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Showing posts with label Nonfiction: Poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

The Queen of Sonnets Reviews James Sale's Poetry "HellWard"

A Review of HellWard by Theresa Rodriguez

Title: HellWard: The English Cantos Volume One

Author: James Sale

Genre: Poetry

146 pages

Independently Published

ISBN: 979-8654151919

Released June 2020

$10.02 (Paperback)

Purchase on Amazon

Reviewed by Theresa Rodriguez

I had the pleasure of listening to James Sale read each of his twelve Cantos of HellWard through his Wider Circle YouTube videos, which was a riveting experience. Then I had perhaps the even more riveting experience of reading the book, which I did in one day. The language is so compelling and the story so interesting that I could not put it down!

HellWard is a journey of the mind and spirit whereby the author, in a series of visions, is guided by no less than the great Dante himself through various wards of hell. Within these wards he encounters an array of people from his past, as well as world leaders, philosophers, and poets.

In HellWard we find powerful, often disturbing language, at the same time raw and refined, beautiful and at times jolting in its honesty. What struck me particularly throughout the book is the way Sale uses mono-syllabic words to powerful effect: death, hell, pain, depth, weak, guts, ache, dark, gunk, blight, flesh, tears, stench, dread, blood, hiss, oozed,“clots of gore” (a wonderful image), cries, groans, filth, swill, “smelt the blood” (another wonderful image), skull, skin, bone, ice, heat, hot, bare, raw, mess, froth, “dark webs,” “hard knots”, guilt, “black holes,” blotch, stank, bleak, slop, “greed and pride and lust,” and “sick slime.” Each of these words are like little pinpricks, jabbing the sensibilities over and over again as one reads through the text.

I was deeply affected by many passages in HellWard. These few examples impressed me particularly:

In Canto Two, James is seeing his mother in hell:

“My hair electrified, raised up in shock;

My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth;

I could not speak, seemed my whole being locked,”

And in this poignant passage we read about his dysfunctional relationship with her:

“How I longed, despite it all, just to feel

She loved me, and that deeply she approved;

My whole life waiting, and hoping she will

At last say words that mean, truly, I am loved.”

In Canto 3 we have a vivid and disturbing scene of a former friend's sperm-bank babies:

“'Hi James,' he said, emotionless and waste.

'I'd knew you'd find me; knew you'd like my work.'

What work? I thought, Then heard some sullen sobs:

The walls themselves had faces in, each hurt--

Each face half-formed, deformed, and like a yob's

Made so through lack of love and fatherhood,

But each one spoke, as one collection, mob;

Each one deprived of anything called good

So each one cried and tried to finger-point,”

There is a fine alliterative passage in Canto 5:

“And Marlene's hair, once red, now growing shoots

Of flecked and flecking grey, like fine, foamed froth,”

And a beautiful passage on prayer in Canto 6:

“And I at last in the wide interval

Unfroze and found myself creating prayer.”

Dante's advice to James in Canto 7 is skillfully rendered:

“What's solid materialises here;

In mortal life cause and effect may not

Always manifest as a conjoined pair;

Delay may be profound, prolonged, such that

The superficial mock, see that as proof

No order is, or word established fiat;”

As well as is this passage:

“Where is my guide? Was that someone I dreamed?

How lonely being lonely felt.”

In Canto 9, we find another striking image:

“...we drowned

In his rich sop of words that, as I say,

Echoed in double froth, doubled rebound,”

The book is full of intensity and movement, and there is much more ready to to read and savor.

One technical aspect of Sale's writing that intrigued me is is use of imperfect rhyme. As he says in the interview which follows the Cantos: “Of course, the key is not to set oneself the misguided task of insisting on perfect rhymes, since our language is not as rich in them as Italian.” Hence we have such combinations as “breaker,” “beaker,” and “features”; “other,” “further,” and “together”; and “fish,” “crush,” and “flesh.” I have been fairly rigid in my own rhyming philosophy but reading Sale's work has inspired me to play around with a little more flexibility in my rhyming in the future.

