Assorted short fiction deftly united by an insightful theme of kinship.
A collection delivers poems and stories about family, both heartfelt and humorous.
In “Day of the Butterflies,” Fidel Lenin “Lenny” Medina is living in a seaside Caribbean village with his infant daughter, Laureano. He’s still coming to terms with wife Nedra’s fatal drowning less than a year ago. But Lenny also struggles with the rumor that Nedra, soon after giving birth to Laureano, was so depressed she committed suicide. Many of the collection’s offerings involve family, like “Getting Even,” in which Dilly helps his big brother, Wayne, get revenge against the movie producer responsible for his recent incarceration. The stories are profound and, even when trekking somber terrain, generally optimistic. For example, in the concluding “Dark Matters,” Buck Walters’ tape-recorded history of his life is occasionally grim, such as a very young Buck witnessing a burned corpse. But interspersed throughout his personal tale are recollections of his wife, Mary, including their meet-cute. Viles’ (The Sasquatch Murder, 2017) poems are also familial, with titles such as “When Father Hit Mother” and “To My Children, Six and Four.” The poems are furthermore displays of the author’s indelible imagery, as in “Ice Storm (Apology to Robert Frost)”: “Trees morphed into upside-down chandeliers / along a slippery, shiny Christmas landscape.” But Viles has a knack for comedy as well. In “Joe and Gorgeous George,” Joe’s lack of urgency makes his 911 call rather amusing while the narrator of the poem “Bird and Window (Mating Season)” laments his inability to give an injured bluebird “mouth-to-beak” resuscitation. The book’s comedic pièce-de-résistance is a series of four “fake-news Christmas letters” that appear sporadically. Ribbing the news-laden familial updates some people tuck into Christmas cards, the mock letters become increasingly more absurd and hilarious. They begin as boastful accounts of Jeff and his family (for example, daughter Savannah, who’s multilingual at age 3). But they hit quite a few snags by the final letter, with predictably outlandish results.
Assorted short fiction deftly united by an insightful theme of kinship.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 161
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
