Poetic Reflections: A Compilation of Poems

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.

Take one look at the cover of Michael Sweet’s book and your interest is perhaps immediately aroused.  The title – Nude – one single word that catches a second glance and makes us privately take notice.  Its black and white image of skin and shadow laced with a touch of peachy fuzz, like remnants in a cotton candy machine, makes us look closer. That curve, that dimple, that place just out of the six by nine frame…you know the place.  It’s poetry, isn’t it?  And you’re right.

It is a book of poetry.

Thumbing through the pages, wandering eyes will find a few photographs of naked Greek statues, but with hands and feet strategically covering the parts you thought you’d get to see in a book called Nude.  The first poem in the book serves as a double entendre for the book cover alone.  It’s a quick and concise poem about Sweet seeing his mother nude for the first time as a child:

perhaps the faintest breeze
would have caused her to cover herself
and remain my mother

Reading Sweet’s words immediately conjured up images of  Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote sitting on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street, smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey, and writing about whatever came to mind…people passing on the street, a steamboat rolling on the river, or just the summer rain.  His simple poems are short and lazy sounding and flow naturally off the tongue if you read them out loud. Sweet is an artist, who can definitely paint a word picture with very few words at that.  Here is one such poem in its entirety:

NEW ORLEANS
in the shelter of silence
a city waits
the sky has sobered
let us learn to love the rain
again

And yet there are other poems that evoke a very different sense, hitting you hard in the gut and painting pictures you might not want to see, like your own nude mother, or perhaps the Diary of a Nazi:

I’ve seen souls reshape in the smoke
of burning bodies;
I’ve seen eyes dry and crack like glass
and fat sizzle,
and skulls cracked
in two places.
I’ve seen myself in that breathless hole,
eyes and mouth – lungs full of dirt;
only the dead escaped.

Forbidden love, new love, lovers, first kisses, forever moments, moonlight, passion, more kisses, more love, smiles, forevers…the authors “love” poems unfortunately became repetitive, predictable, and too frequent for me.  I felt like I’d read them somewhere else before, and half way through the book I had already read them…just a few pages back.  For example, this poem called “Love” on page 49 which sounds like a Valentines greeting card…

LOVE
I see something in your eyes,
your smile,
I hear something in your voice,
your laugh,
I feel something in your embrace,
upon your lips,
love

Lines from the last poem in the book almost give a perfect explanation….

These lines have been written
and rewritten,
erased and covered.
Ink and paper cannot expose me,
I have written love poem after love poem
in search of life’s unspoken promise.

…

Love cannot be written any longer.
It must be given,
taken.

As a poet myself, I’ve often repeated themes of love in my work, and yet like Sweet, displayed my true talent for verse in poems that probably came about unexpectedly.  It is these verses from Sweet that really “expose” Nude as being divine work from a strong, yet sensitive, poet with true talent.

I was a poet long before I was a novelist or book reviewer.  My first self-published book was a pop up book of poetry which was literally assembled by hand in the 4th grade for a young author’s grade school event.  In college, I continued to write poetry and fell in love with the words of Frost and Dickinson.  Having only recently rekindled my affair with Miss Emily’s words, I was eager to read more verse and from a fresh new voice.  I’d had much success with the poetry I’ve reviewed here on the blog to date, so I knew Lulu was the perfect place to start.  I didn’t have to look far.  Poet Harry Gilleland, Jr. had quieried us some time ago with his third collection of poetry entitled Poetic Musings of an Old, Fat Man.

Based on the title alone, I was expecting a book of humorous limericks and rhyming political commentary, and while there are a few of those within the pages, Gilleland offers much more than that.  I was completely amazed at his vast but thorough range of subject matter.  From a poem about the candiru fish (which is known to lodge itself inside someone’s urethra) to another about a pack of vicious ankle biting chihuahuas, Gilleland treats his subject matter with the utmost seriousness.  The rhyming technique, verse, and pattern  which he uses to craft his so-called “storoems” (story poems) is so unique that you almost forget the humor just for the appreciation of his word use.

The book is divided into four styles of poetry: rhyming and storeoms, limericks (of which there are only two), acrostic poems, and free verse.  Gilleland has broken up the candid poems with other verses that are indeed of a more serious subject matter such has having to put a pet to sleep or a child dealing with the divorce of his parents.  But his crisp style remains tight and to the point throughout.  There are no wasted words, as one of my college professors used to say.

One of the true purposes of poetry for a reader is not just to discover what the poet was intending to convey, but to find how you relate to the poem.  Gilleland does a superb job of presenting an array of poems that are easy to understand and will certainly capture the attention, and the heart, of every reader.  Some of his well-known subjects came right from the headlines such as the tiger attacks in the California zoo or the effects Hurricane Katrina had on New Orleans.  Like conversations we share with old friends, these are events that each of us know in a different way but it’s still nice to take the time to listen to someone else’s view point.