This collection of twelve Cantos is the pinnacle of achievement by a master poet. Sale has managed to interweave a vibrant personal narrative with current topics of interest such as mass murder, Brexit, and modern poets and philosophers. It is a rich and intense reading experience. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Dante, classical poetry, or social commentary.

James Sale’s website is https://jamessalepoetry.webs.com

More About the Reviewer

Theresa Rodriguez is the author of three books of poetry: Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020), and Sonnets, a collection of sixty-five sonnets (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift,Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Her website is http://www.bardsinger.com, where you can view videos of her performance poetry and find information about her books. Follow Theresa on Instagram and Twitter @thesonnetqueen.

The Queen of Sonnets Reviews James Sale's Poetry "HellWard"

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Friday, January 1, 2021

Veteran Editor and Poet Praises John Biscello's New "Moonglow on Mercy Street"

TITLE: Moonglow on Mercy Street

AUTHOR: John Biscello

GENRE: Poetry

PAGE #: 100

PUBLISHER: CSF Publishing

TO BE RELEASED SOON

LEARN MORE: Biscello's Author Profile on Amazon

Reviewed by Candice Louisa Daquin

When you read a lot of poetry for a living, after a while it’s hard for poetry to move you because your standards invariably raise and you demand something nuanced and rhythmical that isn’t the ordinary dish of the day. At times it can be hard to review poetry books for this reason. They can be ‘good’, but they don’t wow. Unfortunately, in our world, wow is the only way we become somewhat immortal in the literary world.

Therefore, it was a relief and a secret joy to read Moonglow on Mercy Street by John Biscello and find hidden among the pages, some real beauties.

Of late, many poetry books I’ve read, tend to have some type of collectivizing, harmonizing theme. I wouldn’t say this is abundantly clear or necessary with Moonglow on Mercy Street. Why do we need a theme or a collectivizing concept? Can’t we just enjoy a really good book of poetry? I vote yes.

When poetry really strikes me, it does so almost anonymously You don’t know the location, the author, the voice, the era, but you feel the atmosphere, and is that lyrical world you inhabit so intensely that resonates with you. Much like a song, why do you pick one over another and begin to incessantly hum it? Because it has that hook – that hook that keeps you mulling it over in your psyche.

The other important element to any good collection of poetry, is quite simply, to be a powerful wordsmith, someone who can harness words rather than simply move them around a page. Too often you read poetry that seems forced, mechanical, formulaic, or devoid of meaning. Sound, music, song, isn’t sufficient, it’s not enough to wear a pretty dress as a poem, you need to make sense, have gravity boots and know how to wield your light saber.

In that, a poem is an individual entity, in its own right it must speak of what it is, stand alone, defend itself, stand up to scrutiny. That’s not easy to accomplish in a world where people are gasping to tear you to pieces. In essence, this is survival of the fittest, and by fit, I mean, endowed with the right properties to stand the test of time and critic.

You should be able to pluck a poem out of your pocket in a 100 years’ time and read it and feel the same burning sensation as you did 100 years previously. That’s what ensures the master’s endure, and we shouldn’t really aspire for any less with our own collections. Fortunately, John Biscello is somewhat of a Master in this regard, he knows how to create what you, as a lover of poetry, really need, to ensure you get your teeth sunk deeply into his universe. His are not flippant, vague, missives, they are well thought out, well-functioning and fed poems that possess full stomachs and deep pockets.

I myself am a fan of words, and when a poet knows wordplay and can juxtapose and weave words so effortlessly they really do feel like a primal chant in your amygdala then you know you are reading someone worth pursuing. Someone who invariably shares your love of words, for anything less and you’ll get hackneyed, trite and immature.

