The New Death and Others by James Hutchings ASIN: B005Q8Q8DY Copyright © September 2011 264 KB (119 Pages) Kindle .99 cents Having read and reviewed James Hutchings’s Two Fisted Tweets I have to say that Mr. Hutchings is a master at microfiction. Able to tell a story in 172 characters or less in order to meet [...]
Poetry is hard to review. It’s very personal, and sometimes a poet likes to hide secrets or special meanings in their verse. They play on words and patterns and rhyming schemes. In the end, interpretation is often left up to the reader although the poet has often exposed a soft inner piece of themselves through their expression. That is certainly the case with Mr. Monroe’s collection of songs and poems called Slow Turning.
Your mind probably conjures up all sorts of central ideas when you think of a collection of poetry called I Wandered From New Orleans: Cajun food, the French Quarter, the Garden District, Mardi Gras, balconies, beads, ghosts, Hurricane Katrina, Bourbon Street, jazz, shrimp, Creoles… Is there any other place in this country (New York, perhaps?) that could be a cliche within itself because of all of these wonderful (and predictable) things that give New Orleans its ambiance and flavor?
Poems are useless
Though some people read them
They’re either trying to be romantic
Or pseudo-intellectual
Or they just like it
When words
Are formatted
Like
This
April Chartrand has a long list of credits to be proud of, besides being both the author and illustrator of her book entitled Angel’s Destiny:
With a title like that, I just had to take a look at Chazda Albright’s book. Being a fellow poet and artist, the title alone definitely captured my attention. Chazda introduces the book with an explanation about her medium:
At only 76 pages, Dervish by James Mirarchi was a quick read but is a prime example – I’ve pointed out many here at LLBR – of an author embracing self publishing to truly capture his creativity. The book sells itself as a collection of poetry, but actually opens with a brief one act play and ends with a short story, reminding me of the editions of the “Concise Book of Literature” from college English courses, still adorning my bookshelf today because they contain some of my favorite short stories and poetry.
After reading this short collection of poetry by Judy Ann and Christina Eichstedt, I immediately thought the title of the collection, Whispers of Truth, was a bit ironic. None of the poems convey a message that you think would be whispered, but instead are passages that sound like the poets would want to scream at the top of their lungs. They even say so in the book description:
In reading just the back of Richard King’s collection of poetry, one will see that the book was inspired by many things: karma, reincarnation, transmigration, destiny, devotion, vegetarianism, attainment, the human form, love, morality, heaven, hell, the inner regions, justice, the nature of this world, illusion, deception, success, money, the Pendulum, the struggle between this world and the higher worlds and much, much more.
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.
