Carol Smallwood's Poetry Gets Star Status from Literary Professionals

In Hubble’s Shadow
Carol Smallwood
Shanti Arts, 2017, Brunswick, Maine
98 pages
$14.95, paperback
Purchase on Amazon


Reviewed by Jennifer L. Dean

    The early 90s were exciting and troubling times—the Berlin wall came down, and the Iraq War began. A Gen Xer, this was the backdrop for my first year of college. When the Hubble Telescope launched into space in early 1990, sending us brilliant images of a world we had heretofore only imagined, it surprised and delighted us, showing us just how small we were. For me, these bright photographs helped to offset the images of the loss of the Challenger, a loss many in my generation still remember as one of our first shared tragedies. In Hubble’s Shadow, a collection of poems by Carol Smallwood, evoked this rush of memories for this reader, simply with its title.

    These memories were not the only ones that flooded my senses as I read Smallwood’s poetry. I delighted in scenes seemingly inspired from my own rural upbringing—from an exploration of spring’s arrival in the changing landscape of a dirt road in the brief “An Ode to Mud,” or the remembrance of summer’s bounty in the even briefer “The Sugar Beet Field.” These poems delight the senses and inspire wonder and laughter. But, darker images reside here, too. Faithless friends and partners in “Dreams of Flying Sestina,” and health concerns in “Live with It” and “Kitty Doesn’t Explore” rear their heads, weaving their way into this tapestry of a life lived in contemplation of our world’s complexity, whether underfoot, overhead, or right in front of us.

Taken as a whole, this collection reflects the full round of life, with all of its questions, beauty, and pain. This volume is accessible to all readers, no matter their knowledge of poetry and poetic devices. Although this collection includes several longer-form works, the majority pull you in with their brevity and knock you out with their depth of feeling and the poet’s ability to bring the reader right to the heart of the story. This collection meets the reader where they are, with just enough detail to inspire the wonder with which the author so clearly perceives the world and her place in it. Or, as Smallwood writes so eloquently in the last line of “Wind in Trees”—“the story lies with the interpreter.”

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jennifer L. Dean is the Dean of University Libraries and Instructional Technology, Instructional Design Studio, at University of Detroit Mercy Libraries. 

OTHER REVIEWS FOR "IN HUBBLE'S SHADOW"
Scarlet Leaf Review
https://www.scarletleafreview.com/nonfiction4
January 15, 2018

Michigan Quarterly Review 
http://www.michiganquarterlyreview.com/2017/05/a-review-of-carol-smallwoods-in-hubbles-shadow/
May 16, 2017

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 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

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Veteran Poet Releases New Book from Poetic Matrix Press

  A Matter of Selection

 by Carol Smallwood
Publisher:Poetic Matrix Press (March 5, 2018)

Paperback:120 pages

ISBN-10:0998146986
Available on Amazon 
$17



Carol Smallwood, 
a whole battery of poetry chapbooks to her credit, has written another 
masterpiece.  By that, I don't mean something utterly impossible to
decipher or something that reminds the reader of poets' sonnets from her

11th grade English Literature class.  Many of the poems in Smallwood's 
A Matter of Selection are just as intricate, just as formulated. The thing is, 
you won't notice unless you make them into a puzzle to be unraveled 
or refigured like a Rubic's cube. And why would you want to do that?

Smallwood
writes intricate poems that are easy--even lazy. We read them for the spell
they create, the nostalgia, the wonder. Each is like images in the
opening poem: A melody. Morning fog. A path. 

Smallwood's
repetitive line, " . . . it makes sense to cut up pieces to sew with needle and
thread" in her poem "The Universe" lets her unraveling of the cosmos
be understood with subtle sounds. "Read," "bed," and, yes "dread." You
won't need a reviewer to tell you not to sweat it. You'll just go with the
gentle flow. 

Smallwood's 
A Matter of Selection are poems all the better in the moment. Save
analytics for another time, another chapbook another text. Like a child
listening to her mother's voice, no need to analyze. 

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everything from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion and a whole lot you didn't know including how to use blurbs from reviews to sell books to catalogs. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically! 

This blog 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.

Prolific Reviewer Shares Chapbook of Poetry

Title: Prisms Particles, and Refractions

Author: Carol Smallwood

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2017

$18.99 [paper] 108 pp. 

ISNB 978-1635342338

Available on Amazon

Review by Judith Skillman originally for Ragazine

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.

As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.

The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.

“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Skillman also reviews for Scarlet Leaf Review, www.scarletleafreview.com and Mom Egg Review, http://momeggreview.com.  

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog 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.