I appreciate the anonymity of sentiment in Biscello’s work. He talks like he is a musing voice in the forest, speaking to us as we plunge through, muttering words of incantation, emotion, longing, living, with the gravitas of a well-oiled tongue. He knows language and the shifting and mixing of words so adroitly he seems to write without effort, although I am sure he puts a lot of effort into seeming effortless and that again, is a gift hard to learn as a writer.

There’s definitely an entire fantasy world within the realm of Biscello’s over-arcing imagination that causes you to pause time and again, to contemplate what he sees in his minds-eye and how smoothly he feeds this beautiful vision back to us, as if looping a long silver rope through time and landscape.

Some are fans of ‘shock art’ and want to read graphic, visceral, bound to grab headlines more contemporary styles, and that’s all very well. But there is always going to be a home for classic writing, the kind that caused you to enjoy reading poetry to begin with. Biscello’s work is that kind of work and in that, he excels time and time again, as if he doesn’t quite live in this world, but has one foot in another, where things are more vivid, more able to evoke and illustrate.

“find your ghost’s / bluest breath of want / upon a mirrored caste / of longing. “(Icy Hot).

Do not for a moment, imagine, Biscello is old-fashioned because of his multilayered ability to articulate a world beyond ours, but rather, he is a man who knows words well enough to build entire universes with them. Nor is his work defunct because it’s classical in nature, Biscello is a modern man and that shines through intermittently in his nod to our modern lives, the irony, the crush and the quiet despair.

“Sssssh! You can’t tell yourself, / but you have a crush on God. / Between classes, in the hallway, / you see her leaning obliquely against / the edge of a wall,” (Middle School).

An intelligent poet is one who seeks to unpack the depths of an emotion, or a moment and shine a different colored light into its crevices and discover what we don’t talk about in prose. That’s why poetry is considered the highest form of art, it is both a secret language, with the ability to be more potent than a confessional. But all done in the guise of art. Essentially, the intelligence lies in how the poet returns the observation.

“Paradox is the umbrella blown inside out in stormy weather, / as we keep walking, still covered, / yet determined to return the umbrella to its original form.” (Paradox).

Many modern poets are not aware of who came before them. I argue this is essential just as you must know how to paint realistically to master the abstract. It is down to choice. You choose where you go after you know. But if you do not know, you are limited. Biscello, with his love of other authors, ancient and contemporary, personifies the modern poet with that breadth of knowing, and that knowing lends his writing wings.

“Remember that nouns, verbs and adjectives / are made-up things. Crows, on the other hand, / are real to life, and winged.” (Thirteen Ways of Visioning a Crow).

There were a couple of poems that didn’t personally appeal but overall I found I read through this book voraciously and with a smile on my face, at the humble smarts of this poet and his unending ability to appeal deeply to our inner world and make it flourish all the more.

“I know they kill / poets in these parts / because the dismembered / remains of Allen Ginsberg / the man that Norman Mailer / once called the bravest four eyed kike / in the whole land / yes that man / scattered all over / screaming psych wards / and fallacious newsprint / meant to stir the cauldron / of bloody bathwater. “(American Poem).

If you read old-modern, contemporary-modern and classical poetry, you’ll love the nuanced update Biscello lends those worlds in homage. If you are unfamiliar with that history, then I suspect you’ll be going out to buy Anais Nin et al soon after reading Moonglow on Mercy Street. What greater compliment to the world of poetry, than to reinvigorate our enthusiasm for those who came before, to bring back to life, their gritty brilliance through your own? Biscello is one of a kind and yet, superlatively familiar to anyone who knows what good poetry really is.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Candice Louisa Daquin is the author of five books of poetry, including her most recent, Pinch the Lock, and Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing.

