Category: Reviews – Poetry

On the back cover of Gillian Prew’s recent book of poetry it says: “The ambient howl-sound pervades everything. The gutted beasts are everywhere – billions raised and slaughtered for food globally each year. ‘A Wound’s Sound’ is an attempt to distil and voice their pain and their silence.”   After reading this I thought to myself, well, there is no one more capable than Prew through the art form of poetry, who could more vividly and poignantly illustrate, expose the plight of “gutted beasts everywhere.”

If there ever would be such a level of recognition for poets, Prew is no doubt in my opinion the ever-rising superstar in the world of poetry.   Prew lends support to my claim  in A Wound’s Sound, where her word imagery is visually rich as dessert and powerfully potent as hemlock. She is the master, the teacher, who can perceptually lure you in and then hook you forever in one poetic sentence.   As exemplified on page 22 of her book in a poem called This Poem.

This poem has blood in its ears/
it is being hauled up by a hook/
it is losing consciousness.

To entice you to buy and become totally immersed within the word imagery of a poet I consider the best of the best out there today, Gillian Prew, I leave you with her poem on page 61 of A Wound’s Sound called Still Life.

Blister blooms meat and farrow pearls
staining a grunted image of violet dust/
growing slate-grey in lumbering spins. Is
lit buds and a wall of wind. Skyline cry
and a scatter of stone-scuffed snout
down among the decay/eyes all
clever shine and sorrow.

Peace out and love Gillian Prew     ~Keith Alan Hamilton~

Buy Gillian Prew’s book A Wounds Sound.

Prew’s Featured Artist page at The Hamilton Gallery ~ Online.com https://www.thehamiltongalleryonline.com/blog/?page_id=411

Before you open and read one of the poems from Carolyn Srygley-Moore’s book, miracles of the BloG: A series (something I have learned to do every morning when I awake @ 4 AM to read one of Carolyn’s poems posted on Facebook), I suggest the following …..    read the poem all the way through to the end, don’t stop along the way to ponder.   After you’ve read the poem, tip your head back in the chair and let the word imagery flow through your body from head to toe before thinking about the experience of it all.   The experience is like the scene in the movie Men in Black when the alien first enters the farmer’s body, you spasm until accepting to surrender.   This technique will lessen the degree your brain will hemorrhage, and it will hemorrhage but in a good way.   Why?   ‘Cause you’ve just experienced the twists and turns, the miracle, the word imagery of one of the greatest poetic thinkers in present time.   The artistry of Carolyn’s words is so unique, I beg you to find someone to compare her to …..    peace out and love Carolyn Srygley-Moore !

Case in point, the simplistic complexity of Carolyn’s poetic thoughts as illustrated on page 71 of her book, miracles of the BloG: A series.

Miracles of trembling

There is a whoosh when the umbilical is cut
An anti-noise       whoosh as of a ghost loosed.
So I have been informed
*
by men in surgical masks with surgeon’s hands
hands that are not allowed to tremble.
I blame neither moon or sun but
*
dew on the grass in wind trembling.
What do we do but follow
nature’s intuitions?        Whoosh     another cord
*
is cut.      Another ghost of the past released.
In the fog that swallows the grasses
there is truth.        There is truth.
*
I choose not to watch the news today.
I will ride the tortoise back into the sun
squinting against the dark        my hands, trembling.

Utterly genius    ~Keith Alan Hamilton~

Buy Carolyn’s book  –  miracles of the BloG: A series

Carolyn’s Featured Artist page at The Hamilton Gallery ~ Online.com
https://www.thehamiltongalleryonline.com/blog/?page_id=371

This memoir with poems by Madeline Sharples,   I hope will have a positive effect on the reader’s intellect and values beyond the awareness of a mother’s tremendous courage as a human being to cope with and talk about the loss of her son.   Way beyond her gifted abilities to write so openly and poetically about her son’s life experience, his all-out struggle with a condition not fully understood and still felt as not normal by others.   Way, way beyond the heart wrenching trauma underwent by a family who had a beloved member commit the ill thought of and unspeakable act, the taking of his own life.   Madeline’s forthright and insightful words, whether intentional or not, will present an introspective opportunity to the reader.   Where the reader is unexpectedly provided the chance to self-reflect and wrestle with their own preconceived biases and inhibitions on this matter.   Those socially embedded judgments, which sadly cause a state of dis-ease, a lack of discernment concerning two separate but often associated components within the trials and tribulations of day-to-day living.   Publicly chosen and accepted labels, shadowed by the stigma of disease, mental illness and defect, called bipolar disorder and suicide.

