Rating: WORTHY!
This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
As I mentioned in the post for the other volume of poetry I reviewed today, I feel something of an obligation to read a book of poetry now and then because I published one myself. Poetry is a tough sell these days and is in fact a dying art in terms of publishing. I actually find that strange, because in this modern world of short attention spans and sound bites, you would think that poetry would do well. On the other hand, sound-bites tend to be the lowest common denominator, which is the very antithesis of good poetry, so maybe that's why it doesn't do so well?!
This does makes me wonder though, if poetry has become too disconnected from real life for its own good. It used to be that poetry rhymed and while as a kid I never did quite get the non-rhyming ones, as an adult they made a lot more sense. I'm not advocating for rhyming poems here although I personally have no problem with them. For some reason - the leading suspect is disdain - they're out of fashion these days in poetry books, but are an area of endeavor that seems to have been usurped not by greeting cards, but by popular music these days. Perhaps, when all is said and done, this is what rap music is? I don't know! I'm not a fan of rap, but it does seem to be the natural if belated heir to the beat generation of the forties and fifties.
I would definitely advocate for poetry that's more accessible, and especially that's accessible to children, who are actually being spoiled by growing-up learning only that a poem has to rhyme line for line. A poem can rhyme in many more senses than the last word in the line: it can rhyme in sense, in meaning, in feeling and in other ways. This is the heart of poetry, and it's something children do not learn. They're taught exactly the opposite with nursery rhymes and rhyming children's picture books, which makes it hardly a surprise that when those children become adults, they don't pay poetry much mind, associated with childhood things and put away as it evidently is.
This particular volume was a pleasure to read, although it seemed a little odd to read in the front of the book that it was a work of fiction! It was the standard disclaimer, but when related to a book of poetry that's hopefully pulled from the author's heart and soul, what can that mean exactly? I wonder!
The first poem, "Espejitos" (Mirrors - that's what living in Texas will get you!) was highly topical and had #MeToo written all over it; not literally, but in the words of Doctor Who, "Give me a crayon and some time...." The book has a butterfly image superimposed on the text, appropriately a glass-winged butterfly, but I have to say that parts of the image were so dark that they obscured the text. I'm not sure if this was intentional. If so it was an interesting effect: a poem about women being undervalued, effaced, unseen, retired to a haunting mirror image, abused, and then being further abused by something as delicate as a butterfly?
There were other poems accompanied by images, but none of those seemed to interfere with the text like this first one did, except perhaps for "Wind-up Girl", which featured a picture of a ballerina collapsed almost like a tortoise retreated into a shell. The picture was dark and the text white, but some of it disappeared into the tutu it must be reported! Maybe this was the #MeTutu movement? The poem and image very-well recalled the dancing girl in a music box and how captive she is.
I really liked several of these poems, in particular "In rejoice of Kindred Grief", "Two Young Wives", and "She learns How to Disappear." I particularly liked "Woman" which in its succeeding line echoing the previous reminded me so much of some of my own work and harks back to what I said above about rhyming in ways other than matching the last words of each line. I will quote a small section of this to illustrate:
I split myself apart
parting seas
seaward bound prow
prowling wood hewn rough
rough as the chill of
children...
There's no rhyme here in words as such, but there is rhythm in how the first word of the next line catches the last word of the previous one and reinterprets it, continuing the poem. This is very much to my taste and something I like to bring to prose when I can, if I can. It's especially apparent in my parodies where I feel no need to constrain myself, so for me, it was a real joy to read it here and see how well done it was.
The book is quite short, only some forty-six pages of which only thirty or so are poems, but it says a lot in that small space - itself evoking the small space some women are forced to occupy in this male-dominant world, so even that worked. I can't claim that I loved everything in the book by any means, but poetry is like a box of chocolates...no, I won't go there! Suffice to say there was more enough to love, and I commend this as a highly worthy read, full of heart and meaning.