Veteran Editor and Poet Praises John Biscello's New "Moonglow on Mercy Street"

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Friday, May 24, 2019

Professor Emeritus of English Reviews Carol Smallwood's "Visits"

Title: Visits and Other Passages

Author: Carol Smallwood. Georgetown, Kentucky

Publisher: Finishing Line Press,

$18.99

Available on Amazon

REVIEWED BY RONALD PRIMEAU

         In her latest of over sixty books, the prolific Carol Smallwood serves up a feast of genres in a hybrid of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and other vignettes that exemplify her career-long mastery of exquisite close observation. These fresh and widely varied selections play like a documentary film about visits and revisitings, the feelings of loss and passage, and the ways we can either miss totally or experience more fully the process of living as it unfolds. Smallwood—always a master of character—sends her narrators on simple quests that will change the way we see everything and introduces us to an array of fascinating folks who drop by for visits that we don’t want to end.

    Like most of her collections, Smallwood’s latest is almost always about the creative process itself as we live it in our everyday experiences and try to capture it in writing and reading. In an interview four years ago, Smallwood suggested that “writers do most of their work when not actually writing; thinking is where it boils. The subconscious is the mother of all.” In fact, the most crucial times in her way of writing occur when she does not appear to be writing at all. Ideas come while daydreaming or washing dishes and then need “brooding time” to “mull over” what she calls “the incubating bits” which “appear to have no connection until when one is at last ready, the seemingly loose ends can be fit together” (“Arriving at the Aha Moment,” 75-76). The mulling over time also forges the connections between the actual process of writing and the rigors of paying attention to details we generally overlook. In her Introduction Smallwood quotes Heraclitus (“We are estranged from that with which we are most familiar”) and sets out to reconnect herself and readers to the passages and visits we live through every day. Enter writers who “see things with fresh eyes (“Perspective” 46) and give readers a chance to recover from the self-induced blindness of familiarity: “What we see in everyday life is often limited from seeing it so often: people become part of the furniture.” Hence we need the aesthetic sensibility that defamiliarizes what would otherwise never get beyond mere ordinariness to “what is there just beyond reach” “Sleep,” 33).

    Smallwood’s defamiliarization includes works that take a closer look at what is easily missed—concentrating on the passages we encounter and the visits and revisitings that show how we participate in community. Close ups include a fly eating a morsel of fruitcake near her keyboard, deliberations about how to handle mounds in the lawn, members of a spice-shelf brigade standing for military formation, a tea party with a treasured vintage doll, looking at clocks for more than the time, and the art of folding napkins like J. Alfred Prufrock would do it. The most notable visits to include the dentist, Aunt Heidi’s, the supermarket, and the library; visits from feature friend Polly and an unsuspecting Avon Lady who never knew what hit her. The “revisiting” poems include significant discussions of memory and the spirit of place. Other selections pause over a brief and fascinating history of libraries, the shifting of continents, thoughts on the evolution of cornfields, and a show-stopping recollection of her Uncle Walt’s funeral. The collection is rounded out by a series of short essays on various authors and other subjects. While interesting in themselves, some short discursive and less illusive reflections don’t always find their right place alongside the other more successful pieces.

    In her Foreword to this volume, which she calls a travel narrative, Su Epstein identifies what is “comfortingly familiar, fascinatingly foreign, and intellectually thought provoking” as “a life lived” sneaks out from behind the narrator’s magnifying glass. In “One December Day,’ a maestro fly walks to the podium for the volume’s overture as it nibbles “ fruitcake with an occasional kick of the leg.” More close ups come into view as the narrator struggles to address the problem of mounds taking over her lawn. Rejecting outright killing, she decides on sonic rockets that would trigger swift and thorough evacuation. This plan too is vetoed by “dreams of families forsaking homes” to become “the underground homeless,” and in the end profoundly mundane activities are left to unfold: “Don’t let your molehills become mountains” (“Mounds Keep Appearing,” 10). The villanelle “The Last Doll” introduces us to a long-haired beauty who sits with two other Christmas presents, ruling over them perhaps because “she’s not been held as often for validation” (“The Last Doll,” 32). Soon we see Prufrock folding napkins in fast food restaurants, pause at a three-month cancer check-up where we endure “the smile for the aged,” and find ourselves reading a letter to God exploring why we keep on thinking “everything revolves around” us and go on to “kill each other especially in your name.” And then there is the unforgettable spice shelf in every store where those iconic jars “stand at attention facing you always on parade.” Again all around us where so much is too familiar to see, “there’s tales worth knowing” if we “just look” (“There’s Much to See,” 45).

