March 2023 MBR The Poetry Shelf

The Poetry Shelf

O C E A N
Anastasia Lindsey
Atmosphere Press
www.atmospherepress.com
9781639887057, $22.99

https://www.amazon.com/C-N-Anastasia-Lindsey/dp/1639887059

O C E A N is a poetry collection about tides of grief, waves of healing, and the pull of something bigger than the human soul. Life itself is steeped into works that arrive with no title to portend the punch of the poetry.

Anastasia Lindsey produces weeping words that sparkle and glisten with evocative free verse phrasing: "I dreaded the rain/every time the clouds/came rolling in/I knew it was my collection/of tears from the week/ready to let me have a/taste of my own sadness."

The poems present a storm of sorrow before metamorphosing into the healing rains of an ocean of life promises. Before this transformation, they move from first-person pain to third-person observation in a form that demands of its readers an emotional flexibility in moving fluidly from observer to observed: "she doesn't show the bad and the ugly - she doesn't show her tears/although bright, warm, and vibrant/she's hidden/amongst her fears and insecurities - she feels forgotten/just when you think you/couldn't love her enough - she stays awake at night/wondering if she is loved."

The intersection of the ocean comes later, in a wave of evocative poetic description that marries heart and soul with the unrelenting tides of nature: "I am immersed into the undiscoverable/our human eyes have not seen/can you see me?/a second passed and a whisper entered my ear/"welcome... to the Milky sea..."/bioluminescent film coats the top of the water/it's on my skin, filling my pores/in my eyes, they are glowing."

It soon becomes evident that this collection is about more than grief or healing, but is ultimately about love and inevitability. These threads wind through the collection, joining the poems in a mosaic of extraordinary word pictures that depict relationships, transition points, and growth.

Anastasia Lindsey's exploration of her life and the tides that consume and carry it will appeal to readers of emotional free verse autobiography that brings with it a sense of place, purpose, and connection that expands from personal experience to universal ties. Lindsey lets her "wild side" free in these works, and libraries looking for emotional explorations of that side in contemporary free verse will find O C E A N a draw.

Our Lives in Verse: Everyday Poetry
Ann Brubaker Greenleaf Wirtz
www.anngreenleafwirtz.com
WestBow Press
www.westbowpress.com
9781664276390, $9.95 Paper/$2.99 ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Lives-Verse-Everyday-Poetry/dp/1664276394

Our Lives in Verse: Everyday Poetry pays tribute to common, ordinary life in a simple yet evocative manner that translates to its accessibility and understanding by poets and non-poets alike.

Here, the trappings of literary strength lie in both a lifelong familiarity with and appreciation of poetry and Ann Brubaker Greenleaf Wirtz's desire to comprehend, capture, and embrace everyday experience. Her fine art creates a work that both celebrates poetic efforts and remains vivid and easily understandable to her readers. She achieves this with poems that reflect experience through the lens of her faith, adding a spiritual component that will especially reach readers on similar paths to linking everyday experience with spiritual reflection.

There's a fine line between poem and prayer, which Wirtz traverses with a delicate step. Some of her writings are more spiritual letters to God, as in 'Our Community, a Prayer in Verse': "Regardless the generation,/Challenges are ever present,/For certainly the way is never easy,/But good-hearted faith and the/Determination to succeed do prevail./Thank You, Dear Lord, for our town,/A vibrant refuge, life-giving with hope,/For our place and time in its history, and/Upon this, our sheltering home..."

Others celebrate ordinary wonders, such as a summer's drive in the country, captured in 'The Hay Bales of Summer': "My car made its way/Down the winding road,/A lazy jaunt to see the sights/Of farmland and pasture/In the afternoon light.../Garden flowers were rioting,/And farm fields flourishing,/When startling my gaze/As they came into view,/Were hay bales to frankly amaze."

In representing moments of everyday life and times and injecting these with expressions of gratitude and wonder, Wirtz pays tribute not only to God, but to life. Libraries seeking literary works that remain true to poetic form and description while celebrating miracles of place and time will find Our Lives in Verse: Everyday Poetry a fine choice that holds the ability to reach literary and non-poetry readers alike.

Animal Afterlife
Jaya Stenquist
https://jayastenquist.com
Airlie Press
https://www.airliepress.org
9781950404094, $18.00, PB, 92pp

https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Afterlife-Jaya-Stenquist/dp/1950404099

Synopsis: The voices of near-extinct animals create troubled echoes in Jaya Stenquist's debut poetry collection, "Animal Afterlife". In fragmented reincarnations, these poems reach for the limits of humanity, the boundaries of species, and the laws of embodiment. Here, sensations become the mechanism for insight.

With lithe lyric power, Stenquist verse builds a world of impossibilities, a language for the binturong, the eyeless spider, the siren of Canosa, and wild ponies of England; communications and intermingling with the human that can never be preserved, only imagined. As the Earth continues to change during its Sixth Great Extinction, "Animal Afterlife" creates an poetic archive of spellbinding ghosts.

Critique: Eloquent, erudite, original, unique, thought-provoking, meditative, imaginative, the poetry written and compiled by Jaya Stenquist in her first published collection from Airlie Press is an extraordinary, memorable, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, and academic library Contemporary American Poetry collections.

Editorial Note: Jaya Stenquist (https://jayastenquist.com/Abt) is a writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Mid- American, Black Warrior Review, and West Branch Wired. She is also a PhD student at the University of Texas-Austin.

Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings
Nikita Kapoor
www.nikitakapoor.net
Paper Lily Press
9798986811727, $8.99, PB, 105pp

https://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Shadows-Fierce-Nikita-Kapoor/dp/B0BN43KF4F

Synopsis: With the publication of "Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings", Nikita Kapoor presents is a collection of thought-evoking poems written with a touch of innocence and infused with inspirational snippets of courage and wisdom that demonstrate the depth of her innate poetic sensibilities. Of special note is that beautiful art pieces are paired with the poems that visually express their spirit and make the poetry comprising "Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings" an even more enjoyable read.

Critique: A truly remarkable, thoughtful, and thought-provoking body of poetry matched with art, "Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings" is an inherently fascinating work made even more impressive when considering this young poet's age (10 years old). Simply stated, "Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings" is unreservedly recommended for elementary school, middle school, and community library Contemporary Poetry collections. It will be of special appeal to those with an interest in inspirational and religious poetry.

Editorial Note: Nikita Kapoor, (www.nikitakapoor.net) is a ten year old 5th grader, an avid reader, and loves to write. Nikita has been writing since she was young (about 4 years old). She started writing her first middle grade fantasy fiction book, Pack of the Lost - The Uninviting Forest when she was 8 years old and is delighted to finally see it published. Besides fantasy fiction, she loves to write poems, and her first poetry book is "Gentle Shadows Fierce Wings". She is a member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and was awarded Grand Honors for achieving scores that are among the highest of all CTY Talent Search participants. She is also part of the Gifted and Talented (GATE) program at her school, in addition to being a member of Mensa.

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