Poetry Book Reviews

Nigeria-based poet Joe Odey presents 100 poems touching on human hopes, connections and failings in Becoming a Whisper.

These short works occupy one page each, most examining what Odey calls “flawed human experience.” The five-part “Letters to Ada” laments that after a beginning in which “the whole world felt like a fairytale,” it becomes clear that “Fate had dealt us the worst of the deck.” “Our Guardian Angel” poignantly recalls an infant brother’s passing. In “That We May Live Again” a woman scorned turns to “a bottle in hand and a strange man for company.”

Odey uses language deftly […]

Gary Burns’ Bridges: To There is an evocative collection of poetry, but lacks the visceral immediacy of his earlier collections of meditative poetry, such as Clouds: On the Wind.

Within the first of the four sections, the poems contain the same mixture of Haiku-esque observation, yet contain a childlike rhyme scheme. For example, in  “The Wind All About”:

In the trees, with ease
The bird flees the stir of leaves
When the spirit of the wind
Stirs us
Go we must

The effect this has is to draw the reader away from the actual words and images and focuses […]

Clouds: On the Wind is another lovely book of poetry by Gary Burns, adding another naturalistic collection to his oeuvre.

Splitting the collection into four parts – “Clouds Moonlit,” “Cloudy Day Doorway,” “Windswept,” “Wind Song” – was an ingenious idea by Burns, as it has the effect of moving the reader through space, from night into day, as if on a gust of wind. The illustrations at the beginning of each poem are also a delight, and enhance the imagery, rather than leading the reader.

The opening poem, “Quietly There You Be,” is a tone-setter. An undercurrent of longing runs […]

In Garden Walks: Hand in Hand, poet Gary W. Burns has crafted a beautiful collection that acts as a vivid and meditative appreciation of love between people, and the love of nature.

Burns achieves the semblance of a whole through splitting the collection into four parts: “Colorful Blooms,” “This Backyard Garden,” “Garden Paths,” and “Seasons Cascading.” Each part seems to mirror the constituent parts of a flower’s life – it buds, grows, blooms, and dies. There is a symbiosis between human relationships and nature, exploring love seen through the lens of the natural world.

The most affecting poems are […]