    Just as these altered perspectives defamiliarize what would otherwise be lost in narcoleptic ordinariness, many of the varied genres in this volume infuse vibrance into ordinary visits that make up much of daily life. In Smallwood’s hands, a visit from the Avon Lady is whimsical and poignant. This visitor shares not only products and calendars but updates on her grandchildren, her sister who “still doesn’t know her place” at the age of 45, and a battery of questions intended to “welcome” new customers to the neighborhood. As an extension of the passage motif of moving away from one’s home and into a new neighborhood, “Polly’s Visit” brings an assault of unpleasantries from someone who tries to stop the passage of moving on from divorce, poverty, and the death of a spouse. Some of the best selections in the volume about passages are portraits of those jealous of others who are moving on. “Lunch at Aunt Heidi’s” is another prickly trip down memory lane as the narrator fends off advice about battle fatigued returning veterans, Heidi’s life with Uncle Walt, and polite exchanges about the benefits and destructiveness of religion. When the narrator shares stories of a Vietnam Vet scarred for life. Heidi advises that he “drink prune juice for iron and pray.” Even a trip to the dentist is grist for Smallwood. “Give me all the shots you can,” she says to “the masked man” who looks like Zorro or the Lone Ranger and dispenses pain medication like candy.

    Return visits provide additional layers of passage enabling a measure of not only change but of how well memory holds up against inevitable change. Returning to college after retirement, the narrator takes note of changes but revels in the “freedom intoxicating” of new ideas in class discussions. Feeling empowered by this trip back home, she quotes Hemingway: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life. It stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (“Hallways”). For Smallwood, passages require reciprocity. Her narrators take stock of the moving forward that is central to relocation and growth itself even as they go back in time to places they have left on trips where “memories of when I’d been there competed with each other” (“Revisiting, 52). Repeatedly in these selections she learns the lessons of what D.H. Lawrence called “the spirit of place.” Living through and coming to understand passages requires, of course, almost constant change—whether in physical spaces, concepts or movements, the evolving meanings of words, or the growth spurts and almost imperceptible deterioration of aging itself. Smallwood’s Epilogue is called “passage” where the evanescence of summer ice testifies to both “the pleasure of the moment” and the inevitable passage of time. Cubes turn round and swirl into miniature rings: “Evaporation could be measured/ if there were days enough.”

    Inviting readers into its variety of places and perspectives, Visits and Other Passages successfully defamiliarizes ordinary events so we can reconnect with the lives we are experiencing. Clocks reveal more than the time of day. Napkins in fast food restaurants and spices on grocery shelves have stories to share. Smallwood’s poems, stories and vignettes are rooted in the two-fold belief that “we are usually too much a part of our setting to be very conscious of it” (“Location and Character”) and that creative estrangement from what has gotten encrusted in ordinariness can be learned. For readers of this book, dentists’ waiting rooms will never again be the same. Wonder may be restored once more to corn fields, supermarkets, libraries, and front porches. Smallwood’s defamiliarization moves forward strikingly as she attends to so much that is generally overlooked. A postcard from a funeral director urging her to “PLAN AHEAD WITH PIZZA” is read carefully on its way to the wastebasket: “It was good it was sent to RESIDENT--/it discouraged being selected as a/prime candidate for the Grim Reaper” (44). There’s the Avon lady’s hair that “looks just like the wig called ‘Caesar’s Wife’ in a catalog”(1), colorful puzzles on placemats at Wendy’s” (12), and the oft overlooked spiders whose intricate work created the first ever curtains in her new home” (23).

