Peeking Between the Pages

...escape into the pages of a good book

Poetic Book Tours

Ergon by George HS Singer

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Ergon by George HS Singer is a poetry collection that really touches on the human experience. His poems are about his life as a monk and then his life when he left to get married and have a family. They are deeply moving and full of a vulnerability that touches the reader as the poet shares his most intimate thoughts through his words.

I’d love to share one particular piece that I felt portrays the deep love that couples share as they age. It’s no longer love like a bright shiny coin but it’s so familiar and caring.

Our Quotidian

I love you differently
now than when you were hot
and I sizzled—

I sweep the floor, scrape away
squashed berries, pry
tops off medicine bottles you no longer can
and you drive

across town to find just the right
apples, open the bills first, brew kimchee,
worry for the both of us.

I listen for your stuttering laugh
downstairs and feel the silence
that concentration makes

when you ply your needlework,
racing to finish the Christmas stockings
as if the cosmos required it.

Children phone with stories about
their children. We need only change
the beds in their old rooms twice a year.

You call 911 and you’re there
with me when the anesthesia
wears off—worry webbing around

your eyes. Too, you call me cheap
and I spit lazy. We walk past each other
in the hallways.

Until we jump back from
the loneliness as, when on a hike,
a diamond back shook its rattle at us.

You vacuum, I mop.
I know your smell and you, my snore.
In line at the market, you lean into me,

Grazing my shoulder with the warm loaf
of your breast, I tap your thigh—still here,
together in the quotidian.

This slim volume of poetry is a must read for poetry lovers.

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Source: Copy received from the author for an honest review. No compensation was received.

Saris and a Single Malt by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

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Saris and a Single Malt by is the latest poetry collection from Sweta Srivastava Vikram. It is a very personal collection in which she shares her pain and grief at the sudden loss of her mother. It is so eloquently written and the raw pain and emotion flows with every word written.

I have read other collections written by Sweta. And while I don’t read poetry on a regular basis I know what I like and Sweta has become my favorite poet since I was introduced to her writing a few years ago. This latest collection of hers has touched me on such a deeply personal level. The death of a loved one is such a painful experience and the author uses her words to attempt to try and heal her broken heart soul. One can’t read her words without feeling her grief and struggle to move forward and say goodbye.

Saris and a Single Malt is a beautiful and touching collection. One that allows the reader to feel the true soul of the poet and her precious relationship with her mother. Simply exquisite.

To end I’d like to share one particular piece that really tore at my heart…

Does Grief Wear a Color?

Hindu tradition tells me
to wear white to show loss.

But, will wearing white
bring back my mother?

No one answers.

A part of me died with
you, Mumma.

A part of me ceased to
exist.

I can’t wear white,
my bleeding heart will
ruin it.

(taken from the digital edition of Saris and a Single Malt by Sweta Srivastava Vikram)

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Review copy provided by the author in return for an honest review. No compensation was received.

The Couple Who Fell to Earth by Michelle Bitting

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couple-who-fell-to-earthToday I’m spotlighting a poetry collection entitled The Couple Who Fell to Earth by Michelle Bitting. Her collection is receiving attention from the Poet Laureate of the United States and others. Her work was also chosen to be featured by Kirkus as one of their top 35 starred reviewed works (that’s out of hundreds) in a literary publication/forum they are set to launch so that gives you an idea of how great this collection is. Here’s a bit about it:

These meditations, cosmic-toned, yet utterly visceral, demonstrate Michelle Bitting’s continuing growth and power as a poet of love, loss, the daily and deeply human experience, together with a maturing eye to understanding greater mythological tropes. Woven throughout her contemplation of the terrible beauty and struggle of family dynamics, corporeal desire, the injustices and revelations of life in the 21st century, thrums a vital connectivity to the mystic and mythological strains of the past, newfangled to the present in a way that ultimately sheds light on what it is to be alive and conscious of who we’re called to be.

To read Michelle’s poetry is to take a wild, passionate ride through the rubble of the quotidian, to be shocked by sensual discovery and awakened to a relentless curiosity for both the surreal and historical. These poems travel–an expansion in service of communion with the world, confrontation and acceptance of self.

