Book Reviews

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BOOK REVIEWS

  • With Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget, by Emmett Wheatfall, reviewed by Carolyn Martin

    July 15, 2022

    With Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget by Emmett Wheatfall
    Fernwood Press, 2022, 105 pages, $17.00
    ISBN: 978-1-59498-088-6
    Available at Fernwood Press

    As a poet astutely aware of the challenges facing 21st century America, Emmett Wheatfall has never shied away from the in-your-face-truths all of us need to hear. With Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget is his latest foray into truth-telling. This collection bears witness to the history of the COVID-19 pandemic which Wheatfall elegantly describes as The greatest hitchhiker on earth…/making its rounds (“Every Nation Under The Sun”).

    In poem after poem, he explores both the ongoing fear of a disease that has taken so many lives as well as the hope for the brighter future we all yearn for. The opening poem, “For All We Lose,” sets up this interplay:

           For all we lose,
           never to come again,
           the lighthouse remains,
           the channels flow,
           and humanity
           will go on

    Aware of his own mortality, Wheatfall is not afraid to show his vulnerability. In “For the Most Part,” he lays himself bare:

           For the record I am a black male
           whose legs continue to grow weak,
           whose knees incessantly throb and ache
           despite Copper Fit compression sleeves….
           On occasion, a shot of bourbon rocks my senses,
           infrequent sex stiffens my joints,
           an 81 mg aspirin tablet—a daily necessity

    And, in typical Wheatfall fashion, the poem lands on an upbeat note: For the most part, in the sweet by-and-by,/I hope to live forever.

    The poet is not only physically vulnerable but also admits to emotional vulnerability. In “World War C” he says, I am scared, man––/oh, how I am scared. In “Beyond the Shadows” he writes, We know despair/and despair knows us. And, in “Freddy’s Stimulus Check,”

    In this the days of COVID-19––
                            The Smiths cannot pay their rent;
                a lawn service mows my lawn.
                            Freddy has not received his stimulus check;
                I will periodically reallocate my investments.
                            A homeless family has not eaten;
                Karen and I are eating three meals a day….
                            All over the world, people are dying;
                I am alive here in Portland, Oregon.
                            I feel guilty.

    How authentic: this fear, despair, and guilt of a poet who was not afraid to share his feelings at the beginning of the pandemic and would attest to them now.

    Throughout this collection, Wheatfall surprises us with allusions to Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Patrick Henry, Leonard Cohen, and Charles Bukowski. He also delights us with unexpected images that emerge from his plain-spoken poems. For example, in “The Man on Earth’s Moon,” he writes:

                        Wait for it.
           Watch for it. Stars will shine again.
           And the man on earth’s moon?
           He will look back and smile.

    and in “Summer Day,”

           The cowgirl
           Wearing cowgirl boots
           Is hot-hot on the heels
           Of so much fun

    The bottom line of Without Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget is that COVID-19 is no match for hope–– three years ago or now. Eventually, the vagabond will die, Wheatfall proclaims inSing Like Italy.” Then,

           seniors will rejoice in mercy that is grace,
           some will visit the gravesite of the less fortunate,
           Sally will again hang washcloths on clotheslines,
           Sam will return to his rickety rocking chair,
           sisters will sob in their mother’s arms
           sons will man-up and hug their father

    Wheatfall’s poetic honesty reminds me of Galway Kinnell who said, To me, poetry is somebody standing up … and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.

    With Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget suggests we look back in time––with as little concealment as possible­­–– at the poet’s observations of the early years of living with COVID-19. He offers us hard and hopeful truths: the hallmark not of one single poem in this collection but of the entire body of Wheatfall’s inspiring and captivating work.

    (This review is adapted from the “Foreward” of With Extreme Prejudice, Lest We Forget written by Carolyn Martin)

    Reviewer’s Bio

    Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 150 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penned “extremely maudlin,” she is amazed she has continued to write. She is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterlyjournal for global transformation and OPA’s book review editor. Find out more at www.carolynmartinpoet.com.

  • Transition Thunderstorms, by Beth Bonness, reviewed by Roxanne Colyer

    July 1, 2022

    Transition Thunderstorms by Beth Bonness,
    Reviewed by Roxanne Colyer
    The Poetry Box, 2022, 50 pages, $14
    ISBN 978-1-956285-07-9
    Available at https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/thunderstorms

    In Transition Thunderstorms, Beth Bonness offers breathtaking insights into life events we find hard to talk about with the people we love most. This book is a tender and honest lifeline to reconnection.

