Review 98: Poetic Reflections by Candace Gillespie

Poetic Reflections: A Compilation of Poems
Candace Gillespie
Publisher: CreateSpace (May 9, 2009)
$12.00 Paperback
122 Pages
ISBN: 1441497501

Having used self-publishing to create a chapbook of my own poetry three years ago, I can appreciate any other poet who does the same.  Poetry can be very personal, and often goes under appreciated in the publishing world.  Many readers will admit they don’t understand poetry. So any poet choosing to put their words out there in front of others, whether it be at an open mic reading at a coffee house or in a small book on Amazon.com, is often revealing a lot about themselves as a person, their emotions, their feelings, their beliefs.

There are different rules to poetry, if any rules at all are followed because poetry is often experimental.  The rules are a bit more relaxed than they are for fiction writing, particularly when it comes to phrasing and punctuation.  Candace Gillespie’s book, Poetic Reflections, is a good example of one such poet who does not abide by a traditional format and I can appreciate that.  Her book begins with a simple preface as to when and why she started writing poetry and what types of poetry you’ll find in her book.

This is followed by an acknowledgements page, a dedication to her son and nephew, and a lengthy table of contents.  I don’t really like a table of contents for poetry unless the book is divided into chapters of different types of poems. Candace’s table consists of every title of every poem in the book so the table is five pages long. There is no copyright page, but I can forgive that.  If Candace’s audience is made up of mainly friends and families and that is who she intended the book for, no problem.  However, since the book is being sold on Amazon.com, she might want to consider adding a copyright page just to protect her work from possible plagiarism.

I have one major complaint about Candace’s poetry itself which I’d like to get out of the way immediately.  I call it the magnet list.  We’ve all seen those boxes of little word magnets you litter your fridge door or filing cabinets with so people can create clever poems and phrases.  Often, people will cluster three or four adjectives or nouns together because they sound good.  It makes a nice list of “impact” words, until you put them into a verse in a poem.  In a poem, it just sounds like the poet overused their thesaurus a bit.  Many of Candace’s poems open with a magnet list in the first verse.  Here are three examples of this from three different poems…

There is so much madness in the world today.
Many people have no morals or values.
People are raising their children
to hate. Atmospheres filled with anger, hatred,
and violence plague our country.

In the beginning, you were different-
gentle, humble, kind, and loving.
As time passed, you changed.
You became almost like a stranger,
very different in your actions and attitudes.
And I began to miss the first you.

In life, we endure many hard times.
It is not about social, racial, or
educational status. It is just a
normal part
of life.

As you can see, the words themselves might sound good in a speech or by themselves, but in a poem its as if the author is summing up a thought rather than using the poem to really spell it out.   And as I said, this is really my one sole complaint about Ms. Gillespie’s poetry.

Beyond that, the poet begins by exploring quite a few thoughts and complexities on love, being a woman, and relationships with men.  Mind you, these are not tender love poems you’d find in greeting cards, but rather poems where the narrator is seeking out something better and questioning the moments in life she has been presented with instead. Here’s a verse from a poem called “At Any Given Moment” which presents a harsh truth for many women…

At any given moment, whenever there is a
disagreement my name becomes one
I was not given at birth. Only a short time
before that, I was darling or sweet cakes.
When anger ensues, my name
becomes one filled
with obscenities.

But these are not all bitter poems of heartbreak.  The poet balances out the hard times and good times with other verse about hearts skipping beats and romantic times that might even make the reader blush.  She explores arguments she’s had with her loved ones, and even the hardships of having to say good-bye, whether it be for a short time or forever. Many of her poems read like daily affirmations that are simple, but to the point:

My mistakes are others gain.
My triumphs are others sickness.
My goals are attainable, measurable,
and possible.

When it comes to visual style, all of the verses are centered just as I’ve presented them here.  I would have liked to have seen Candace play with the placement of her poems a bit more just to make the book a bit more interesting to the eyes.  Small verse leaves a lot of white space on the page and if you aren’t using pictures or drawings, aligning the poems differently throughout the book can at least make it a tad bit more appealing and give the poems movement. But overall, Poetic Reflections is a nice simple collection of poems Candace should be very proud of.

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