Spare, powerful, well-calibrated poems that perceptively anatomize grief.
A collection of poems explores loss and its aftermath with stark thoughtfulness.
The work of Chmielarz (Visibility: Ten Miles, 2015, etc.), an accomplished poet, has often been published in literary magazines; “On Green,” included here, won the Jane Kenyon Award from Water-Stone Review. This collection is arranged in three parts, each with its introductory poem: “At the Cave’s Entrance,” “The Widow’s House,” and “Tastes.” The first of these helps establish something about the speaker’s husband and their relationship, which gives force to later poems as they develop. He doesn’t like the cave’s darkness on his guided tour; “He’d had enough of that / as a refugee,” writes Chmielarz, deftly suggesting much more to that story. She uses enjambment to good effect, propelling the reader, like a descending tourist, down through the poem to an unexpected place: “No, caves offered no thrill / for him. Much warmer, // making his way through / the darkness inside me.” Those lines have the pride and wonder of someone who loves and is loved. But they are valedictory; the poems turn to illness, the writer’s awareness she will be alone, the funeral, the grief counseling, the loneliness. Throughout this fine collection, Chmielarz’s well-crafted lines get the most out of every word. They seem to place their feet with the stunned, careful precision of someone who is holding herself together with every resource she has. These resources include Chmielarz’s mastery of tone, through which she transforms unbearable grief into multilayered, quietly emotional, often ironic conclusions. For example, in “When Are You Coming Back? I’m Getting Tired of Waiting,” the speaker contrasts generic applies-to-everyone advice with the definite particularities of her husband—his forehead, for example, his frown, how he lifts a brow. The poem’s last lines are “And I’m to let you go? / Like some balloon? The grief counselor says yes. / Quietly yet firmly, yes. / I raise my chin and say nothing.” The saying is in these poems, which never wallow in self-pity but instead fearlessly probe bitterness, jealousy, undesired courage, and bleak longing with lapidary attention to language.
Spare, powerful, well-calibrated poems that perceptively anatomize grief.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9908670-8-1
Page Count: 86
Publisher: Brighthorse Books
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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