A gay man finds spiritual exaltation in the realm of the senses in this debut poem.
The narrator of this pilgrimage in verse starts out in the barren shallows of the hookup scene vetting potential partners on their most superficial iPhone traits: “Grindr sounds / Hi / Too thin / Send saved phrase / Sorry, you’re not quite my type / Grindr sounds / Hi / Too short / Sorry, you’re not quite my type.” Tiring of the daily Grindr, he repairs to a Christian retreat (despite his being a Hindu). Ensconced in a Spartan room with an icon, candle, rug, and no mirror to feed his narcissism, he embarks on a bout of contemplation fueled not by the artificial stimulation of screens but by unmediated encounters with raw sensations as simple as chewing a bread roll. (“Crisp outside, soft inside….One small seed / Stuck in my molar / Like a small animal / Hidden in its cave.”) He also comes upon the form of a young man who merges with the figure of Jesus in the poet’s imagination. The poet’s blossoming relationship with Jesus is imbued with devotion (“Can I love him with all my heart…And with all my mind?”) but is also frankly sexual—“I sense him here,” he writes after a masturbatory shower scene; “He will come to bed with me / If I want.” And whimsically romantic: “Come, let’s have breakfast, Jesus….Come, let’s eat a chocolate, Jesus.” Kolmannskog’s delicately erotic poem is drenched in Christian symbolism (“I take off my shirt / I dry his feet with it / I find some fragrant oil / I massage his feet”) but also partakes of earthier and more piquant imagery, likening the memory of love, for example, to a mosquito bite. Some readers may be taken aback by the embrace of Jesus as a personal boyfriend, but the physicality adds intensity to the poem’s soulfulness.
A lyrical study of passion, both religious and carnal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Mohini Books AS
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Merging geographic precision with detailed lyricism, Berry’s collection of poetry spans continents and states of the soul.
The best poetry focused on a particular locale tends to evoke sensory stimulation as much as meaning, and Berry’s collection of nearly 60 poems is no different. Born in England, the author has travelled widely throughout Africa and the United States. With a doctorate in geography, she casts a discriminating, discerning eye on the landscapes to which her travels have taken her. In unrhymed, compact poems—few more than a page in length—the poet speaks with seriousness about the relationship between the natural world and one’s inner world. In “Music of Place,” she writes: “Carried in the wind is the music of place, blown / like washing on a line, white sheets flapping, sending / large billowing folds of sound back to me,” which typifies her ability to translate a place into a finely detailed, highly specific moment in her past or present. Some poems set in North Africa elevate journallike jottings into sharply etched experiences. The dominant moods suffusing these poems are calm and meditational, perhaps reflecting the influence of poet Elizabeth Bishop, who was also attuned to inner and outer geographies. The final 20 poems shift focus from geography and place to reconciliations or frictions with family members; many relatives have passed on but are vibrantly alive in the author’s memory. These family sketches often turn on a particularly poignant phrase spoken to the author by a parent or loved one: “Windows” pivots on Berry’s father’s comment, “I could drive if I wanted to,” as the author notes that her father never owned a car. Few books of recent poetry reveal such a penetrating awareness of how the environments in which we live affect us as much as we affect them. An extraordinary, nuanced collection by a gifted poet.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1935514749
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Plain View
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Engaging lyric poetry that manages to be sensual and cerebral, fun and profound.
Readers willing to dig deeper than the work of poets Derek Walcott, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph will find that exciting new worlds of Caribbean poetry await. Although some lesser-known Caribbean writers tend to get bogged down in the exotic fecundity of their island landscapes, others write with a grace and steadiness that highlights personal experience within the larger context of culture and environment to reveal something universal. Trinidadian novelist, painter and poet Drayton (The Crystal Bird, 2012, etc.) most decidedly falls into the latter category. Her personal poems often focus on singular moments in her past, yet her evocation of the slippage between past and present, of how we manage to exist in both times simultaneously, speaks directly to readers. The exploration of how “time…magically overlaps generations” pervades this collection. Her narrators are buffeted by nostalgia but are never fatalistic or cloying; instead, they treasure the past and the present as a single fabric of interwoven threads. One narrator, for instance, revisits a memorable beach and finds that the “scenery I knew has all but gone, / except for the sea. / Longing and waiting, I dream of the days / that never can be again. / The sea waits while I dream a dream / where I stand on the balcony of this precious day.” Drayton invests symbols with a similar complexity; the titular brown dove, for instance, is at once a symbol of maternal devotion, sexual allure, rebellion and quiet endurance, and is rife with gender and racial resonances. Occasionally, her more contemplative poems suffer from excess erudition, and she is sometimes prone to distracting alliteration, but she also delivers unmatched similes such as, “The morning stormed my day / like a drunken party crasher / with streams of gold and white ribbons / coming through the window.”
Wise, kind and lively verse that truly “dances to a tune that’s / gloriously redeeming / of anger, hate, and envy. / It’s an awesome authority / with boundless energy.”Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478160045
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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