    Bonness grew up in the Midwest where thunderstorms are plentiful. During summers, heavy rains pour down in sheets soaking anyone caught in the deluge. This collection of poems shares events in Beth’s life when she was soaked to the bone by her life’s transitions: her little sister’s death, her wedding day, and series of unexplained strokes.

    The spine of the collection, “thanksgiving with a side of no thank you,” fragments Bonness’s experience on the morning of one of her strokes into eight connected pieces. She invites us on a private ride-a-long with commentary from voices both inside her head and outside in the world.

    Before a nurse arrives, Bonness wakes up in the hospital and doesn’t realize she’s had another stroke. She says, “left arm doesn’t work!/left arm doesn’t work!/ she can’t hear me.”

    As the nurse checks her BP for the umpteenth time, she tells Beth to “stop holding your breath/it only makes the numbers go up” and Beth responds from inside her head, “i can’t, my heart’s racing too fast.”

    In #8, the final segment in the stroke series, Bonness is taken to the basement of the mostly empty-of-staff hospital on Thanksgiving for yet another MRI.  She experiences “extra silence with a side of heart racing” and loneliness for her husband: “where’s jeff?/how will he know i’m down here?”

    Interspersed with perfect pacing throughout “thanksgiving with a side of no thank you,” Bonness serves up additional poems like dressing and jello at a Thanksgiving dinner.

    In “the night she died,” we huddle with her as she peers through the upstairs railing at her father cradling her little sister’s dead body: “a lace bonnet with blond/curls scotch-taped inside/her legs to his right … still …” The death of a child is wrenching, yet more so when the witness is a child herself, the elder sibling confused by the presence of police cars.

    The nature of Bonness’s thoughts and poetry seem the perfect container to share the experience of searching for ways to express feelings when the words won’t come out. In the poem “wrong word dinner,” she describes how a brain attacked by stroke jumbles language:

           words in my head stand in line ready for their turn
           only they get all mixed up when they come out
           someone at camp stopping abruptly

    To temper the weight of the storms, Bonness delights us with poems like “nose piercing”––a visual e. e. cummings-inspired reveal to memorialize the day she pierced her nose.

           quick
           cRunCH
           through cartilage

    Thanksgiving would be incomplete without a delightful dessert, and “behind the mirror of someone else” is a rich experience where we definitely need to suspend disbelief. This offering may be a bit strenuous for those of us who are more literal yet, if we have the courage to look behind the mirror, the charm of this more avant garde work is swirling and accessible.

           black slips out of a car and walks into the living room with a
           lit cigar in his mouth, eyeballs blinking in opposite rhythms to
           each other, a tray of bacon-covered dates dare you to eat them

    Bonness writes from the depths of her soul’s experience. With the finesse of a true poet, she invites the reader to the pinch point of their pain then, having walked the path herself, coaxes the reader through to greater understanding and self-acceptance. With extraordinary alchemy, and a shared sense of empathy and relief, she leaves the reader transformed as she articulates truths of stroke recovery with gentleness, compassion, and words resonate with hope.

    After reading Transition Thunderstorms, I searched the author’s website and discovered she’s facilitating a writing group with other survivors. Begin with the book and then explore the ways the poet is using her experiences to contribute to the world ( www.bethbonness.com).

    Reviewer Bio:

    Roxanne Colyer is an artist, writer, and healer who divides her residence and studio work between winters at her Alaska birth home and summers in her adopted abode near Portland, Oregon. Roxanne has professional certifications in bio-energy applications and is a former fine art gallery owner. She shares a blog about art, healing, spiritual possibilities, and what makes life interesting on this planet at roxannecolyer.art

  • Perigee Moon, by Margaret Chula, reviewed by Jeanne Yu

    June 15, 2022

    Perigee Moon by Margaret Chula,
    Reviewed by Jeanne Yu
    Red Mountain Press, 2021, 89 pages, $22
    ISBN:978-1-952204-07-4
    Available at https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781952204074/perigee-moon.aspx

    In her collection, Perígee Moon, Margaret Chula invites us closer into the luminous light of tanka, a poetic form rooted in the Japanese Heian era (790 –1180 A.D.) Tanka, meaning literally “short song,” has captured the imagination of lovers, warriors, and emperors over the centuries. Today tanka remains popular in weekly Japanese newspaper columns and as a mainstay in imperial family customs.