In Leaving the Hall Light On, Madeline Sharples has graciously given forth the experience of her son’s journey through life as a precious gift.   Her son’s life and how he lived it, holds out tremendous value to those who care to listen.   Beneath the pain and stigma, is a cherished life, no matter if perceived as being tragically cut short, in the end was well worth every moment it was humanly lived.   A life of a son, portrayed honestly without embarrassment or regret by the loving words of his mother.  The writing of this memoir with poems by Madeline Sharples may have been at times hard for her to say or bear; and yet, her heartfelt words keep alive the spirit of purpose and positive effect her son’s life experience will have on others, even after he choose to walk into the release of death.   Her son’s life and death offers us all the opportunity to learn and then personally grow as a human being ourselves.

Thank you Madeline Sharples for helping to let the memory, the spirit and the value of Paul’s life, get the chance to breathe fully within the beat of time.

 Buy Madeline’s Book:

Madeline’s Featured Artist page at The Hamilton Gallery ~ Online.com
https://www.thehamiltongalleryonline.com/blog/?page_id=50

The word imagery experienced within the pages of Helene Cardona’s book of poetry Dreaming My Animal Selves in bare essence is magically spiritual.   Regardless of a person’s way of belief,  Cardona’s artistry of archetypal symbolize entwined in metaphor and airy rhythm titillates the birth of the mystical spirit in the reader.  The conscious reader now becomes spiritually aware of the sub-conscious filled with images of nature set to a dream realm that invokes the feeling of kindred spirit.  Through the mastery of word image, the artistry of poetry,  seemingly is Cardona’s purpose to achieve what was similarly sought by the peoples of the First Nations.  They used a sweat lodge and/or peyote,  wherefore creating this altered state to induce spiritual enlightenment and growth.   The kindred spirit felt through a heighten cognitive state of interaction with other living and nonliving aspects of nature, emerges spirituality, that felt sense of interconnection and interdependence with all else.   Very similar to the emergence of flavor born from the chemical interaction between the properties of food and the taste buds of the tongue.

Whether or not Helene Cardona used the art of poetry for the above expressed reason I don’t know.   However, I do promise if you buy and read the book, the experience will be more than worth the cost of the trip.   Helene is a world class artist and human being who creates magic…..

Side note:  When I met Helene Cardona at her book signing, she wrote the following in the copy I bought, “For Keith, kindred spirit with love and light.”

Peace Out !

~Keith Alan Hamilton~

The book of poems, Where it Goes lends further testament to why its author Martina Reisz Newberry is one of the great present day poets. In this book Newberry once again  demonstrates how she is the master of poetic storytelling as it relates to the human experience.  As her word imagery tells the tale of life the pot stews with a magical blend of aromatic metaphor.   The ebb and flow of metaphor within the poems of Where it Goes by Newberry is as simple, efficient and effective as economy of motion in nature.   Much like when the apple drops from the tree to the ground and the recognizable thump is heard from a distance.   Thus making her word imagery as  illustratively significant to her poetic storytelling as the parables are in telling the tale of the Bible.

Newberry with a touch of genius in the poem A Day in the Death of Metaphors starting on page 68  of Where it Goes brilliantly teaches us all about the use of metaphor within poetic storytelling, she writes …..

“I’m sick of metaphors.   All the stories and poems and essays are making me tired.  They don’t mean what they say or they use curlicues and asterisks to say it.  No, no metaphors not at least in this poem.”

And later on in the poem she writes …..

“Damn!  I already broke my promise (the “kite-wise” thing, an obvious metaphor).”

Then lastly she writes ……..

“I have licked the frosting off the 21st century, as I’ve lived it so far, and (oh hell! another metaphor.  I’m not even as good as my word.  I’m sorry: I tried).  What’s left is the end of this poem, which I hope has had its moments.

All this, all these words with a minimum of metaphors just to say that I am worried–for you, for me, for the most and least worthy of us.  I guess it is best, just to assure you that tonight, when you are finished reading this,

you can turn out the light and close your eyes and, if you too are worried, know that I can give you this: you are not alone.”

In Where it Goes as with all the other books of poetry Martina Reisz Newberry has written over the years, you never feel alone; but through Newberry’s word imagery seasoned with the right amount of  metaphor,  the reader visually becomes a part of and lives the poetic storytelling experience.   I read this book from front to back without putting it down …..  I highly recommend this same type of experience to anyone who wants to live the poetry of Martina Reisz Newberry.   One of the greats  !!!!!

~Keith Alan Hamilton~

Martina’s Featured Artist page at The Hamilton Gallery ~ Online.com https://www.thehamiltongalleryonline.com/blog/?page_id=384