Subtitle: Writing Truth and Justice with Capital Letters, lie and oppression with Small
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Cover and Internal Art by Richard Conway Jackson
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781515232490
Available on Amazon as e-book or paper
Finalist USA Book News
All Proceeds Support Amnesty International
Holiday Gift for the Thoughtful Person on Your List
REVIEWED BY MARLAN WARREN, originally for Midwest Book Review
Narcissus knows her reflection
well. She
forgets to peer
under
burkas, in our jails,
in the
beds of the abused,
deeper,
deeper into the pond...
From Narcissus Revisited a poem
in Imperfect
Echoes.
Carolyn
Howard-Johnson’s “Imperfect Echoes: Writing Truth and Justice with Capital
Letters, lie and oppression with Small” is just perfect. This Los Angeles
award-winning poet lays out the landscape of her contemplative thoughts,
feelings and reactions with such honesty and deceptive simplicity that they
have the effect of offering a peek into her private journals. What puts this
poetry on par with leaping tall buildings is the fact that each poem manages
the feat of conveying personal and universal relevance at once.
Do not be
scared off by the prospect of political rhetoric masquerading as literature;
this is not one of those books. Although the book's subtitle may strike some as
rather lofty, it is a quote from Czeslaw Milosz's poem, “Incantation,” in his
anthology, “The Captive
Mind,” which reflects Howard-Johnson's poetic themes. She has divided her
prolific poems into a Prologue plus four sections: “Remembering What We Must”; “Nations: Tranquil
Self-Destruction”; “Acceptance: Waiting for the Gift”; and “Future Stones of
Distrust.”
Howard-Johnson
deftly blends the "Truth and Justice" observations with the
"Small" moments of "lie(s)" and "oppression" as
they intersperse through her poet's journey. The poems in “Remembering What We
Must” address the stark realities of war and global misery, which
Howard-Johnson treats with her practiced light touch that floats like the
proverbial butterfly and stings like an outraged bee.
In
“Belgium's War Fields,” she
compares the reasons for bygone wars to our present day confusion: “And now a
war that takes from the mouths /and hearts of the stranded, the homeless. / How
different from those who / marched with snares or flew flags / in a war when we
knew / why we were there.”
In the “Nations: Tranquil
Self-Destruction” section,
“The Story of My Missed Connection in Minneola” brings to life a brief rest
stop during a road trip, which seems rather amusing at first as the wife
relieves her bladder and the husband declines the coffee with “Let's skip it.
Coffee's / probably been stewing for days...” but hits an unexpected bump of
overt bigotry when the roadside store owner confides in them (in between the
screeches of his pet parrot) that he left Los Angeles to get away from the
“ragheads.”
In the
“Acceptance: Waiting for the Gift” section, “Relatives” takes on the ways in which
"Small" minds can make a family dinner feel like a stint in
Purgatory: “Perhaps you won't invite me back / if I mention that infamous /
uncle. You know, the one who killed / three of his wives / but is candid /
about who he is, / how many he's killed, / the methods he used / and never gets
invited to dinner.
In the “Future Stones of Distrust” section, “Rosa Parks Memorialized” opens with “On the day our
September losses / reached 2,000, a tribute / to Rosa...” and asks “If she were
alive now.../ would her solo / be enough or do we need now a choir singing, /
thousands screaming...?”
Imperfect
Echoes allows readers to witness a poet's
lifetime revisited in memory and with fresh wisdom. If the topics of
oppression, prejudice and war seem to some "overdone," Howard-Johnson
responds in her Prologue poem, “Apologies
from a Magpie”:
Magpies
are born to sing others' songs
stained
notes, imperfect echoes—
until the
world begins to know
them by
heart.
Note:
Proceeds from the sales will be donated to the non-profit human rights
watchdog, Amnesty International.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Marlan Warren is an L.A. journalist, novelist,
playwright, screenwriter, blogger, and publicist with Roadmap Communications[http://tinyurl.com/RoadmapCommunications] and Book Publicity by Marlan [http://BookPublicitybyMarlan.blogspot.com].
She reviews for the Midwest Book Review [http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/nov_15.htm], and her blogs include “Roadmap Girl’s Book Buzz” [http://roadmapgirlsbookbuzz.blogspot.com] and
“L.A. Now & Then [http://losangelesnowthen.blogspot.com].”
Her press releases are published in Broadway World Book News and the BBC
Record. She is the author of the novel, “Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged:
All’s Not Fair in Love or War” [http://tinyurl.com/qj92dhr]
and the producer/writer of the acclaimed documentary, “Reunion” [http://www.directing.com]. Marlan is currently producing/directing her documentary “What Did
You Do in the War, Mama?: Kochiyama’s Crusaders ” based on her play “Bits of Paradise” [http://sites.google.com/site/bitsofparadisethemovie/home].
ABOUT THE NEW BOOK REVIEW
The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.
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