and the tarot, always with a firm, sometimes tongue-in-cheek foundation in mundane reality, such as in “After the Dorje Shugden Empowerment,” which ends: “I focus on my compassionate wish / to alleviate your suffering and my desire / to eat a sandwich.” A handful of Nathan’s poems are transparent philosophical messages, like the four-line “Rebirth”: “I want to be drained of my self / emptied of all meaning / reinterpreted / and translated into another language.” Others are cryptic to the point of incomprehensibility, such as “Box Office Graffiti,” which includes the lines “Yet again, I need a nap. Who loves me? Snarf. Schmeg. Rerun. / Freakass. Lucky Box Office Chicken. Hello, it’s hot in here!!” But overall, the poems are genuine and compelling, blending spiritual questioning with an engaging humor and using language that is by turns down-to-earth and lushly suggestive: “I sat down naked in a remote corner of Central Park watching the / first one / of many tangerine color sunsets. I looked at my watch and became / realized.”
An accessible volume of poetry rich with vivid imagery and grounded in Buddhist and New Age thought.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-8061-6
Page Count: 70
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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