For most of us perhaps nothing brings more estrangement than death, and in this book perhaps the summative passage bringing everyone together is the formal visitation at Uncle Walt’s funeral. Perhaps the pivotal work in this collection, “Preparing for the Service” asks whether we attend funerals to honor the deceased, comfort survivors, or jolt ourselves at least temporarily out of numbing familiarity. Uncle Walt is a significant presence in this volume. He seems a steadying influence who monitors the excess of people around him to the point of telling his overzealous wife “I never know what the hell kind of bugs I’ll find in your cooking” (“24). Even though Uncle Walt has died, our attention is drawn not to him but to the preparations unfolding for his memorial. In the satiric demeanor of the deceased, the speaker remarks on the colors of the Big Boy placemat and eases pain by trying to “float away on whiffs of Belgian Waffles” (29). Talk of corn relish and the clatter of plates gives way to a waitress who walks “like one of her heels is missing” and reaches under a counter to give “her underwear a quick tug.” Relatives gather to help with casket and flower selection and wonder what happened to their Uncle’s blood: “Did they just slit his wrist and let it drain like oil from a car?” The narrator provides details on the funeral procession which, once moving, felt like being “in a car wash.”

    Readers used to poetry collections or volumes where the prose knows if it is fiction or nonfiction might at first be perplexed by the way genre boundaries are transgressed or redrawn this time around. But my bet is that those who come with a spirit of adventure will be rewarded by the irreverence and innovation on almost every page. Visits and Other Passages provides enough threads of a motif that knits up a quest myth, patterns of loss and recovery, and the power of visitation. The language is fresh throughout and constructs mastery of form and characterization. A half dozen or so selections could have been cut, and the editing misses a few too many errors. The cover design creates simple elegance.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ronald Primeau, Professor Emeritus of English, Central Michigan University and Adjunct Instructor, The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee

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Thursday, April 4, 2019

Poet Aline Soules Calls Carol Smallwood's Chapbook a "Universal Collection"

Visits and Passages by Carol Smallwood

Paperback:134 pages;

Finishing Line Press (January 4, 2019)

ISBN-10: 1635348005; $18.99

Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Aline Soules originally for B. Lynn Goodwin's WritersAdvice.com

In Visits and Passages, Carol Smallwood not only writes in multiple formats (short stories, diaries, fantasy, poetry, and others), she offers her explorations of everything from the color pink to a letter to God. All come from the heart of American life. As Roland Barksdale-Hall notes: “Smallwood paints with delicate strokes a splendid cornucopia of lyrical ruminations on family, nature, literature and places.”

In her first piece, “A Visit from Caesar’s Wife”, Smallwood writes: “Avon made me feel a part of things: it was as American as McDonald’s, the Fourth of July, or the Reader’s Digest.” This sets the tone of the entire eclectic collection and the evolution of her world.

In her memoir about a relative, she recalls Christmas in Poland where the table was set with hay under the tablecloth, the common shepherd who was fed in turn by each villager, the swing used by the whole village, and a beautiful brook where the author waded. It’s a far cry from a family that grew flax, spun linen thread, and made cloth on a loom to the modern American woman who later writes a piece called Wendy’s where she read the Canterbury Tales over chili, a baked potato, and a senior Diet Pepsi, and observed tabloid headlines like “3500-Year-Old Mummy Gives Birth.” A woman who observes the humanity around her, wondering if a young teenage couple in line will turn into another couple with kids at a back table.

Interspersed among the prose are poems of memoir and reflection. The poem, “A Lace Piece,” ponders the fragile beauty of lace, its history, its universality, its grace. In “Grandmother Said,” she mixes a memoir of her grandmother with the universality of sewing with needle and thread, possessions her grandmother obviously valued greatly as social objects that addressed loneliness. As Su Epstein notes: “A picture may paint a thousand words, but Carol Smallwood’s words paint a million images.” Mary Langer Thompson calls Smallwood “a keen observer collecting fragments that make up a life.”