    In the modern English form, the tanka structure has evolved to five lines. The first two often capture a moment in nature, followed by a third germane to the first two lines. Then the tanka culminates in a two-line illumination. Chula’s talent shines in her empowered pivot of this center line. Additionally, her attention to musicality, astute sense of observation, invitation to intimacy, and playfulness pay homage to the tanka tradition while pushing the boundaries to what tanka can be.

    Paralleling tanka origins, Chula begins her collection with themes of love. In the first section, “All Those Words for Love,” Chula follows the trajectory of love: what it is and how it can transform, all the while accepting its messiness and reality.

                            spring peepers
                            and their sad cheeping
                            keep me awake
                            all those sweet nothings
                            I once thought were something  

    The musical sounds echo as peepers and cheeping pull you into this spring morning, but the sad hint followed by the keep me awake pivots and uncovers those sweet nothings that present interior emotions.

    Chula approaches the tanka both as a stand-alone and as part of a larger group weaving song into an integrated story. The subsequent sections in the Perígee Moon, “Spots of Rust” and “Keepsakes,” carry the theme of the lived life, aging, and even memoir. Chula accomplishes this by stringing together tanka stanzas in conversation with one another as profundity is unraveled. In “Obon at the Portland Japanese Garden” ––Obon being a Buddhist festival to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors––the tanka spirit guides you, poem by poem within a poem. For example, here are the first and last stanzas:

                            preparing to light
                            a commemorative candle
                            for my mother –
                            the unexpected giggle
                            when the wick comes out
                                        …

                            walking on the path
                            through the silent garden
                            we pass stone lanterns
                            still holding the light
                            of those we’ve loved

    The great influential Japanese poet, Fujiwara no Teika, once summarized a letter of the ten elements of tanka, among these being mystery and depth, clever treatment of conventional topics, and exquisite detail “so that it seems to glide as smoothly as a drop of water rolling down the length of a five-foot iris leaf.” [1] Chula does not disappoint as you experience all these elements and more in this collection. In the following tanka, Chula takes two Teika hallmark elements––well-chosen metaphors and the conviction of feeling–– and glides them seamlessly into the world:

                            the tireless squirrel
                            finally tips over the suet
                            peppered with chili –
                            those forbidden things that left
                            a bitter taste in my mouth

    This bitter taste carries so much while leaving much unsaid said in this perfect balance. The tireless squirrel reinforces distraction and the lolling “l’s” of tireless, squirrel, finally, chili, stand in contrast to the other side of the tanka allowing the hard sounding peppered, forbidden, and bitter to carry these emotions in deeper meaning tuned to the troubles of heart.

    Chula’s artful use of syntax on both sides of the tanka, along with her sense of humor, readily brings you into intimacy. In continuous familiarity, Chula’s playfulness extends to tanka that can also feel like simple fun that delights your senses and moods at once:

                            writing retreat
                            I walk the labyrinth
                            for the last time
                            resisting the urge
                            to pull up weed

    Throughout this luminous collection, the musicality of cohesive sounds and beauty surface in Chula’s tanka images, permitting sentimentality that is so difficult to put words to. Instead, they find a way to rest on the pleasures of the tongue until the full meaning is landed.

                            just a few blooms
                            of white trillium
                            on the Wildwood Trail
                            how to hold back the blossoms
                            until you arrive

    There is much to contemplate and enjoy in Perígee Moon. There is too much here to share, and there is too much here to give away. It is best that you just go there yourself, as close to the moon as you can. The tanka will hold back the blossoms/until you arrive.

    [1] Reichhold, Jane. Ribbons, Journal of the Tanka Society of America 6:1 Spring 2010.

    Reviewer Bio:
    Jeanne Yu is a poet, environmentalist, mom, engineer, and coach, who is currently pursuing an MFA at Pacific University. She was a recently selected as a semi-finalist in Rattle’s 2021 poetry contest. Her inspiration is to “write from a place of my hope for the world.”

  • More Alice—Further Fragments, by Matthew Michael Hanner, reviewed by Gayle Kaune

    June 6, 2022

    More Alice—Further Fragments by Matthew Michael Hanner,
    Reviewed by Gayle Kaune
    Chandelier Galaxy Press, 2021, 89 pages
    ISBN 979-8515034016
    Available on Amazon

    Fans of Michael Hanner’s earlier work, Alice—What I Heard, will be pleased with this charming and inventive sequel, More Alice—Further Fragments. The main character, Alice, is a chimera whose mini adventures coalesce to form a whirligig of her life.

