Masterful poems from a seasoned writer.
Rewak’s (The Right Taxi, 2012) latest collection showcases the work of a skilled poet near the peak of his powers.
The poet, a Jesuit priest, spent years as a university president, and readers could create a classics course by tracking down all the allusions in his exquisite verse. All the greats are here—Shakespeare, Blake, Sophocles, Wordsworth—filling and animating Rewak’s balanced lines. He also pays homage to more recent luminaries: A tribute to the late, great Ansel Adams, for example, praises the photographer’s ability to match weight with airiness: “All those mountains / with the tonnage of centuries / suddenly leap / in magic / how you’ve subverted / gravity to show us / the lightness of creation.” Rewak successfully conveys a similar tension in his own poetry. While he addresses subjects that are, by turns, serious and light, his gravitas is never ponderous, and his levity never lacks substance. On one page, he meditates on the old myth that Jesus crafted his own cross using the carpentry skills he learned from Joseph: “the home he built / stands on Golgotha / you could not know / how he would use / your gift.” Switching gears just a handful of pages later, the poet wonders at the meter an ant would use if he talked in verse: “He spoke, / at first, in accents Chaucerian—I sensed / a primordial de-bump…but then / changed to the chittering of a pious Pound.” Only a talented writer can pull off such radical shifts in topic and tone, and Rewak does it all in free verse that never devolves into the lazier cant of lesser stylists. Best of all, his poetry rewards rereading, as images that at first seem merely clever have a depth that only reveals itself the second or third time around. In a touching meditation on Psalm 46, he asks, “Forgive me, Lord, for being mundane.” A funny request, since Rewak never is.
Masterful poems from a seasoned writer.Pub Date: March 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495382161
Page Count: 126
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Tender yet jarring, cerebral yet visceral.
Rich, compelling lyric poetry that bores beneath the decorum of civilization, revealing the elementally human beneath.
Few writers are able to use juxtaposition and irony as frequently and consistently and with still-startling results as Johnson does in this penetrating debut. Like his most obvious, almost overshadowing, influence, James Dickey, Johnson accomplishes this through meticulously rendered detail, a knack for subjecting his characters to psychologically trying situations and an evocative sensuality that usually prefigures loss. Most of his major themes and techniques appear in the opening poem, in which the child narrator describes with disarmingly counterintuitive, yet accurate, metaphors the inexorable rise of floodwaters: “a puddle that grew wide on the kitchen floor then / covered it, absorbing the hall and climbing, / as an old man would, or a toddler, the steps.” Beset by diluvial apocalypse and the ceaseless cacophony of “the yipping, frantic dog,” Mamma frets instead over social obligation: “My god, Gardiner, the violin. We left Phoebe’s violin. / You have to go get it, Gardiner. It’s a rental.” Under such pressures, the father reacts instinctually and violently, “raising the window, / the dog struggling in his hands, squeaking and gnashing at him” before “flinging the dog out”—a shockingly vicious move that nevertheless re-establishes calmness. Most of the remaining poems play on variations of these same themes, whether the context is a pas de deux between a rattlesnake and the startled hunter who decapitates him, then weeps, or the young spectator who can’t bear to watch the eroticized sawing-in-half of the magician’s assistant. Whoever they are—man, woman, child, Shakespearean character or Audubon’s gifted but overlooked assistant—Johnson’s narrators are insightful, quietly desperate, honest and driven by wild appetites. For instance, in an appealing panegyric to cigarettes, one narrator concludes, “I’m no more addicted than a word to its meaning. / Saying you’re addicted makes it sound like / you don’t want one. / But I do. / I want every one. / Every one I can get.” Johnson’s poems always sound as if they’re telling the truths that we can’t usually bring ourselves to admit. Ultimately, it is both high praise and mild criticism to note how strong the Dickey influence is here, for in the best of these poems, Johnson rises to such heights, but his own distinct voice never fully emerges. Even so, this is one debut not to be missed.
Tender yet jarring, cerebral yet visceral.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1936482573
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Antrim House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A down-to-earth collection of poems and translations on subjects that cover literary terrain ranging from Vermont to ancient...
A book of the author’s original verse along with his translations of works by Horace and three French Renaissance poets.
As the title implies, this debut collection has two sections. The first, “Vermont, Oregon and Elsewhere: Selected Poems,” consists of poems the author wrote mainly in the last three decades of the 20th century. These poems tend to describe simple pleasures in clear language and concrete images, such as a reference to “olive-fat mosquitoes,” a well-turned phrase in “Mediterranean.” Other works in the first part of the book have titles that suggest their subjects, including “Night Spider,” “Moon,” “Vermont Sun” and “Oregon Rain.” In this section, Malamud occasionally experiments with free verse but more often uses traditional rhyme schemes, as in “Corvallis, 1957,” which deals with a cherished childhood memory of dusk spent in good company: “With unbound energy and breath, I race / laughing and screaming, braking in the dirt — / my friend, a blurred old bike and pale face — / the night air rippling in my cotton shirt.” The narrator of the poem, basking in the exhilarating freedom of youth, then heads home, “happiness pinned like medals to my chest.” The second part of the collection, “Ten From Horace, Three From The French,” has the author’s translations of some of the ancient Roman poet’s odes and of one work from each of three writers of the French Renaissance. This part of the book begins by mentioning some of the challenges of translating poetry, such as whether or not to preserve meter and rhyme, and explaining how the author dealt with them. It then offers a brief introduction to Horace and his times, written in a conversational style: “Much of his poetry consists of criticism of luxury and poor taste, and he is given to reminding wealthy friends in verse, that they are going to die soon. Yet, his satire has a laid-back, jovial quality.” Modern readers may especially relate to an ode that urges people to seize the day because they do not know what the future holds. Similarly, the author’s translation of Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye’s poem “Déja, venant hérissonné” conveys the universal uneasiness that often accompanies the approach of winter.
A down-to-earth collection of poems and translations on subjects that cover literary terrain ranging from Vermont to ancient Rome.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490946443
Page Count: 76
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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