The author raises questions: “What is our definition of home?” she asks in “Home.” In “A Letter to God, Revised,” she asks, “Why such an odd world of 71% water, a round planet rotating around a boiling star with a moon also held by gravity?” She can question all she wants, but she still has to form an opinion. In her “Dear Diary” section, she lists essay topics for class, which are often questions in another form, for example, “The Importance (or Lack Thereof) of Knowing Why the Sky is Blue.”

The author ends the collection with an epilogue, a poem called “Passage,” which she starts with “summer ice, pleasure of the moment: / proof of time’s passage” and ends with “evaporation could be measured / if there were days enough—/but ice has many forms.” The momentary nature of time and the multiplicity of forms, whether of ice or passages, makes this a universal collection.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Aline Soules, is the author of:

"Evening Sun: a Widow's Journey" (chapbook), https://amzn.to/2OTFXVE and

"Meditation on Woman," https://amzn.to/2CHEhst.

Lean more about her on her blog a http://alinesoules.com/blog or at Twitter (@aline_elisabeth). Her work has appeared in such publications as Literature of the Expanding Frontier, Kenyon Review, Houston Literary Review, and Poetry Midwest.

visits-and-other-passages-carol-smallwood-book-review

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Sunday, March 10, 2019

Editor Reviews LB Sedlacek New Poetry Book

Words and Bones

By LB Sedlacek

Published 2018

Finishing Line Press

Genre: Poetry

42 pages

ISBN-10: 1635346320

ISBN-13: 978-1635346329

www.lbsedlacek.com

Reviewed by Cristina M.R. Norcross

In L.B. Sedlacek’s collection, Words and Bones, we see the wonder of every day miracles presented to us using spare, but precise language, and imagery that opens up the sky and earth in unique ways. If we follow the thread of words in these engaging poems, we not only find our way out of the forest of life, we emerge with a deeper understanding of human connection, ways of seeing, and inner knowing. These are poems to be savored and sipped. These words and bones shed light on the mysterious world around us and skillfully offer a poetic guide map.

L.B. Sedlacek’s poetry has appeared in publications such as "Pure Francis," "The Broad River Review," "The Broken Plate," "I-70 Review," "Third Wednesday," "Mastodon Dentist," "Big Pulp," and others. Her latest poetry book, "The Architect of French Fries" was recently published by Presa Press. She also teaches poetry at local elementary and middle schools, publishes a free resource for poets "The Poetry Market Ezine," and was a Poetry Editor for "ESC! Magazine." In her free time, LB enjoys swimming, reading, and volunteering for her local humane society. Find out more: www.lbsedlacek.com

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Editor Reviews LB Sedlacek New Poetry Book

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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. 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.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Judith Skillman Offers Skilled Review of Poetry Chapbook

Prisms Particles, and Refractions

by Carol Smallwood 

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2017,

$18.99 [paper]

ISNB 978-1635342338

85 pp.

Formerly published in Ragazine, http://ragzine.cc; Scarlet Leaf Review, https://www.scarletleafreview.com; Mom Egg Review, http://momeggreview.com

Reviewed by Judith Skillman

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.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

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

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Wednesday, January 20, 2021

The Queen of Sonnets Reviews James Sale's Poetry "HellWard"

Friday, January 1, 2021

Veteran Editor and Poet Praises John Biscello's New "Moonglow on Mercy Street"

Friday, May 24, 2019

Professor Emeritus of English Reviews Carol Smallwood's "Visits"

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Poet Aline Soules Calls Carol Smallwood's Chapbook a "Universal Collection"

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Editor Reviews LB Sedlacek New Poetry Book

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Judith Skillman Offers Skilled Review of Poetry Chapbook

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