    Like an author who scatters his manuscript to the wind, Hanner has chosen to scramble these vignettes about Alice, portraying her in random order at ten, eighty, sixty and younger. She has a series of love affairs with various men and one woman, Delia, and we are left to puzzle out who was the favorite or who came first. Many vignettes include Rose, the daughter that once was not in Alice’s plan. Having children, like most Alice’s choices, was a coin toss. One side of the coin said Happy and the other side Smart. (“General Delivery”).

    How to make sense of these random notes about Alice and her life? There is continuity because of Alice herself. She is smart, well-traveled, and her own independent person. Quirky? Yes. Dumb? No.

    This collection might be read quickly, or better still, slowly. Let the episodes of Alice’s life key into some of your own; for example, youthful sex in the back of a car. In Alice’s case, it’s a Dodge crew-cab which is also where she birthed her daughter Rose just outside a hospital. Later when her daughter is grown, Alice, like most parents, still worries, If Rose needed help, she’d call. (“Ultramarine”). Like hard candy, the stories are better if you let them dissolve slowly.

    And aren’t these random vignettes the way we think? After a second reading of More Alice ––Further Fragments, I began to witness my own mind’s randomly occurring memories: how, on an afternoon during this pandemic, something might remind me of my Michigan childhood. Or, reading one of Alice’s adventures in France, I suddenly recollected that time in Paris the red-haired Frenchman took me for paella in a Spanish restaurant overlooking Sacre Coeur. Alice does that. Her life is presented in jumps and flashes, just as one’s own memories appear in random order.

    Moreover, Alice’s thoughts are surprising: The Biscayne now was a memory almost as thin as a Mercury Dime (“Stars”). These memories are often strung with lyrical phrases like Delia’s grave already half lost in the fallen browns and umbers/The leaves would cover her too./And later, snow. (“Leaves”). And they are also sprinkled with unique and unknown nouns: Fish-hawks, yellow tins of 555’s, Rapastratos, Emilia Romaga.

    Alice travels through much of the United States: Culpepper, Virginia; Chicago, Duluth, Carbondale, and Florida, to name a few. Her father’s funeral takes place in Florida and the narrator says, This was Alice’s first/funeral. This was Alice’s last funeral./One white frame church in Florida was enough (“The Sunshine State”). Alice will never return to this state.

    We can’t get enough of Alice. Every vignette elicits a story, but the endings are open. What happens? Who knows? We can often surmise, but we may have to wait for another sequel, Still More Fragments from Alice. Michael Hanner is witty and astute. He writes from a woman’s point of view. Or is it a man’s point of view disguised as a woman? He tells us about Alice’s life, or is it his life disguised as Alice?

    This book grows with each reading. The subtle humor and wry observations of Alice are delightful and leave us wanting more. If you are a teacher, I can envision using these vignettes as prompts for students to create the background or a sequel to an individual piece.

    More AliceFurther Fragments defies categories and simple interpretations but invites everyone to react and enjoy. We need more Alice in our lives!

    Reviewer Bio:
    Gayle Kaune lives in Port Townsend with her husband and a new puppy. She is a poet who has published books with Blue Begonia press and, her most recent two includes Noise from Stars from Tebot Bach press. She has been a poetry editor of Shark Reef Review and taught writing workshops including Port Townsend’s Centrum Writer’s Conference. Imprisoned by the pandemic, she turns to painting so she doesn’t whine. She is creating a series of ekphrastic paintings from More AliceFurther Fragments.

  • Dervish Lions, by Tiel Aisha Ansari, reviewed by Betsy Fogelman Tighe

    May 15, 2022

    Dervish Lions by Tiel Aisha Ansari,
    Reviewed by Betsy Fogelman Tighe
    Fernwood Press, 2022, 150 pages
    ISBN 9781594980824
    Available at www.fernwoodpress.com

    I have had the privilege of being in writing response groups with Tiel Aisha Ansari for more than a dozen years. I had summarized her as a nature poet or even a science poet who plumps up many poems with the little-known fact, the surprising detail that expands to become the truest of metaphors. However, after reading Dervish Lions, I realized that I have been underestimating Ansari’s range. Her latest full-length book­­––coming in at an impressive 150 pages– is an ecstatic exploration of time on earth, a kind of extended prayer arising from her Sufi practice. As Paulann Peterson says in the foreword, “We’re in a world lit by reverence, compassion, and awe.”

