A strong collection of insightful narrative poems.
These collected poems explore memory, regret, and missed connections.
Along with being a bioethicist, physician, and lawyer, Appel (The Amazing Mr. Morality: Stories, 2018, etc.) is also a prolific, award-winning writer of short stories, novels, essays, and plays. He now offers a collection of 43 witty, thoughtful poems, many of which were previously published in literary journals. Appel’s poetry has a narrative quality that’s appropriate for a fiction writer, telling compressed stories that often end in moments of realization or summation. In the title poem, for example, the first line provides a nutshell character sketch: “You could never put one over on my uncle.” Instances follow: “Scoured his returned change for Canadian pennies, / Steered clear of con games like synagogue / And life insurance.” The poet makes no judgment about the uncle’s cynicism or lack of mercy; he simply does the compassionate thing by visiting him when no one else will. But the uncle remains himself: “Of course, you’ve come, he says, /… / You were always a sucker.” Con artists and chumps are a recurring motif in Appel’s fiction, with tension between the morality of truth and the comfort, even the magic, of illusion. Is it wrong to be a sucker if it means a dying old man gets a visit from a family member? Other poems consider mortality and the past’s irretrievability, such as “Summer Camp Socials,” which recalls a girl who’s cheerful despite being ostracized at a dance for her bald scalp. Looking back, the speaker writes that she “stars in the revision of my life,” one in which he asks her to dance, but in his “unrevised life, she is still waiting.” The past can’t be made up for; imagination can revise, but life resists editing. Even the future is unsusceptible to change, as in “The Homely Girls,” where a kindergarten teacher predicts that the unattractive girls have only steely endurance ahead of them. Of course it’s possible for even homely girls to have fulfilling lives, but the teacher, like the uncle, is paying the price for cynicism—sourness that overtakes all perceptions.
A strong collection of insightful narrative poems.Pub Date: June 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77349-014-4
Page Count: 78
Publisher: Able Muse Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.
Heidish (A Misplaced Woman, 2016, etc.) presents an account of St. Francis of Assisi’s life, as told from his father’s perspective in poetic form.
St. Francis is known as a saint who believed in living the Gospel, gave sermons to birds, and tamed a wolf. Over the course of 84 poems, Heidish tells her own fictionalized version of the saint’s journey. In his youth, Francesco is an apprentice of his father, Pietro Bernardone, a fabric importer. The boy is a sensitive dreamer and nature lover who sees “natural holiness in every living thing.” As an adult, Francesco decides to pursue knighthood, but God warns him to “Go back, child / Serve the master.” He joins the Church of San Damiano, steals his father’s storeroom stock, and sells it to rebuild the church. His furious father chains him in the cellar, and the bishop orders Francesco to repay the debt. Afterward, father and son stop speaking to each other; Francesco becomes a healer of the sick and a proficient preacher. After failing to broker a peace agreement during wartime, Francesco falls into depression and resigns his church position. He retreats to the mountains and eventually dies; it’s only then that Pietro becomes a true follower of St. Francis: “You are the father now and I the son / learning still what it means to be a saint,” he says. Heidish’s decision to tell this story from Pietro’s perspective is what makes this oft-told legend seem fresh again. She uses superb similes and metaphors; for example, at different points, she writes that St. Francis had eyes like “lit wicks” and a spirit that “shone like a clean copper pot.” In another instance, she describes the Church of San Damiano as a place in which “walls crumbled / like stale dry bread.” Following the poems, the author also offers a thorough and engaging historical summary of the real life of St. Francis, which only adds further context and depth to the tale.
An emotional, captivating Christian story in verse.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9905262-1-6
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Dolan & Associates
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.
A debut volume of poetry explores love and war.
Divided into four sections, Osaki’s book covers vast emotional territories. Section 1, entitled “Walking Back the Cat,” is a reflection on youthful relationships both familial and romantic. “Dying Arts,” the second part, is an examination of war and its brutal consequences. But sections three and four, named “Tradecraft” and “Best Evidence” respectively, do not appear to group poems by theme. The collection opens with “My Father Holding Squash,” one of Osaki’s strongest poems. It introduces the poet’s preoccupation with ephemera—particularly old photographs and letters. Here he describes a photo that is “several years old” of his father in his garden. Osaki muses that an invisible caption reads: “Look at this, you poetry-writing / jackass. Not everything I raise is useless!” The squash is described as “bearable fruit,” wryly hinting that the poet son is considered somewhat less bearable in his father’s eyes. Again, in the poem “Photograph,” Osaki is at his best, sensuously describing a shot of a young woman and the fleeting nature of that moment spent with her: “I know only that I was with her / in a room years ago, and that the sun filtering / into that room faded instantly upon striking the floor.” Wistful nostalgia gives way to violence in “Dying Arts.” Poems such as “Preserve” present a battleground dystopia: “Upturned graves and craters / to swim in when it rains. / Small children shake skulls / like rattles, while older ones carve rifles / out of bone.” Meanwhile, “Silver Star” considers the act of escorting the coffin of a dead soldier home, and “Gun Song” ruminates on owning a weapon to protect against home invasion. The language is more jagged here but powerfully unsettling nonetheless. The collection boasts a range of promising poetic voices, but they do not speak to one another, a common pitfall found in debuts. “Walking Back the Cat” is outstanding in its refined attention to detail; the sections following it read as though they have been produced by two or more other poets. Nevertheless, this is thoughtful, timely writing that demands further attention.
A poignant collection by a talented poet still in search of one defining voice.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984198-32-7
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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