A beautiful volume that tells a classic American story.
A verse narrative follows the fortunes of a Jewish family through five generations after it immigrates to the United States.
In 1892, a Russian Jewish couple suffer a horrifying loss when their baby is murdered by Cossacks in a pogrom. They send their two remaining children, Basya and Laili, to the United States, because “in America everyone has a chance.” With their names changed to Bess and Lily at Ellis Island, the girls toil in a Lower East Side sweatshop. Lily dreams of making beautiful clothes for rich women and moving to warm, sunny Southern California but realizes “Not for Lily’s family, no. / But a grandchild, maybe, one day would go.” Her daughters, Molly and Anna, join her at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, where the girls survive the factory’s notorious fire, but their mother dies. Through two world wars and the Great Depression, Molly and her husband, Max, work hard and better their circumstances. Their daughter Lily and her husband prosper, sending their daughter Maxine to college. Not very religiously observant up till then, Maxine is drawn to the Chabad movement and Orthodox Judaism. She marries young and has five children while getting her Ph.D. in costume history, and she fulfills her grandmother’s dream by moving to Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley. Maxine’s daughter Lily continues the family interest in fashion and style by starting her own clothing line (“Lily of the Valley”) after marrying and having children. Michaels (Mindel and the Misfit Dragons, 2014) offers a gorgeously designed and illustrated book, though its appearance may outweigh its entirely familiar story (Ellis Island, sweatshops, world wars, reclamation of one’s heritage). Still, it’s told with verve and a pleasing sense of things coming out right. Michaels employs an English sestet form that works well; it’s short enough to keep things moving, while the ABABCC structure lends an air of finality to each stanza. The rhyme and the sometimes-singsong rhythm might make this seem a children’s book, but the content isn’t always kid-friendly: “[The Cossacks] stomped on the baby and slashed Mama’s side.”
A beautiful volume that tells a classic American story.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-941067-01-7
Page Count: 65
Publisher: Alcabal Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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