A moving, vivid collection of verse.
A poetry collection by Laina (Mikti Techniki, 2012, etc.), translated from Greek to English by McCann, explores the nuances of time and women’s power.
“It was summer from shore to shore / I say this even though seasons have no meaning anymore,” muses a lighthouse keeper in the poem “Narration.” The first section of this collection, “Time,” offers imagery reflecting the march of time (“It blooms slowly, silently / the melancholic, comic tree”) and also explores its antithesis, stillness, offering grounding and emotional connections to the elusive notion of time’s passage. This expressive collection moves into different territory in the second section, “Witches.” From Circe in Homer’s Odyssey to the Wayward Sisters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, witches have served as supernatural beings, as evil, twisted characters, and, in some cases, as symbols of female empowerment. Laina deftly expands on this latter notion. In “Poros Minor,” the speaker describes a beautiful woman with glowing red eyes that “will mimic again the grace and the strength of a sword.” This theme recurs through the rest of the collection; in an unnamed poem, the speaker describes living a life of “malice and deceit” but powerfully concludes by reminding herself to “let no man overpower me.” The third section, “Travels,” especially shines with its poignant storytelling (“He left the jug down by the river / and recollected everything / creaks and murmurs that changed color around the houses / deep voids in the sky / but he didn't leave because / his story had died”). However, opaque prose slows the collection’s momentum at times. McCann’s translations are impressive and capture Laina’s nuance, but the word “rose,” for instance, gets lost. In Greek, there are separate words for the color (used in the original title poem) and the flower, while English has one for both, making the meaning of the translated poem hard to discern: “Fear / ever worse / rose fear / before what, of what / fear’s fear / fear, lest it paralyze you.” That said, the collection’s strength lies in its ability to challenge the reader, and its study of time offers new ways of imagining the intangible.
A moving, vivid collection of verse.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9992613-1-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: World Poetry Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 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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