I particularly liked the sections where Gilleland spends two or three poems on one specific theme.  There are two poems about his dogs near the beginning.  One is a cheerful poem while the other is very sad.  There’s another about a soldier having to leave for war, followed by another poem about the soldier in battle, then one about a soldier’s death and another about Memorial Day.  Each poem can stand completely on its own, but together they capture a nice vignette of words and thoughts.

My favorites were two poems about Hummingbirds.  In one, Gilleland ponders the thought of the birds leaving for winter and how he anticipates their return because it means warmer weather will be returning with them.  The next poem is about a daughter promising her dying mother she’ll continue to feed the hummingbirds after she’s gone.  The appearance of a white hummingbird becomes the vision of hope and healing after a tragic event.

At 63 years of age and an old Southerner, Gilleland also ponders how the world and technology has changed our social interaction with one another in magnificent poems entitled “I Remember When” and “The Pleasure of Old-Fashioned Letters.”  His good nature shines in fun verse about women obsessing over their hair, and in another play on words about a man wanting to rub cream on his wife’s hard and cracked “pair” in a poem called “Can’t Touch Them.”

Verse after verse, this poet is to be commended for his true talent with words.  I dog eared a dozen pages to possibly quote in this review, but the book must really be experienced as a whole.  But you don’t have to take my word for it.  Just read the number of reviews of praise Harry’s books have already received on Amazon.com before me.  Even if you don’t like poetry all that much or find it hard to understand, Harry Gilleland, Jr. writes with such heart that there is truly something here for everyone. I will leave you with one verse that still resonates with me long after I closed this book…

If humans were able to see their soul
while alive, it would become certain then
that all the virtues they would extol;
the world would be filled with better men.

I’ve been a reader, writer, and lover of poetry all my life. Many many years ago, I self-published a pop up book of my poems back in the 6th or 7th grade with some pieces of cardboard and pretty contact paper for a class project. Two years ago I used Lulu to self publish a book of every poem I’d ever written. So, since beginning the LLBR in March, I’ve been on the look out for another inspiring poet. I found one in Kevin King.

Based on his author profile in the back of the book, Mr. King is a well traveled man. He grew up in Louisiana, went to school in Texas, and did mission work in Ecuador. He’s worn many hats: a sign language interpreter, a robotics engineer, and a database programmer. His varied life has obviously played a huge influence on his writing, and his voice is indeed one worth listening to. He even has a poem about it called “Please Listen.”

Please listen to me
Not just to my words
But listen to what’s inside.
My feelings are there
Within my eyes hid
If you ask I will confide.

For those who may also be well read in poetry, I know what you are thinking…Eh, that’s nothing special. It’s probably nothing new you haven’t read before. Well, as poets we all have poems like that which only convey their true meaning when spoken aloud. There is no rhyme, no real pattern, just a plain personal verse that remains lifeless on the page unless spoken. And there are a few of Kevin’s longer pieces that are indeed like that. But that’s the beauty of poetry really. Like art, it’s left up to interpretation. But then there are some of Kevin’s shorter poems that stand up at attention and just pop out at you, showing his true talent at word use and rhyme. “In Memory of a Poet” is a prime example. Here is the entire piece…

An echo down the halls of time
Where dead men speak in metered rhyme
The poet’s soul imprinted there
Throughout all time his thoughts to share
The man is dead but is not gone
In fiery verse his heart lives on.

Some of the poet’s lighter verse reminded me of good old Shel Silverstein and the black ink drawings that often accompanied his published work. Although there are no illustrations in Kevin’s book, I almost wished there were. I printed out the download and found myself inspired to add my own pencil drawings in the margins of some of his “fact-of-life” poems. One of my favorites was actually a poem about artistry called “Please, Draw me a Sheep.”

Paint me a vision
Draw me a dream
Swirl me in acrylic wonder
For the world seems gray
As untouched canvass
Is it dead, or is it waiting
For you to give it life?

Kevin writes of the topics every poet is often inspired by: life, love, passion, art, youth, philosophy, religion, nature, the list goes on and on. It is his unique use of words and imagery that give these topics new meaning. Here’s a vivid verse about abortion from a poem called “The Children Cry:”

Shining white lab coats and razor sharp steel
A heartbeat unheard as a soft saddened sigh
Unplanned and unwanted, not too young to feel
A cruel choice to silence the children’s cry.

It’s been months since I wrote a poem myself, and years since the evenings I spent standing between a microphone and a barstool in front of latte lovers reading angry verse out loud in coffee shops. Mr. King’s book was a nice trip down memory lane for me. There is indeed a poet of some type in all of us, and those of us like King who can capture that essence and purity on the page deserve the spotlight. When we can pull back the heavy curtain that hides our inhibitions and express ourselves so personally, it’s almost like good therapy. I commend Kevin King on such an excellent collection of his poems that succeed at just that! The last verse of his poem, “Life,” says it all quite perfectly:

The spirit yearning to be free
Struggles ever against the flesh
Make your choices daily.
This life is more than what we see.

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