    Dervish Lions is divided into three sections: “Kingdom of Wind,” “Countries of Origin,” and “Province of Saints.” The first two sections land themselves more firmly in the environment: the first section mostly in Oregon and the second section in ancestral lands which include the more exotic locales in which Ansari spent much of her youth.  These sections employ many of Ansari’s regular devices, including simple narrative, mostly declarative sentences, and a flatter diction; for example, For some time I’ve wanted to climb the Marquam Trail/to the top of Council Crest (“Death on the Marquam Trail”). The third section contains most of the more spiritually yearning poems and lifts the book to another level.

    The opening poem in the first section, “Paper Birches,” is the entry into the book and alerts us to the fact that we are in mystical territory. In this prose poem, Ansari describes the white birches outside her building:

    ….On a clear afternoon, the west sides of the slender trunks blaze with sunlight; the east sides glow with soft light reflected
    from the building windows. There is no darkness around these trees. Moss will never grow on them….

                I hold up a poem and one side is lit by reflection from the faces of listeners. The other side is brilliant with divine radiance.
                In this transaction I illuminate nothing. My fingerprint on the paper is only a shadow. The poem is incandescent. The poem is
    a white birch.

    Perhaps the most proper use of poetry is to transport and connect us to the “divine radiance” of the All, whatever each of us may call that.

    Then, near the end of the book in a poem called “Radiance,” Ansari embeds a shorter poem in the longer one by bolding the first word in each line. In the process, she affirms the precious ties between life and death.

    If you wake up, really wake up
    the world seems changed.
    Radiance is everywhere. The smell
    of roses. The fragrance of
    a garden overflowing with the
    thousand songs of Milarepa.
    Suns dance hand in hand. You
    were sleeping all this time. Wake
    to see the bubbles of time
    burst. Kick-start yourself
    into eternity, into perpetual motion,
    the dream of engineers forever.
    Sky is the only limit
    that the awoken recognize. Who
    would dream on when they could
    be awake
    like this? Who would choose
    the comfort of dreams over the
    splendor of reality? Which
    of us sleeps and which watches
    the clockwork of the universe?
    Mighty God, Most High
    One of many Names
    I lie wide-eyed at your feet. I
    am your dog, your slave. I have
    become your lover.
    Death is only
    the gateway to eternal life,
    shatterer of chains, opener
    of doors. Wake. The radiance of new
    worlds awaits.

    Reading the bold words vertically, the shorter poem says, If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One I am become Death the shatterer of worlds. Then the larger poem affirms that Death is only the gateway to eternal life…opener/of doors. Wake. The radiance of new/worlds awaits. The form of the two poems might mirror the way each individual is nestled in the larger radiant reality Ansari calls God.

    One of my favorite poems in the book is in the third section: “Waiting for the Bus with Yunus Emre.” Ansari engages the 13th century Turkish Sufi poet in a dialog that attempts to get answers about her own poetry. For example:

    I never know if my poems are any good.
                        When you have brought the pearl to the surface
                        a jeweler is needed to know its worth….

    Yunus, what’s the use of poetry anyway?
                        Let the deaf listen to the mute
                        a soul is needed to understand them both.

    But what makes a really good poem?
                        We entered the house of realization. We witnessed
                        the body.

    Like Ansari, aren’t we always questioning ourselves? And isn’t the answer always, in truth, that we are just small parts of a very great whole? Dervish Lions give us the realization and experience of this truth––and both are of tremendous value.

    Reviewer’s Bio
    Betsy Fogelman Tighe has published widely in literary magazines, including TriQuarterly, for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Rattle, for whom she traveled to LA to read. She has won a third-place and a first-place prize from the Oregon Poetry Association. Her full-length manuscript has been semi-finalist for the Snake Nation Press Violet Reed Haas Poetry Prize and the Hidden Rivers Willow Run Book Award. (She looks forward to winning one someday.) Ilya Kaminsky chose a poem as a finalist for the 2020 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. Tighe’s essay about her mentorship with James Wright appears in the Spring, 2018 issue of The Georgia Review. She works as a teacher-librarian in Portland, OR, where she also pays some notice to her garden and dotes on two young adult children.

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