And now I’ll share a few of Michelle’s poems from The Coulke Who Fell to Earth…

Elegy for a Body

There was a time I’d spend an afternoon
digging the bitter green sliver from a fair garlic thumb,
seed mountains of weepy Heirlooms, thread hunks
of yellow dough through a roller’s metal teeth,
the long Rapunzel locks strung from one end
of our tiny kitchen to the other, then snipped off quick
into boiling fumes. Meanwhile, my baby suckled,
siphoning fuel, sheen of buttered stars poking through
my shirt’s thin firmament; child I’d soon nurse to bed
only to get up three times in the night
and knowing that, I still had the juice to be cheerful,
to lift high the steaming nest of noodles,
to center that tangled gold on my husband’s everyday plate
and everything about the moment slow motion focus
on his face: grateful; love rising through the numbness,
melting the day’s cold. He’d look up at me, at his food
and lean closer into that delicious heat,
his mouth a flower flamed open by the sun.

The Goods

It’s the corporeal feelings
I crave the most: aridity, lust,
their aches’ redaction, love-weariness,
kiss-quest, falling in bed again
when loneliness breaks a sweat
and we mount a horse
called faith borne
on this wheel of March,
charge and stamping
heat of the noble
night that will carry us,
tongue and thigh
entwined and shuddering
against our own coming history.

Here she reads “Lupercalia” from the collection, which was published by C&R Press in March 2016:

 

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Wet Silence by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

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wetPowerful.  That is the word I would use to describe Wet Silence, the newest poetry collection from Sweta Srivastava Vikram.  I devoured this collection in one sitting and went back to reread several pieces and I know I will read them yet again in the future.  This collection relates the hardships of Hindu widows in India.  We don’t know the women the stories speak of but we know that their stories are shared by many other widows in India.  It is a very moving and emotional collection … very raw in the telling and one that will haunt your thoughts for days to come.

In my years of reading I have read many novels that  portrayed the lives of women in India and that was, in fact, my interest in this collection.  This collection addresses the many restrictions placed on Hindu women after the passing of their husbands.  What they wear and eat is controlled.  They are unable to love again and remarry.  Basically they are expected to mourn their husbands for the rest of their lives whether they had been treated well or not.  As a woman it saddens me to think of vibrant women, some in the peak of their lives, having to live a life like this –  being dictated to and no longer being able to enjoy the pleasures life has to offer.  Wet Silence perfectly captures the grief, sadness, and anger that these women feel and through Sweta’s voice, I too felt their sorrow.

Wet Silence is an amazing collection.  It hits you hard – in the gut with it’s raw reality.  When I read poetry I look for how it affects me emotionally and Sweta’s is one of the most powerful I’ve read in terms of evoking so many feelings in me.  It is exceptional.

Please take the time to enjoy this video of Sweta and a reading of her poetry.  I’ve never listened to an author read their own poetry and it really adds a whole other dimension to the words spoken.

 

And finally I’d love to share a piece of Sweta’s poetry with you…one of my favorites.  It was the very first one I read.

My husband is leaving

Widowhood is trapping me unwillingly.

I can hear a white cotton sari weaving at the shop,
demonic voices sharp as the mustard paste in fish curry
speaking in whispers around the hospital corridor,
accusing me of standing and watching
his rotting flesh and dull eyes,
not brooding like soot on windows.

My husband is leaving.

It’s his touch gentle as velvet,
his angelic tone that I’m seeking.
Bidding farewell to our dream,
my curse: I keep on living.

(“My husband is leaving,” a poem, originally appeared in Sweta Srivastava Vikram’s poetry book: Wet Silence(Modern History Press: July 1, 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1615992560))

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Highly recommended!

 

Source: Digital review copy provided by the publisher for an honest review. No compensation was received.

Reconnaissance by Anne Higgins

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reonReconnaissance is a collection of poems by Anne Higgins and a very lovely one indeed!  Her poems are about seeing the world around us and this collection evokes vivid images of the beauty and the harshness around us every day.  She writes of birds and gardens and then on the other end of the spectrum illness and death.  Her poems take us on a journey through memories of her childhood and later years and we find we are taken away on the beauty of her words.

Anne’s poetry is really about life and all the things in it.  I think that’s what really connects the reader to her poetry.  There are poems about traffic, the blind spot when you’re driving, and another where she dreams she is Agatha Christie.  Still others deal with aging, illness, and family.  These are all poems many of us can relate to and for me that’s what is most important when I read poetry.  I was able to understand what the poems were trying to relate to me and in that I was able to just relax and enjoy them all the more.

I found the title of the collection interesting and the author explains that, to her,  the word Reconnaissance means ‘to know again’.  So she says the poems are about knowing things again, of seeing them with new eyes.  I always find it fascinating to learn where a poet finds their inspiration and I think that Anne’s perfectly encompasses the scope of this wonderful collection. While I enjoyed many of the poems there were a few that really struck a chord with me and I thought it might be nice to share at least one of them…

 

PERDITA

If I had a daughter, I would name her Perdita.
Of course, the time when I could have a daughter is long
gone.
But that name, the lost one, calls to me tonight.
Like Anita, and Rita, and Jacquita, Lolita, Florita, it is Latin and
lovely
but it’s lost, too.
So my lost eggs, long ago shriveled up,
and lost nest, more recently, fried by radiation.
Perdita, your name wouldn’t go well with my last name,
or the names of any of the men I would have married,
but you are the lost one,
the invisible one,
the one I never would have had the patience
to toilet train, to least train like a puppy,
to train like a stubborn adolescent.
Never meant to be be a mother,
today, more than old enough to be a grandmother,
I think of long lost tempests,
and you.

 

Beautiful, just beautiful… Recommended for all those with a love of poetry.

 

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Source: Digital review copy provided by the publisher for an honest review. No compensation was received.

The Robot Scientist’s Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey

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The Robot Scientist’s Daughterrobot by Jeannine Hall Gailey is a collection of poems that are quite powerful. While my initial attraction to the collection was the title and beautiful book cover, it soon became apparent that these poems run so much deeper than that. The collection reflects on the author’s own childhood growing up near the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee where nuclear experiments were conducted and the effects that this had on her growing up and years later on her health as an adult.

The poems are so full of imagery and I thought sadness. Sadness in growing up as a kid and not knowing that doing something as simple as chewing on a blade of grass or tasting snow could be so bad for you. As you read her words you can almost feel the radiation and sickness closing in on you; the unfairness of it all. Yet there is hope in the the water lilies that bloom and the sunflowers that are planted and in just being a kid. It was interesting to see both sides of the coin – the goodness and beauty in the world around you and yet the devastation in how easily it can all crumble.

As always I am no expert when it comes to poetry but I enjoyed this collection and hope to read more from this author. The poems reflect real life mixed with science fiction mixed with the devastating effects of the nuclear world. These poems continue to haunt me and I don’t think I’ll soon forget them. I’ll leave you with a piece I found particularly powerful… not to mention the author’s poetry shows her amazing talent much better than I could ever put into words.

 

The Robot Scientist’s Daughter (recumbent)

She lies back on a floor of pine needles looking up at a sky
obscured by crooked branches. But she can’t be back-
this must be a memory, tricking her, her hands on the damp
violets and moss, the sharp shells of acorns a mirage.
If she could, she would once again be part of this wood,
her own cells the building blocks of the next flower,
the next kit fox. Trace elements still exist inside her
that call her to this place, the skeleton of decayed leaves
a reminder that her own skeleton, marrow emptied out,
might emit the same markers, might show
the exact same chemical makeup. When she was young
there were so many daffodils, she could not pick them all-
she ran her hands along their frilled faces, she placed
her face in their clusters and smiled, covered in yellow
pollen. Even the glue of their stems on her hands smelled
like sunshine. One more trick. She lies back,
and remembers perennials that no longer exist.
She will not die here in concrete. Her body belongs there,
in a flower-field tilled under, waiting, vast and empty,
for her to return.

 

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Source: Review copy provided by the publisher for an honest review. Poem taken from The Robot Scientist’s Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Page 68, eBook copy. No compensation was received.